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Comment by tyrion | Hacker News Reader

I just set up a small monthly donation to Mozilla. You can do the same if you wish at: https://donate.mozilla.org

I think it is worth it since I have been using FF since forever for free.

Note that donations go to Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit parent of Mozilla Corporation that works on an open web and other social initiatives. Mozilla Corporation, the maker of Firefox, does not get anything from your donations because of the way these organizations are structured.

I've asked about this here before (how to support MoCo and Firefox with money), but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that so far. This is one of the reasons Mozilla Corporation has been looking at other services, like the VPN service we've heard of, to get more revenue. Mozilla Corporation also laid off several people from the Firefox team recently because...not enough money, in very simple terms! This is not to say that one must not donate to Mozilla Foundation. Just be aware of where your money can go and what it can be used for.

On the other hand, donations to Mozilla Thunderbird go directly to Thunderbird development, maintenance, etc.

Edit: Removed an erroneous statement about the search engine partnerships.

Thanks for bringing this up. I remember reading something similar in a previous thread, but while making the donation I couldn't think of why it would be a reason not do donate anyway.

If I could donate directly towards ff development, I would probably choose to do so. Anyway from your comment I get the impression that donating to Moz Foundation is not such a great idea. If so, could you elaborate why?

My reasoning is this: I wish to donate to the people that brought me FF. If they believe those funds are better allocated to something else (instead of FF development), I guess it is should be their choice. Unless they start neglecting FF I see no reason not to donate some small amount anyway.

I use Tab Mix Plus. (I'm on Waterfox just for that one extension.)

Back when Firefox switched to the new UI backend and broke approximately all of the addons, it was promised that the missing APIs they'd ditched would be re-added post release as JS APIs. This is now many years overdue.

Frnakly, I disagree that it should be their choice, and will not donate until they give me an avenue to donate to Firefox Browser specifically.

I miss Tab Mix Plus too. I also miss Session Manager, Lazarus form recovery, etc. It's been very frustrating that Firefox hasn't provided adequate support for these fantastic extensions to continue in the WebExtensions world.

Tab Session Manager is a WebExtension. I'm not familiar enough with the others to know what's missing and can't be replicated, but session management is alive and well.

> Anyway from your comment I get the impression that donating to Moz Foundation is not such a great idea. If so, could you elaborate why?

Sorry, that wasn't my intention. Donating to Mozilla Foundation does a lot of good around the world. It just doesn't support Firefox development. I just wanted to make that distinction clearer.

A somewhat cynical take: If users could contribute directly to Firefox development, it would still pale in comparison to the amount of money they get from Google for search.

While it would be a noble cause to support the browser directly, it sounds like Mozilla Corp could make better use of the funds.

Sorry, what is the direct Thunderbird donation link? Last time I saw it, it supposedly was Moz Foundation only as well.

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