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Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

Not sure The Guardian is the best example of economic success.

I think you need to qualify that statement

They only survived at all because they owned a stake in Auto Trader Group which was sold off for £600m, allowing their non-profit parent to continue operating. Since then they are just about breaking even with subscriptions. They also (very controversially) employ many unpaid interns to do journalist jobs.

Lots of industries employ lots of unpaid interns. Journalism, Acting, Museums, Charities, Sports teams, Political parties, etc.

On one hand, if people are happy to do work for free, a company would be stupid not to make use of it. On the other hand, governments should probably outlaw it since it really is just a loophole to pay less than minimum wage. ("Volunteer for 2 years for free, and then we'll give you a minimum wage paid position" = "On average over your career, you get less than minimum wage")

Just about breaking even may be seen as good financial management for a not-for-profit in an industry in massive decline.

Their news operations are subsidised to the tune of ~£30m/yr by the charitable trust that owns them. Not in and of itself problematic, but accumulating a sizeable enough endowment to sufficiently fund operations isn't an option for most orgs.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/07/guardian-broke...

Mozilla corporation is owned by a non profit. Having a sizeable endowment is hard, but that sweet sweet google money has totaled over a billion dollars so its not like they didn't have the opportunity.

Yes, that totals a couple billion dollars at this point. Mozilla's mismanagement of that money is really unfortunate. Up until 2012 Mozilla ran just fine on about 100MM a year. Why they didn't care to save any significant portion of the Google dollars is beyond me. If they had simply been a somewhat leaner organization they would be in a far better place right now.

> ...accumulating a sizeable enough endowment to sufficiently fund operations isn't an option for most orgs.

And one of the claims / complaints of TFA is that Mozilla had a massive income for many years, and could have built up an endowment; but instead chose to live "hand-to-mouth", spending their income on useless failed projects that have nothing to do with Firefox. (And CEO pay of course.)

> that have nothing to do with Firefox

Not arguing against the overall point but Thunderbird has nothing to do with Firefox either and is still a thing Mozilla's reason for existing is not just their browser.

I get the point you're putting across, but you chose a terrible example. Mozilla cut thunderbird loose years ago, after neglecting it (Thunderbird remained XUL-based long after Mozilla decided that XUL was a technological dead-end). Yes, Mozilla's mission to to make the internet better for all users - not just the web. But I think they forgot what their mission is sometime back.

Exactly. Asking for donations isn't good enough for the likes of Mozilla.

From the post:

> Mozilla should probably just ask their users for money. For many years the Guardian newspaper (a similarly sized organisation to Mozilla in terms of staff) was a financial basket case. The Guardian started asking their readers for money a few years ago and seems to be on firmer financial footing since.

This comparison doesn't make sense. First of all, nearly all these publishers are moving towards subscriptions. This clearly works for them to give readers other incentives like say remove ads and paywalled content, weekly hard copies, etc. Asking users to donate to a free browser when the alternatives are also completely free to use isn't sustainable for Mozilla.

Given that the closest equivalent replacement is Chromium or ungoogled-chromium which is completely free to use and the latter addresses privacy by removing Google on everything, how can 'donations' work for Mozilla if there are other browsers that exist that users can be used for free?

The Guardian hasn't set up a paywall. It remains free without a subscription.

Replace 'Guardian' with every other online news publisher and you will also get to my disclaimer on where I said 'nearly', especially on subscriptions.

The Guardian knows that they will eventually add paywalls and require subscriptions just like every other publisher as everyone knows 'donations' are not sustainable to fund their 'journalism'. It's all about subscriptions, paywalls, etc.

EDIT: To downvoters: Oh so donations 'are sustainable' for the likes of the Guardian, such that they are still asking their users for years to donate whilst ramping up the registrations and adding a soft pseudo-wall on their content, and the suggestion is to get Mozilla to also ask its users for donations?

What happens if Google decides NOT to renew that contract in the future due to Mozilla's declining market share?

Explain how surviving off of user's 'donations' is sustainable for Mozilla to survive, given that Google is its direct competitor and offers a browser for free (and a similar one without the Google stuff is also free).

downvoter: You made an excellent case for criticizing a different passage in a similar article. The passage you quoted, and the only organization referred to in the article, was the Guardian.

Now you're just generally (and angrily) defending mozilla against a donation model, and ignoring the passage you quoted entirely. A passage which iirc was the entirety of references to a donation model in the entire article.

Well, I wonder if you think it makes sense economically for Mozilla to go through that model for asking its users for money - For a browser. Be honest.

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