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Comment by badguybeetle | Hacker News Reader

they do use mullvad to provide this service and mullvad's pricing model is flat monthly rate at ~$5 and yet mozilla charges almost double the amount per month at $9.99 and you need to get locked in to 12 month subscription to get the same price as mullvad charges.

i don't get what is the reasoning behind this

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The approach seems two-pronged:

1. Those who are aware of VPNs but have the money and would like to support Firefox can do so by using their product.

2. Those who aren't very aware of the vpn scene can trust a relatively more prevalent name in Firefox while still getting a reliable service and giving them money.

It's not ideal from a value perspective but I don't feel like it is egregious.

>Those who are aware of VPNs but have the money and would like to support Firefox can do so by using their product.

That's me.

Same.

Unlike Mullvad, Mozilla isn't just trying to run a VPN service profitably. They're trying to get reliable recurring revenue on the balance sheet to spend on other things, like redesigning Firefox over and over and increasing their CEO's salary. So they really want to lock people into longer-term subscriptions, whereas Mullvad is fine with users subscribing for a month and then leaving.

They’re trying to capitalise one their own brand.

Mozilla can't afford to work for free. They need to get paid, too.

If I understand the OP well, the question is, how can Mozilla justify charging twice what Mullvad charges, and lock you into a 12-month contract, for what is largely a repackaging of Mullvad.

So just use Mullvad instead. For those who want to support Mozilla's efforts, this is a good way of doing it. Think of your extra $5 as a sort of donation to them for building such a wonderful browser and browser ecosystem (Lockwise, extensions, Pocket etc)

A $5 donation is at least tax deductible and comes with less overhead for the foundation to process.

But firefox is developed by mozilla corporation, and donations to mozilla foundation doesn't fund firefox development. It goes to various advocacy/activism causes.

Does mozilla corporation income necessarily go to firefox development though?

(I worry that foundation income goes to activism and corporation income goes to the CEO’s pockets...)

While executives earn money like at any company, most of their budget is spent on Firefox. 2% of the Mozilla Corporation revenue goes back to the Mozilla Foundation.

That downplays the remuneration of the principle Moz exec considerably AIUI. Mitchell Baker's remuneration from Moz was >$2M last I heard (a few years back [see eg https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html]), I can only assume it's more now.

There was also a report Baker had a >$1M "stipend" (uncharitably a bung) from Google, though I've been unable to refute/corroborate it.

The last report is from 2017 I believe, a year when Mozilla's revenue hit an all time high $562 million. I personally doubt her salary is as high, despite her promotion and I believe the overall decrease in amount of executives that accompanied it.

Seriously, "Chair pay is .5% of revenue" seems fair.

And I haven't heard this "bung" rumor but Mozilla's revenue and usage were shrinking long before Baker became CEO in late 2019.

Personally I find the idea of a charity begging for cash whilst simultaneously paying outrageously large amounts of money to execs to be immoral.

My limit on reasonable salary is 5 times the UK median graduate salary.

If ".5% of revenue is reasonable" surely there's no excuse not to increase salaries of everyone working for a company -- pay everyone ludicrous sums as each salary is small!

IIRC studies have shown exec salary doesn't correlate with increased company success, why should revenue come into it.

The Mozilla Corporation isn't a charity, none of the donated money goes towards their salary. And their revenue is directly tied to a specific deal that the executives negotiated to get over $100 million per year more than their previous deal. They negotiated that despite the years of decreasing users your link showed.

As for the rest, I also dislike standard corporate practices but Mozilla is more or less forced to follow them to compete at all in this world.

Do you really think Moz couldn't find someone to competently lead it for less than $2M? For an average USA engineering manager's salary, say?

Right, let's get an engineering manager to run an international company. They just have to negotiate deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, handle all of the licensing issues, manage a charity, manage hiring for areas including PR and translation, and more assorted tasks. And let's offer them well below market rate for such a position, though we'll still publicly disclose their salary so the entire world can criticize them for everything that goes wrong with the company.

I'm sure they're flooded with great applicants for that gig. And again I doubt the CEO salary is still over $2 million. It would have been negotiated in April 2020 right before the layoffs.

For clarification, I believe he is saying you pay the same price as a mullvad subscription if you lock into a 12 month subscription, not that you pay double the price and are locked into that.

brand name

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