I, for one, am encouraged to see Mozilla try and create new revenue streams.
I hope I am not the lone positive voice in the thread - it does seem no company gets quite the same level of criticism as Mozilla on HN
I hope I am not the lone positive voice in the thread - it does seem no company gets quite the same level of criticism as Mozilla on HN
Perhaps, but Mozilla is also the company most centered at the intersection "mission we like and wish the company succeeded at" and "management doing stupid shit one after another"....
They knew they weren't good at executing on something, so they partnered with a company with a proven track record, and leveraged their brand to make sure both Mozilla and their partner got value.
It's a very successful business model, and has been used everywhere (entertainment is a great example, most IP owners license the creation of content outside of their immediate domain to other developers - toy manufacturers, video game studios, comic book and board games companies, etc).
In a world where the relevance of Firefox is waning, investing in a brand where user centricity, privacy, and security are key, and maintaining high standards on licensees is a winning strategy, especially if Mozilla owns the customer relationships.
That said, 3 million USD/year is a ridiculous wage for a non-profit (even if its a for-profit-in-non-profit construction). There's no function in the world which warrants such a wage.
Now there will come those saying that since it’s not a government, it can’t be corruption, they can go ans screw themselves in advance.
It's good that Mozilla is trying to diversify its income streams, it's a bit worrying when they are so dependent on Google.
In an underperforming company, executives have no grounds for rewards or raises. In a still-healthy company, they would likely have been replaced.
Mozilla and Firefox developers are still actively engaged in web standards, and are still punching above their weight in terms of building a web browser with a small team, and narrow revenue streams.
I don't necessarily agree that Mozilla has the right leadership, but how do you expect that leadership to change constructively if the pay isn't competitive with other tech companies of similar size and scale (1/2 Billion in revenue, and hundreds of millions of users)?
People here literally accuse Facebook of being a global Orwellian totalitarian superstate that engages in genocide and MK-ULTRA style mind-control, but OK.
That's what happens when you go around with a holier-than-thou attitude: they set high standars for the industry when they themselves fail to meet those standards every time.
My issues with Mozilla's leadership team were never about the vision, mostly about the execution. I don't like Brendan Eich's politics, or the cryptocurrency and borderline shakedown approach that he used to build and launch Brave, but the goal of keeping competition alive on the web? I could get behind that.
I don't like the recurring fallback to Google search revenue by the Mozilla leadership team, but it's kept Mozilla around to keep fighting the fight, and give the opportunity to find other options to keep fighting for their principles (which are not wokeness and leftism, despite what folks would have you believe - https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ )
Choosing a hill to die on doesn't make you virtuous, it just makes you dead. Mozilla is alive and seems to be trying to move forward, and I hope they succeed.