“A republic, if you can keep it.”

  • drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    They spend so much superflous money on crap like AI and random advocacy groups. Mozilla makes a lot more money then people tend to think they do.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
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      23 hours ago

      Feel free to share how much money they spend on random advocacy. I believe the Google deal nets a couple of hundred million - it sounds like you’re saying that if Mozilla scraps the AI and advocacy, that should recoup that money? Because otherwise losing the money is still going to require finding other sources of income to fund Firefox.

      • drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        21 hours ago

        well for one, disclosed in their 2021 they spent 300’000 on an advocacy group called MCKENSIE MACK GROUP and 375’000 to new venture fund. Neither of which have anything to do with free internet technologies. And much more has been left rather hard to find.

        In their annual report for 2024 they also show weird spending https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-2023-fs-final-short-1209.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-foundation-form-990-public-disclosure-ty23.pdf

        Page 7 (PDF page 8) lists the funding that executives have gotten, quite a lot for a “non profit” Page 10 (PDF page 11) is also relevant.

        Where it gets really interesting is after PDF page 35

        300’000 for european AI fund, 100’000 on an interactive tool for exploring broadband inequalities, 50’000 for Carbon footprint, 50’000 for another pollution related project, 50’000 for studing the impact of nuclear reactors in africa and a bunch more of these, while in some cases meaningful, completely unrelated projects from mozilla which used to be about internet and other digital rights stuff (which has changed in recent years)

        I don’t think it would recoup the money that is spent, I don’t even think it needs to. Yes, a majority of their income comes from google, but they still make a lot of money, mozilla’s search income is 85 percent according to https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-revenue-share-doj-antitrust-remedies

        If firefox were to focus on just firefox and thunderbird, and sure other things that do directly make them money, then they would still have plenty of funding left over for developers to work on mentioned projects

        • Vincent@feddit.nl
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          10 hours ago

          Sorry, you’re saying that if 85 percent of funding disappears (hundreds of millions), and “weird spending” (including the venture fund, which usually make money) to the tune of 0.3 million (let’s make that 2 million, assuming they have several such projects) is cut, then that would be able to sustain Firefox? Because that math doesn’t add up for me.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
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          19 hours ago

          From those projects, which ones are out of scope for the Mozilla Manifesto?

          The African nuclear reactors might need more explaining, but the rest seem to be right on the goals:

          • Anti-cendorship groups
          • Lobbying EU AI regulations
          • Tool to reveal censorship on ISPs
          • Coding/operations related carbon footprint and pollution, which can be used to prevent people’s access
    • jarfil@beehaw.org
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      1 day ago

      What would be the proper advocacy groups? Would you’ve ever heard of Mozilla without some advocacy group?

      • drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        21 hours ago

        One’s that are actually directly related to mozilla’s mission statement, polution and studies on nuclear reactors in africa, not related.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
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          19 hours ago

          Is there more information about that nuclear reactor?

          Pollution related to computing and coding, seem relevant to the mission statement.

    • yoasif@fedia.ioOP
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      1 day ago

      Do you have numbers behind these assertions? How much money is spent on “crap”?