comments claiming mozilla doesn’t need the money make me feel i’m crazy. you actually think making a modern web engine that competes with chrome in terms of performance and compatibility is easy? that relying solely on donations from individuals and voluntary work are gonna cut it? if it was that easy, we’d have more than just gecko, webkit and webkit fork – but we don’t.
it also truly drives me insane when people bring up the forks, as if they’re anything more than re-skins.
without financial backing, mozilla is dead, firefox is dead, and the web will be 100% google’s. no project as large and complex as firefox stays afloat without corporate-level money.
No but maybe the C-level guys don’t need multiple millions while the actual developers don’t hardly get paid in comparison.
i might be mistaken, but mozilla’s executives get paid about 15% of the total revenue. it’s a lot, but it’s not the problem here
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The majority of Mozilla’s money actually does not go towards Firefox. They have a crazy amount of side projects.
looking at their 2023 financial report, unless i’m misinterpreting something, they spent around 200 million paying “program staff” (i suppose that’s the developers) and 130 million paying executives, which is more than i was expecting. still, if their revenue gets slashed in 90%, just firing every single executive wouldn’t be enough. they’d still have to fire firefox staff
Firefox was doomed decades ago
They had a lot of market share and then promptly lost it
the sad truth, i believe. i hope i’m wrong, but the effective death of firefox feels like a matter of time
Dont worry im sure mozilla the ad company will be able to figure out a way to keepntheir CEO well paid.
Firefox has experienced declines in profit and market share, while the CEO’s compensation has increased. This situation raises questions about the company’s performance and priorities.
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This is a very stupid comment. Librewolf literally takes Firefox and hardens it. If there is no Firefox, there is no Librewolf.
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Huh? You’re literally recommending a fork of Firefox that won’t exist without Firefox. How can i be any more clear? Your comment is absolutely ridiculously stupid.
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surely. until sites start breaking hard and severe security vulnerabilities get found. without maintenance it won’t be all that useful
Ah i get it. You’re a fucking clown who comments in bad faith and doesn’t listen to feedback. Typical.
Have you considered that maybe you could have worded your comment in a different way without just saying it was “stupid”? You are correct about Librewolf but there was no need to reply it that way
Isn’t that a fork of Firefox that still relies on Firefox development? Would it continue to exist if Mozilla shutdown and Firefox was no longer maintained?
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LibreWolf strips Firefox of telemetry, adds privacy and security tweaks, disables Pocket, and ships with uBlock Origin by default. It’s basically Firefox with hardened defaults and no Mozilla connections.
If Firefox ever collapsed, libreWolf couldn’t continue independently long-term, they rely entirely on Firefox’s upstream codebase. They don’t maintain their own engine (Gecko), so they’d lose the foundation their browser is built on. It’d be the end unless a fork of Gecko emerged.
Don’t bother replying. That user is an absolute fucking moron.
It’s ok. We teach our “morons”, not berate them. <3
Isn’t that a fork of Firefox that still relies on Firefox development?
Yes. And it seems like a lot of people who shill for it don’t understand that. If every Firefox user switched to LibreWolf then there would be no more Firefox and then no more LibreWolf. Firefox has done some questionable things lately but all of us jumping ship to something like LibreWolf isn’t the answer.
Would it continue to exist if Mozilla shutdown and Firefox was no longer maintained?
Nope.
Is that the executive paid 10 million a year? Or maybe one of the few millions a year ones?
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Firefox makes enough in its portfolio to maintain its core. It doesnt need all the new bullshit that is only looking to spend money
Open source aint going anywheres, no worries here
The code is one thing. 300 skilled developers is another. Most of those could be full-time too.
Fire the highest paid exec first and I bet you there’s at least 30 devs paid for right there
Browser codebase is really complex and requires dedicated dev effort.
Open-source projects like this require dozents of full-time developers. It will be dead without a company like Mozilla running it. Imagine the Linux kernel with only hobbyist developers…
What wouldn’t I be able to access without compatibility investments? Spotify, LinkedIn? I think I’m fine.
Besides, what’s the point of OSS that is owned 85% by a big company?
Orgs have to wean themselves off big tech dollars. Painful, but has to happen. They’ll have to restructure and refocus. Maybe cut out the AI stuff and focus on core functionality?
God please don’t let Firefox die.
I can’t handle any more slop. I can’t go back to chrome.
Linux Mint puts out a great OS for a few thousand per month. With the start it’s got, Firefox could go on for decades without more income.
Mint is based on Ubuntu which in turn based on Debian.
Mint is neither developing OS, or Linux kernel from scratch.
On the other hand, Mozilla is maintaining Firefox browser and most importantly Gecko JS engine all by itself.
Jeez why are mozilla execs the dumbest people in the fucking room! Next they will say the earth is a spheroid.
I fail to see how this is new news, we have known this for years now, no?
I looked at their finances --which anyone can do-- and even if Google were to remove their funding tomorrow, Mozilla still has about 2-3 years of reserve capital they can burn through. Not optimal but it is not like they will disappear in a year.
Clearly, not a position they would want to be in, but they are not disappearing overnight.
How does Mozilla get money apart from the Google search deal? Are there no other search engines willing to pay to be the (even country specific) default? Also if Google sell Chrome wouldn’t that mean they’d be able to keep the deal? In a sense they are no longer the monopoly?
On the second question: no one bids as high as Google, simple as that. Others may emerge, but no one’s gonna pay that much, and with Google out of the race, the bids can get even lower.
