Allow me to rephrase my earlier choice

  Chromium: Entirely dependent on Google, a $3T company who's entire business model relies upon invading your privacy and currently has a >70% global share of browsers
  WebKit: A closed source browser with ~18% of browser share and run by a nearly $4T company who forces all browsers on their mobile devices to be reskinned versions of their browser and probably wants to do the same on their other devices
  Gecko: An open source browser with ~4% of the browser share, run by a non-profit with a mission of to preserve privacy but is struggling to find funding.

All three choices suck. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. But there's only one option on here that isn't trying to royally fuck everyone over and actually cares about the very service we're arguing over.

So what... we're going to let the internet get screwed because a bunch of dudes making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year can't toss some beer money over to the little guy?

You paint this as a hopeless picture, but seriously, have you considered donating? Every time I see these types of threads I see comments like

  > I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.[0]

Seriously, are we all that greedy and myopic? They're a non-profit. You know tons of companies, such as Google and every other big tech company, have some donation matching system. Google pays the Mozilla Foundation about half a billion a year to make Google the default search engine. How is the fact that they are throwing such massive amounts of money not a concerning thing? Yet FF has enough users that we could give them an extra 40% revenue if we tossed them $5 PER YEAR. That's it.

Do you really think your browser provides to you less value than your Netflix (160%/360%/500% more expensive) or Spotify (240% more expensive) account? Seriously? If literally 30% of FF users gave to Mozilla what they are willing to give to Spotify, then the problem is solved. Or 15% of users did it through their company's matching program. If instead of discouraging people, you got more people to convert then the percentage of necessary contributors decreases!

It's even tax fucking deductible so it isn't even that <$5/yr...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45369141

▲ user432678 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My problem with donating to Mozilla is the donation goes into a pocket of their greedy CEO and only a small fraction to those who do the browser development. And that’s mostly why I donate to Ladybird.

	▲	dotancohen 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well said. Though I use Firefox, I have not donated after a Mozilla CEO quadrupled CEO pay after taking the helm.

▲ john01dav 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can't donate to Firefox. You can donate to Mozilla, but that money doesn't go to Firefox.

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httpsoverdns 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I recently purchased Firefox relay because I thought it was a nifty service to start using to prevent spam and preserve my privacy, but also a driving factor in my purchase was giving money to Mozilla. I didn't really look into it beyond that internal thought process. Your comment made me wonder, are things so segmented at Mozilla that supporting something like relay doesn't actually help Firefox in general?

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input_sh 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Long story short, you made the right choice. You can't purchase anything from a non-profit and you can't donate anything to a corporation.

If you purchase a product from them, it goes to Mozilla Corporation which makes all the products[0], if you donate money to Mozilla, it goes to the foundation.

[0] Minus Thunderbird, Thunderbird is developed by a separate foundation. Both the "Thunderbird foundation" (not actually called that) and Mozilla Corporation are 100% owned by the Mozilla Foundation.

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jamienicol 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m a Mozilla employee who works on Firefox, so I’ll try to answer this to the best of my knowledge but as a disclaimer I can’t guarantee I’m 100% correct

Paying for relay will give money to Mozilla Corporation, the same pot the google money goes into, which will predominantly pay for Firefox development but also other products. The corporation’s profits also fund the non-profit Foundation’s activities.

People often raise this argument regarding donating to the Foundation, as that money will be spent by the foundation, therefore not on Firefox. But a dollar raised by the foundation is a dollar less the corporation has to give the foundation, leaving it with more money to spend on Firefox and other things.

You can also donate directly to “MZLA” which makes thunderbird, and that money will be spent on thunderbird.

	▲	Hendrikto 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The problem many people have with donating to the Mozilla Foundation us them squandering enormous amounts of it. Mostly on things nobody asked for and executive pay. Personally, I don’t feel like firing Firefox devs and starting controversial and expensive diversity campaigns while raising executive pay when Firefox is losing market share every year is being a great steward.

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godelski 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

People have a lot of weird excuses for disliking Mozilla. There are definitely legitimate ones, but the point really is "what's the alternative"? Are the faults of Mozilla really so much worse that we'll turn to Google instead? Honestly, that seems silly to me.

Can we just for once not blindly hate something for not being perfect and consequently strengthening an even worse option?

	▲	bonoboTP 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> so much worse that we'll turn to Google instead Did you know that ~85% of Mozilla Corp's revenue comes from Google?
	▲	pessimizer 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> hate something for not being perfect Could you, and everybody, stop saying this for any reason about any subject? Go through this thread, pick out all of the people saying that they hate Mozilla for "not being perfect." Argue with them. > the point really is "what's the alternative"? Yes, that is the point. If there were an alternative people wouldn't complain, they would just leave. But Google is paying Mozilla (and Apple by the way) massive amounts of money not to compete. Mozilla is just very-ungoogled-chromium. It is not an alternative to google, it is one of the alternatives that google offers. I use it because I don't want to leave the internet altogether. It is a pain in the ass that involves a lot of work to bring it up to 70% of the functionality and UI it had 20 years ago.

▲ swiftcoder 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> WebKit: A closed source browser

You seem to be confusing Safari (a closed source Apple product), and WebKit (an open source browser engine used by multiple browsers).

	▲	typpilol 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You beat me to this comment. Webkit is not an apple only thing