No knowledge of the business. But I think it's because of the underlying question that plagues Mozilla: How will that make money?

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lopis 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not sure how well know this is, but besides their contract with Google to be the default search option, Firefox does earn money through revenue share with all other default search options. A normal healthy company would just rely on those. Growing the user base would therefore grow the amount of rev-share income. So improving the product by itself, and thus attracting users, does make money - and probably enough to run Firefox and Mozilla. Just not enough to pay their CEO.

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4gotunameagain 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They don't really need money. Look at Mozilla's CEO compensation for example. It was 7 million USD in 2022. Seven. Million. For ruining a bastion of the open internet.

The problem is the MBAs.

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RobotToaster 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It still seems obscene to me that anyone at a non-profit, that begs for donations and volunteers, makes 7 figures.

(Yes it's technically a company, but it's a company owned by a non profit.)

	▲	pas 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		did people ask the supervisors of the foundation what do they think about this?

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pas 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

multiple things can be true at once.

is that too much money for one person? well, apparently it depends on who do you ask. and even if the board members who approved it might thought it's too much, it still could have been cheaper than to fire the CEO and find a new one and keep Mozilla on track.

CEO compensation is usually a hedge against risks that are seen as even more costly, even if the performance of the CEO is objectively bad.

https://www.ecgi.global/sites/default/files/working_papers/d...

framing Mozilla/Firefox as some kind of bastion is simply silly - especially if it's supplied by the gigantic fortress kingdom of G, and makes more money on dividends and interest than on selling any actual products or services.

it's a ship at sea with a sail that's too big and a rudder that's unfortunately insignificant.

but whatever metaphor we pick it needs to transform into a sustainable ecosystem, be that donation or sales based.

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drawfloat 5 days ago | parent [-]

It's too much money for a non-profit that is failing by all possible metrics and is saying it is struggling for revenue.

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sakompella 5 days ago | parent [-]

Parallelly, it is on par for similar positions.

	▲	int_19h 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Just because something bad has been normalized doesn't make it appropriate, though. You can argue that they won't find another CEO for less money. To that I would posit that they won't find another CEO from the MBA crowd for less money, but that is a feature, not a bug.

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on_the_train 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a git repo. They don't need employees besides a few programmers

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pas 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it's a completely obvious "problem" -- more users are easier to monetize, even if they "simply" go the Wikipedia donations model

many people stated that they are happy to do targeted donations (ie. money earmarked strictly for Firefox development only, and it cannot be used for bullshit outreach programs and other fluff)

and if they figure out the funding for the browser (and other "value streams") then they can put the for-profit opt-in stuff on top

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tessierashpool9 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Google pays Mozilla, Mozilla has more money, Mozilla spends more money (especially in compensations to a bloated C-level), Mozilla needs more money, Google threatens with paying less, Mozilla will lube up and bend over.