Their text:
Hello, Happy New Year! I am excited to share some fantastic news to start 2024: we reached our goal of raising $3,300,000 USD in grassroots donations from the Mozilla community before the end of 2023!
Here’s how the Mozilla community came together in the final six weeks of the year:
An incredible 34,667 of us made a donation to reclaim the internet since Giving Tuesday, including 14,972 who made their first-ever gift to Mozilla; More than 3,000 of us donated our voices to Mozilla Common Voice, recording more than 90,000 clips to make voice recognition systems more accessible; And 1,181 of us started a monthly gift to sustain Mozilla’s non-profit work. Because of this support from the Mozilla community, we’ll be able to do even more of what Mozilla does best: holding irresponsible tech companies accountable, advocating for your privacy, and investing in the people, ideas, and organisations who will help reclaim the internet.
Thanks for everything you do for the internet.
Ashley Boyd Senior Vice President, Global Advocacy Mozilla
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I don’t understand the negativity. This is objectively good news. Would y’all rather people not donate to the Mozilla foundation? This hostile cynicism against Mozilla popping up time and again is getting old.
I feel like partly because of this infighting is why stupid stuff like brave and chrome keeps on getting recommended and more and more popular. Like I understand we’re supposed to hold Mozilla to a higher standard and all. But I am really tired of this constant infighting among not just privacy/FOSS enthusiasts but also among the climate movement or left leaning people in general. This need for absolute 100% alignment with one’s goals/beliefs gets no progress done. At some point y’all need to look at the bigger picture and root for the David fighting against the Goliath. FFS does it really need to be spelt out that how big of a loss it’d be for the vision of a free and open internet if orgs like Mozilla aren’t around‽
It’s not difficult to understand why Mozilla has become difficult to root for. This is the news story more people heard about so far this year: https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/02/mozilla_in_2024_ai_privacy/
“… exploring ways to better integrate advertising while adhering to our focus on privacy and choice”
I still do root for them of course, since there aren’t really any other web browsers. But they’re not making it easy.
I’d really like to know how you evaluate the following topic. Mozilla’s CEO earns 7 million. Mozilla asks for 3.3 million in donations. Please evaluate pro and con and draw a conclusion.
Compare that to Wikipedia’s CEO and it’s even worse.
Of note is that the Corporation CEO is paid from Corporation revenues, i.e. primarily the Google search deal. Firefox development very likely could not be supported by donations alone, and the Corporation can’t take donations for it.
Donations to the Foundation go to the Foundation’s advocacy work, and projects like Common Voice.
Well done guys. Quarter of CEO’s salary is safed for the next year!
Again, the CEO is not paid by the mozilla donations. She’s paid fully by Mozilla Corp which does not get donations. Please don’t spread misinformation.
Answer this: If the corp had 7M to spare, would it go to the same initiatives as the donations? And if not, why?
They wouldn’t. The Corporation is a separate entity, I believe for tax reasons, allowing them to hold more money. I don’t think that it’s allowed to use it as a loophole to avoid regulations that apply to foundations, while still using that money to fund Foundation projects.
Not true. Corp provides funding to foundation. Foundation owns and started Corp. Foundation uses Corp for development. That 7m could be improving product. Acting like Corp and Foundation are truly independent is a falsehood. Would you say the same about OpenAI?
Worth a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
AFAIK the only way money flows from the Corporation to the Foundation is by the Co paying royalties to the Foundation for the use of the Firefox trademark. Obviously exactly how that number is determined is a little fuzzy, but I don’t think it (legally) can be just any number - it has to be justified somewhat. In any case, the Corporation is not short of money, so if the Foundation wanted more money to flow from it to the Foundation, a shortage of money due to CEO pay is not the reason.
(You are definitely right in the sense that Co money could be used to fund more Co projects. Those are not the same initiatives that would be funded by donations to the Foundation though, as money doesn’t flow from it to the Co. Think Common Voice, MozFest, lobbying, Privacy Not Included…)
The short of it is: No organization that asks for donations should have a CEO making 7M. The facts:
- Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corp
- The licensing fee you mention is purposely fuzzy, and not only that, it’s scaled based on the revenue of the Corp
- The licensing is most certainly NOT the only transaction between the orgs, it’s was only $195K last year. They have agreements on support, staffing, legal, administrative. The biggest of which being money flowing down from the search engine deal.
- This search engine roll-up is one reason the IRS started an audit in 2009 of the Foundation:
The restricted assets remain the same as last year: a “tax reserve fund” established in 2005 for a portion of the revenue the Mozilla Foundation received that year from the search engine providers. As noted last year, the IRS has opened an audit of the Mozilla Foundation.
- To make matters worse, this is not transparent. Gotta love this line from their latest financial reports:
all significant intercompany transactions have been eliminated in the preparation of these financial statements
- In 2009 they were being audited because of this relationship
I’m a Mozilla fan, but I’m not a fan of income inequality, and Mozilla is contributing to it.
Refs:
The licensing fee you mention is purposely fuzzy
I mean, depending on what you mean by “purposely”, I just think there’s no good way in general to determine the exact worth of the use of a trademark.
The restricted assets remain the same as last year: a “tax reserve fund” established in 2005 for a portion of the revenue the Mozilla Foundation received that year from the search engine providers. As noted last year, the IRS has opened an audit of the Mozilla Foundation.
Since the Corporation was founded on August 3, 2005 - this might’ve been the reason? Before the Corporation existed, the Foundation had to receive the money from the search engine providers directly (and the “tax reserve fund” sounds like creative accounting to hold on to that money, potentially leading to the audit), whereas later, the Corporation could hold on to it and pay taxes over it like a regular corporation does.
I’m a Mozilla fan, but I’m not a fan of income inequality, and Mozilla is contributing to it.
I’m with you here, and I’m not saying that the ratio CEO pay:employee pay is a good one. All I’m saying is that the money used to fund the CEO pay could not have been used to fund Foundation projects like Common Voice, as far as I’m aware.
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Done, thx
