“A republic, if you can keep it.”

  • drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    22 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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      11 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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      21 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