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by kevlarr 2325 days ago
Donations go to Mozilla "the non-profit organization" rather than Mozilla "the corporation".

Mozilla (the corporation) has the typical/bad corporate structures and ridiculous executive compensations. Mozilla (the corporation) had the layoffs. Mozilla (the corporation) bought Pocket with money that comes from deals with search engines.

That being said, though...

> Donate to smaller developers of software you use, it'll go a lot further, and they'll probably put it to better use!

... is still a great point.

(Updated this because "Mozilla, Org" and "Mozilla, Inc" were inaccurate)

3 comments

I think the Mozilla Foundation is starting to look a lot like a sinecure employer for friends of friends in the non-profit biz.

Here are a few seemingly similar titles listed on their leadership page[0]:

  VP, Advocacy
  Director, Digital Engagement
  Director, Communications

  VP, Global Programs
  Director, Partnerships

  Director, Events and Training
  Interim Director, Leadership Programs
[0]https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/leadership/
The Mozilla Foundation controls and owns the Mozilla Corporation, and the executive structure looks more or less the same. Baker's compensation has been inversely tied with performance, and she runs both.
Owns, yes. That is radically different from "funds", though.

Not going to dispute anything about executive structure or Baker's compensation and (mis)management, but a lot of people here are acting like donations either go directly to the corporation or funnel to it through the actual recipient of the donations, but there isn't really any evidence being presented.

> Baker's compensation has been inversely tied with performance

You've mentioned this twice in the thread now. "Inversely tied" is quite a strong and unusual claim for compensation. Care to prove it?

That's not "tied", which would imply a contractual relationship...
'Tied' in relational contexts is generally used to describe a correlation, relation, connection, or a consistency between events in the English language. It can—but does not have to—describe a contractual relationship, and it does not generally describe one except in very specific and obvious cases, e.g. what one would expect to be true: "bonuses are tied to performance milestones."

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/tied?s=ts

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/correlated?s=t

But in this context:

> Baker's compensation has been inversely tied with performance

No reasonable person would assume that a person's comp structure from Company would be contractually bound to increase as Company's performance decreases. At which point, the interpretation of "tied" would swing towards generally accepted usage, i.e. "there's a potential relationship between these two things."

ameister14 suggested "associated with" would've worked better, and that's true. But "tied" isn't technically wrong.

That's malarkey. Tied is not exclusively used to imply a "contractual relationship," and that's (if anything) a minority-usage of the idiom of tied to/with.
I think you probably should have used 'associated with' instead of 'tied to' as when discussing remuneration contractual ties is not a minority usage of the idiom.
inverse correlation between executive pay and browser market share, if semantics are necessary.
Their salary has gone up, and firefox market share has gone down, its neither is a controversial statement
That still doesn't answer why should I donate to Mozilla the non-profit? What do they do with my donations? According to another post they don't use them to fund Firefox or presumably any project run by the corporation side.

As I see it if I wanted my donations to go to political or other activism there's more direct and better organizations to donate to with less middle management involved.

> According to another post

Respectfully, HN comments aren't a great primary source. Here are some places to start your research:

https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/faq/

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201...

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/

According to https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ the donations go to:

* supporting a diverse group of fellows working on key internet issues [looking at them they all focus on advocacy and social issues rather than working on things like Firefox]

* connecting open Internet leaders at events like MozFest

* publishing critical research in the Internet Health Report

* rallying citizens around advocacy issues that connect the wellbeing of the Internet directly to everyday life.

Or in other words, exactly as the HN comment said, none of it goes to corporation projects but rather privacy and social advocacy.

edit: I'm guessing the Foundation actually takes money from the Corporation to fund itself since the financial statement seems to cover both, anyone know if that's the case?