[lucideer]

Compare it to operating finances of other open source projects, run by foundations, within a similar complexity (possibly lower, but within order of magnitude):

Blender: ~1 million (2020) Libreoffice: ~1.3 million (2021) Apache: ~900k (2017) Debian: ~340k (2019)

One can argue that browsers are exceptionally complex (even linux distros like Gentoo that build everything - including the kernel - make exceptions for firefox due to its complexity) but even considering that, the figures are staggering by comparison.

To be absolutely clear on this we have a situation where:

- most Mozilla advocates & supporters are so because of Firefox

- most of Mozilla's income comes from Firefox

- most of Mozilla's income does not go towards Firefox development

- Mozilla continue to provide financial supporters with no means to donate directly to the Firefox project

- Mozilla's income is 2 orders of magnitude higher than any comparable charitable foundation

Add to that the decline in Firefox's userbase & the stewardship of the project becomes really difficult to justify/defend

[trap_goes_hot]

Coming back to the point being discussed - Where exactly does wastage occur inside Firefox's development team? Specifics and data are very persuasive!

[lucideer]

Firstly noone has mentioned anything about wastage within the Firefox project - this thread is about Mozilla as a whole, not just Firefox. Not sure what point you're "coming back to" specifically.

Secondly, I don't work for Mozilla, so unless you know of some source more granular than their very high-level annual reports, the specific & data you're talking about would need to be sourced internally. Mozilla don't publish any breakdowns on a per-project basis: for all I know the Firefox team may well be operating at peak financial efficiency.

If we're to speculate, the closest thing Mozilla publish to a per-project breakdown is under activities in their expense report where they have a "software development" category costing ~250 million (not Firefox software development, all general software development). That's still very high compared to other similar open source projects, but it's just over a third of the gp's quoted income figure. So you've got 2/3rds of that figure to look at before you even get near the idea of Firefox dev wastage.

[trap_goes_hot]

>Firstly noone has mentioned anything about wastage within the Firefox project - this thread is about Mozilla as a whole, not just Firefox. Not sure what point you're "coming back to" specifically.

I was responding to this line - "> Firefox's development needs orders of magnitude less than that,". It's in my earlier comment. Its fine to criticize, but at some point you have to "provide the goods", so to speak.

[lucideer]

If the line were "Firefox's development needs orders of magnitude less than it's current budget" your reply would make sense, but it didn't. It's merely stating Firefox's development needs orders of magnitude less than Mozilla's budget (which is explicitly not equivalent to Firefox's budget - that budget isn't public knowledge)