[jacquesm]

HN wants Firefox but with better stewardship and fewer misdirected funds.

Mozilla - wrongly - believes that the majority of FF users believe in Mozilla's hobby projects rather than that they care about their browser.

That's why - as far as I know - to this day it is impossible to directly fund Firefox. They'd rather take money from google than to be focusing on the one thing that matters.

[BrendanEich]

A mundane reason for why donations to the 501c3 parent Mozilla Foundation can't go to Firefox or Gecko engineers is U.S. tax law. We found out the hard way after the IRS San Jose office said we could run only as a foundation and take "sponsorship income" tax-free. They reneged and litigated; this led to the creation of the arms-length Mozilla Corporation that's wholly owned by the Foundation. Per IRS regulations, it cannot be funded by grants from the parent Mozilla Foundation.

The corporation could let users pay for Firefox, and pay tax on that revenue. While I was there, no one thought this would help enough to be worth the effort, compared to just working on other things while taking Google search revshare.

With Brave, I've pushed for user-pays as an option. We let a user buy Premium Search (no ads, but this is possible for free) to support us. It's a small but non-negligible amount of revenue per year, and growing slowly, but we did it on principle. Same will go for buy-once zero-telemetry Brave Origin, stripped down Brave coming in a month or two.

[array_key_first]

HN, and firefox users, can never decide where the money should go or what the goals should be. The problem with producing the better product is the amount of in-fighting increases exponentially. Google produces a "fuck you got mine" type browser and everyone knows it, so nobody really cares when they make god awful privacy decisions or intentionally produce worst standards to try to fuck their customers up the ass in new and exciting ways.

When Firefox introduces a new feature, half the people complain it's stupid and worthless while the other half complain it's not enough. And, when it inevitably gets axed, it magically turns out actually it was beloved the whole time and oh no my Grandma used Pocket as life support and now she can't breath.

When Firefox implements new web standards half the people complain that they're bending to Google's whim and that these standards are stupid. We don't want them, just focus on performance and what people really care about! ... While the other half complains that it took so long, and in the meantime they switched to a real browser, like Chrome.

Of course, Safari is even further behind Firefox in standards and frankly it's not even close, but does anyone care? Of course not. Apple is another "fuck you got mine" type company. People love that.

And it doesn't just end at Firefox. Oh, no. Firefox OS? Depending on who you ask it's either the biggest missed opportunity ever or one of Mozilla's worst money burning schemes. It's Schrödinger's software - in a parallel universe where it took it off everyone would've always wanted it, and in the current universe nobody ever wanted it.

The biggest mistake Mozilla made was extending any kind of goodwill to their customer base. Clearly, that doesn't work and people do not like it. Let's all stop fucking around and be real for a second - nobody, and I do mean nobody, is switching to Google Chrome because Mozilla made some mistake. They're not, because the reality is that Firefox is truly irreplaceable and ahead of Chrome in so many aspects. They're switching to Chrome because they just don't care about being fucked up the ass, or worse, they secretly want to be.

[moring]

> HN, and firefox users, can never decide where the money should go or what the goals should be.

Without ever having dealt with this problem, it sounds like an embarrassingly solved problem, in the sense of: He who gives the money, decides where it goes.

The other half is to provide features that are actually detrimental if you don't want them as plug-ins / extensions / whatever. Pocket is an example for this. Firefox OS is not because it's not force-bundled with Firefox to begin with.

> They're switching to Chrome because they just don't care about being fucked up the ass, or worse, they secretly want to be.

The point where you stop trying to understand your users is the point where you start losing them.

[LunaSea]

I don't think that Mozilla believes that their pet projects are what the use community wants. I think they just don't care. Google's check will clear next year anyways.

[jacquesm]

That's probably true.

[fguerraz]

We have no idea what is in that contract with Google. They get to be the default search engine, but what else? Does it prevent Firefox from accepting some sources of funding, like donations?

It would be great to get transparency on this…

[abirch]

Do you mean Firefox specifically? Because you can donate to Mozilla: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/donate/ it's that you can't specify where you want the funds to go.

[fguerraz]

yes, I do mean Firefox specifically. Mozilla fundation is not Mozilla corporation. The money you give to the fundation is for their charity work, none of that goes to the development of Firefox.

[afiori]

I am pretty sure that the issue is that they either admit to being so l stuck as a vassal beholden to Google, or they pretend to be enterprising and forward looking with many promising projects

[3oil3]

I just want Firefox's search box to be on the top of the window so I don't have to bend my neck when I'm surfing in bed... I don't use it just for that.

[capitainenemo]

If you're talking about url/search bar at the bottom on mobile, that's customisable - actually they ask you which you prefer when you install it, but you can change it at any time in settings. (personally I prefer all that stuff at the bottom since it's more conveniently where all my other phone nav is, and visibility fits in well with how I scroll)

[3oil3]

I mean on the computer, and I haven't found a way to have it at the top.

[capitainenemo]

Alright, now I'm doubly confused, since the search bar is typically on the address bar which is at the top of the screen. You might want to test a clean profile. Perhaps some customisation along the way changed things on your setup.

[3oil3]

I mean to search within the page