[dbdoskey]

There is nothing to defend there. They could have easily: * Made the donations go directly to funding the browser development. Right now I don't know if it even possible to donate purely just to browser development * They could have easily opened a services/consultancy arm, similar to igalia. A great and easy way to fund browser development. (How igalia has funded servo development in the past) * Create a for-pay enterprise support. In the past a lot of government organizations wouldn't use Chrome due to how the Chrome updates worked. They could have made a killing in government contracts just around that

And these are just a few simple income directions that are pretty common in other OSS projects. Instead they did braindead ideas like being a VPN reseller, giving away Pocket, and other things no one wanted or asked for.

[cge]

> * Made the donations go directly to funding the browser development. Right now I don't know if it even possible to donate purely just to browser development

The problem goes beyond them making it impossible to donate purely to browser development: they have arranged their structure such that you cannot donate to browser development at all. The Mozilla Corporation develops Firefox; it is a for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, and donations to the foundation can't be used for the for-profit browser development subsidiary at all.

They've built their entire legal structure around reliance on Google's payments.

[einsteinx2]

Yeah it’s super frustrating. I donate $50/mo to Ladybird development and would do the same for Firefox tomorrow if they gave me any way to actually do it. I have no interest in funding their foundation initiatives.

[pseudalopex]

Few for profit companies accept donations. The compliance costs exceed the expected revenue.

You can fund Mozilla Coporation by paying for Mozilla VPN, Mozilla Monitor, Firefox Relay, or MDN Plus.