I think this is a valid point. Donors don't want to give money to further enrich Mozilla's overpaid leadership, and they don't want to give money to then be split between the cause they're really donating for (generally Firefox) and various tangentially related political causes.
There's no way to donate directly to Firefox development.
Thing is: You can't easily donate to Firefox. One can send money to the Mozilla Foundation, which is a political organisation (where I share many of the goals, but still spend my "political" money elsewhere) not to Mozilla Corporation, who are the developers.
Do you realize that 0 donations go to Firefox development?
Firefox development is done by Mozilla Corporation (that doesn't accept any donations, AFAIK). A part of their earnings are given to their owner, Mozilla Foundation, that you are suggested to donate to, and it may not be a bad idea, but it does not finance Firefox development in any way.
I'd like to support Firefox with a donation as I'm sure many others would, but I don't trust Mozilla foundation to allocate it to something that actually matters.
Regarding the donations, I think the way they are structured with donations going to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and development of Firefox being done by the for-profit Mozilla Corporation means that donations cant be used to support Firefox development. Its unfortunate, because I would happily donate to fund Firefox, but I'm not terribly interested in funding Mozilla's non-profit activities (at least not more than other charities I could donate to).
I wonder if crowdfunding around specific development goals would be productive - certain promising features like Webrender have been in development for a very long time, and I'd be willing to contribute money to see them finished and shipped.
As far as I remember the problem was that you can donate to Mozilla foundation, but not the Mozilla corporation ( which is responsible for Firefox + other stuff ). There is no direct way to finance/donate for Firefox developement (without other projects).
Maybe people should be able to donate directly to Firefox development and not to some controlling org that decides to "invest" the money as it sees fit. But that would be too honest and easy. Gotta have a way to siphon off lots of money for your own bloated salary and the best way to do that is to be between donation and destination.
I'm not sure why the Firefox people haven't split from Mozilla to rectify this. What's keeping them there? Didn't Thunderbird devs split? What am I missing?
Unfortunately the money for within Mozilla is not that straightforward in favor of Firefox and I imagine I am not the only Firefox user who is incredibly annoyed with that. I'd rather send money to individual devs' Github Sponsors sounds than give Mozilla a donation the devs will never see a cent of.
To date, Mozilla refuses to let me donate to directly fund Firefox.
I can donate to Mozilla, but then they'll take my money and pursue whatever their current distraction of the month is. I can pay for Pocket, but then I'm paying for Pocket, which I don't need or want. I can't just give them money and say "I really, really want this money to go directly to Firefox, not to another side project".
Until they offer that as an option, they cannot claim to have tried everything.
I wish there was a way to donate directly to Firefox. Unfortunately, the only option is to donate to Mozilla and they will likely use the money to fund their other initiatives and continue to neglect Firefox.
Donations don't go to the browser's development. They go to the Mozilla "Foundation" which works on projects which you may or may not agree with, but the browser isn't one of those.
As far as I know it's impossible to donate towards the browser's development.
There's no way to donate directly to Firefox development.
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