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.
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.
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.
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).
How can I donate some money that is specifically for Firefox development?
I do not really care for or like the other products that Mozilla is developing, like VPNs etc but rather, I would like for my money to be used towards browser development.
That's not what you donate to? You don't donations to the firefox application, you donate to Mozilla. It's not a "pay to get a better browser" scheme, you're donating because you care about their mission, and Mozilla uses that money to further that mission. Firefox does not get funded by donation, it has its own revenue stream and it's been losing money for years, so do you want it to at least not die? Then you'll have to accept that they _need_ money and unless you happen to have a cool few hundred million lying around to sign over directly for Firefox as a non-donation, no-obligations-other-than-it-goes-to-firefox sponsor partnership, this is how hard it is to get money in this landscape.
Mozilla, please, allow us to donate money in a way that we can be sure it will be used for *developing Firefox* and not for some nonsensical Mozilla Foundation project.
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.
The situation is weird. I want to give them some money but there is absolutely no way to support firefox development.
A long time ago firefox(program) started asking for donations. I've donated 5$(I was a poor student in Poland[1]). After the donation, I found out that money will not be used for FF development (why firefox page did not mention that?). Long story short it was my last donation to them.
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.
reply