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Re:Firefox is on a slippery slope by rdiddly on Saturday December 16, 2017 @01:34PM (#15940979)
Yeah I get impatient with the "they need to make money" apologist argument. Oh, I get it, you're saying I should trust them because they're in it for the money like everybody else. Makes sense thanx.
Re:Firefox is on a slippery slope by marten-de-vries on Saturday December 16, 2017 @02:54PM (#15941591)
No, they're not in it for money. In the end (the foundation owns the corporation), Mozilla is a non-profit.

They need money to achieve their mission though: maintaining a browser (in a landscape of evolving security challenges, performance & web standards) and research (e.g. projects like Rust, Servo & pdf.js originated that way) is not cheap. And currently it mostly comes from search engine deals. If they cannot get a similar one, it all collapses.

I can see why they try to diversify their income. That said, I don't agree with the way they do it here.

Re:Firefox is on a slippery slope by jessaustin on Saturday December 16, 2017 @09:02PM (#15943535)
"Non-profit" just means that shareholders don't profit. Nonprofits offer many opportunities for executives to personally profit.
Re:Firefox is on a slippery slope by arkh on Saturday December 16, 2017 @06:33PM (#15942915)
If they want to diversify they can work on other projects making money instead of fucking up their current userbase.

IMO coding missile software to pay for those projects would be a lot more ethical than what they're doing. Yeah I consider the ad industry and its privacy crushing consequences worse than weapons almost never fired.

Re:Firefox is on a slippery slope by FireBeyond on Saturday December 16, 2017 @02:42PM (#15941500)
Especially as a company with over $440M in assets, $330M of which is invested, with less than $60M/year in accounts payable and liabilities, that received $500M in royalties last year.
Re:Firefox is on a slippery slope by throwaway2048 on Saturday December 16, 2017 @02:52PM (#15941574)
I think the real issue is mozilla essentially gets an infinite supply of money from parties like Google, no matter how shockingly incompetent they are.