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.

> There's no way to donate directly to Firefox development.

There is. It is called "restricted funds":

https://www.501c3.org/kb/what-are-restricted-funds/

The more people use restricted funds designation, the less bloated non-profits with wishy-washy missions there would be and the less money there would be to pilfer by the parasite class that lives in the executive roles of the non-profits.

The mechanism may exist, but can you describe how to actually pull this off, including how the money would get sent from Mofo to Moco?

If so, there's a lot of people who would like to do this, I believe.

Donate via check.

Write "Restricted funds - see attachment" on a check. On the attachment list check details and a restriction such as "Direct expenses for <blahblahblah> only." If you just do not want it to go to G&A fluff fund the execs use to live a large life, just exclude G&A: "<blah blah blah> purposes only. No G&A"

Regulations for non-profits aren't a joke. If they took your restricted funds, you bet they are going to follow the restrictions.

Non-profits may hate it but at the end it is money. So they take it. If they decline to cash the check, no skin off your back.

Source: lived in a non-profit land as a tech consultant. Heard constant bitching about big donors being smart and always restricting funds above a few hundred dollars. Execs of every non-profit that pretends it cannot deal with restrictions are taking the donor for suckers and are fleecing them.

Okay, but how does that money get from MoFo to MoCo?

If MoFo made Firefox, this would make sense. But they don’t.

> Okay, but how does that money get from MoFo to MoCo?

It is their problem, not my. They want money. It is restricted. Money is fungible. If they figure out how to use the money that is restricted then they need to spend less unrestricted money.

Okay, so, this is not actually practically possible today.

Thanks for elaborating though! I didn't know about this feature of donations.

"G&A"?

General and Administrative. For example, a catered lunch from a fancy restaurant that will have friends of the execs attend as a part of some presentation would be charged into G&A line.

Interesting, thanks. Do Mozilla really accept restricted funds donations toward Firefox development? What are the steps to make such a donation?

Here's a related discussion on exactly this topic, from 11 months ago. I see that it was you who mentioned restricted funds in that thread, too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20874641

Donors don't fund Firefox. Search engine revenue does. Every scrap of evidence suggests that donations will absolutely not fund work at the scale of Firefox. If they did our overall open source infrastructure would be in much better shape.

Exactly. I care about Firefox and Thunderbird, not about Mozilla. If another company forks the projects and delivers a better program I'll be as happy as if Mozilla keeps doing it.

Supporting and directing Internet standards, resisting Google, etc, are a byproduct of developing an independent browser.

Agreed i was pissed off when they started injecting politics into my browser recently.

Did you police yourself? It seems you replaced a word you intended with the word “politics” to be PC.

Mozilla has always been political. It was born so. Why do you think Jamie Zawinski got Shepard Fairey to design its logo? The Mozilla manifesto is full of political statements. Do you remember the fight against DRM? Net neutrality? SOPA?

Often, people that speak like you mean “speech favoring equal treatment” instead of “politics”.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-hi...

They used to care about freedom, now they care about a bunch of vaguely defined stuff aligned with (some of) US left. Being from outside the US, to me this change and the speed of it seems extremely jarring. I mean just look at their messaging in new tabs -- do I really need my browser telling me that "It's okay to like Facebook" or that "Tech (people? companies? projects?) has a responsibity to [...]" ? Thanks, Mozilla, I guess I wouldn't have used it if not for your permission (/s). Does anyone even read these fucking things before they push them out?

There's a difference between politics to improve Internet-related things (like fighting DRM, SOPA, or promoting net neutrality) and other political issues that while important are completely irrelevant to a browser development company.

I'd like to add that Mozilla has relatively limited resources and it's more worthwhile for them to focus on issues that are directly related to what they do (the web) instead of unrelated social issues.

Furthermore Mozilla has the expertise, connections and brand when it comes to the web they can use as leverage to solve web-related social/political issues, but might not have much leverage for unrelated issues so the risk/reward ratio will not be in their favor.

Exactly. Everything in the world is political: Firefox was a political statement from its outset, Mozilla is a political entity, and also - and I've yet to see an argument from anyone against this notion - Mozilla is overwhelmingly a force for good in the world. Lots of people on HN really struggle to accept this, because it goes against their own (libertarian right or anarcho-capitalist) political perspective.

People complaining about "politics" are often complaining about political scope creep.

If I keep that in mind while listening/reading people complaining about "politics" it is often the smallest change to their stated message that would make it clear and internally consistent. So I ask clarifying questions to see if their complaint is poorly articulated rather than picking at their words to defend the thing they're criticizing.

By politics do you mean things irrelevant to browsing experience or things you disagree with?