> Let me repeat myself:

> > All I ever wanted from Mozilla was a browser

Good for you. That's not how donations work.

If you donate money to an organization, you are supporting them in the work they do. How they approach that work and how they appropriate and prioritize funding is likely numerous people's entire jobs to figure out, and just because you put some money in the proverbial hat doesn't entitle you to a say in those conversations, nor does it entitle you to an explanation for the results of those conversations.

I don't precisely know why this conference was held, but that's because it is neither my job nor my business. I'm assuming it was a long, complex process to get it done, and I doubt they would've done it if the organizers just felt like getting a free trip to Zambia, or whatever other grievance-politics motive you're implying.

Nobody is confused about how it's currently working. The whole complaint is that there isn't a way to donate towards Firefox and have any confidence that's where the money will go. There are a million social justice charities out there and zero dedicated to non-chromium browsers. A lot of people are disappointed by that. Anyone who wants to fund Afrofeminist conferences can do so directly.

Sure Mozilla can spend donations how it wants, but donors are free to not donate as well. For years many people have been saying that they want to support Firefox without all of unrelated social projects, but Mozilla has refused to offer that. I expect that a lot of potential donations have therefore not happened.

It does entitle you to warn others not to waste their money by donating unless they're big fans of feminist African studies

Quite a few people would donate for Firefox development, but they can't donate to Mozilla because Mozilla spends the money on other stuff. Until now, as Google's lapdog, Mozilla didn't need donations, so that wasn't a problem (for Mozilla, it did however result in firefox getting 2.62% market share).

To reinforce this, I'm a stingy bastard but I'd give them 5$ a month if I could donate them to the browser development itself since it's the program I use the most.

> As long as Firefox isn't kicking ass and being used by, say, 20% of web users, I argue that Mozilla shouldn't be doing anything else (...) I have a problem with Mozilla doing events right now

Consider it marketing, and think about if the market share would have been even lower if they didn't do outreach. Most people don't select a browser based on technical merits (heck, they don't even consciously choose). Saying they should spend every penny on developers is naive.

"Firefox: The Browser for Feminist Africans" is terrible marketing. It actively drives people away, nobody wants to use a crappy woke browser. "Firefox: Objectively Better Than Chrome Because of X, Y, and Z" is great marketing. It's really that simple.

They should spend 90% on developers.

> nobody wants to ...

If you don't want something, don't think everyone else thinks the same as you. From my observations, if something is being called "woke", that means it's probably a good thing, actually.

"Nobody" is an exaggeration since there are a few people like you. Most people want Mozilla to focus on making a good browser.

If Mozilla had used the Google billions on improving Firefox instead of fart sniffing, Firefox would be a better browser now and its market share would be above 2.62%.

The misspending was (implicitly) part of the deal: the Google money would stop if Firefox started to seriously threaten Chrome's dominance.

He's right though. The way to get clients long term is to have a better product. Competing in marketing against Google is a terrible idea considering their main business. Firefox should just be a better, more user friendly product because that's the weakness of Chrome, especially now that they're actively messing with adblocking and they're focusing on everything but developing the actual product.

To use the car analogy, if you want to buy a car, and you can choose between 2 models (and from all the features and prices and luxury and build quality they're equal), and it's a choice between a Tesla and a Ford, which would you choose, at this moment?

What if the Tesla is slightly better?

I'm missing your point at the moment but likely Ford due to parts/service center access if they're equal. Depending on how slightly better it is and whether I plan to keep it long term to where I might need to get things on it repaired I might hop over to the Tesla. Can you elaborate a bit on where we're going with this?

I was trying to say, Tesla is now a toxic brand not because of their product quality, but because of what their CEO is doing... at least for a lot of people the behavior of the corporation and people in it plays a role in buying products.

So it's a question of if Firefox and Chrome are just competing in quality. I can see people swearing off Chrome because of Google, as well as the same with Firefox because of its activism.

That's true but the general populace does not care enough unless you commit a PR suicide which is difficult when your company PR isn't bound to a single person.

Most people don't even know who the CEO of Google is so even if he were to be found with 17 mutilated kids in a moldy basement it won't have the effect Musk's 'tism has had.

Most people don't realize how they're being fucked over. My parents use adblockers because I set them up and they're not even that old, a lot of people believe surveillance is good and even on HN where privacy is a big thing many use less private products because the alternative is mildly inconvenient. The best way to convert them IMO is to offer them a more intuitive and snappier experience, especially on cheap older machines where it's really noticeable and nice integrations into things like email, pdf, etc. Just make their life as easy as possible with as little setup as possible.

Tesla every time. Who would want a crappy Ford?

What would make for a better impact? A marketing event to increase outreach or not announcing a change in the terms of use that allows Firefox to sell user data?