zlacker

This topic keeps coming up. Mozilla is viewed as a bloated entity whose only legitimate activity is maintaining Firefox. No-one cares about the other initiatives they spend money and resources on, and they especially don't want their donations going toward Mozilla's overpaid leadership.

People would like to donate directly to Firefox, but as things stand, this isn't an option. This isn't because Firefox falls under the Mozilla brand, it's because Mozilla choose not to accept Firefox-specific donations.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141852

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129794

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129926

>>MaxBar+(OP)
Mozilla Foundation can't accept Firefox specific donations because the Mozilla Foundation does not develop Firefox. The Mozilla Corporation does and the foundation cannot give money to the corporation (only the other way around). So you'd need to redo a whole lot of things for this to be possible.

>>marcin+U8
They can change that though, by having the foundation directly employ Firefox contributors

>>GoOnTh+Rc
That's true but as MaxBarraclough points out in this discussion the Mozilla Corporation could simply remove an equal number of it's engineers from Firefox development. Thus your donation provides no net gain. There'd also probably be some overhead from managing those new Foundation engineers as they probably, legally, cannot be directly managed by the Corporation.

So as long as the Mozilla mission is not aligned with the "Firefox mission" there is no winning.