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
Why the need for the corporation? The foundation could hire employees, coordinate development, etc. right?

>>wirrbe+Bp
> Why the need for the corporation?

The corporation basically exists to make the Google Search Deal possible. And considering that the search deal pays more than donations to the Apache Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation combined, it looks like it was a smart move.

* Total yearly income for the Apache foundation according to https://www.apache.org/foundation/docs/FY2020AnnualReport.pd... was 2.2M

* Total yearly income for the Mozilla Foundation according to https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo... was $27M, about half from "program service revenue" (which means it came from the Corporation).

* According to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/ (different document, but notice that both are for year 2018), the Mozilla Corporation got $435M from royalties, subscriptions, and advertising. In other words, while the Foundation is not technically allowed to give the Corporation money, that doesn't seem to be a problem.

I wouldn't ask why the need for the corporation. I'd ask why the need for the foundation. Though I'm pretty sure I know the answer: the foundation exists to limit the exploitative behaviour of the corporation. Remember: Benefit Corporations didn't exist at the time.

To quote their original documentation at https://www-archive.mozilla.org/reorganization/#q2

> By forming a commercial subsidiary, the revenue-generating activities of the new entity can provide funds to support development, testing, and productization of the various Mozilla open source technologies. This benefits both end-users of Firefox and Thunderbird, and developers and others who want to use the Mozilla open source code in various ways. Having the Mozilla Corporation handle revenue-generating activities associated with these products also allows the Mozilla Foundation to achieve its goals while still itself remaining a tax-exempt organization.