Comment by nextlevelwizard
6 days ago
How much of Mozilla’s budget actually goes to Firefox? Last I checked making a browser wasn’t even on the road map
6 days ago
How much of Mozilla’s budget actually goes to Firefox? Last I checked making a browser wasn’t even on the road map
There's Mozilla Foundation (where making a browser is not on the road map) and Mozilla Corporation (which makes money by making a browser to finance the foundation).
Mozilla Corporation revenue is about half a billion, most of it coming from Google and only 2% (from what I found) going to the foundation. The foundation gets most of its money from Google as well, but separately, and the foundation's revenue is about 10% of Mozilla Corporation's. So overall over 90% of Mozilla's budget goes to software development and to cost centers that are associated to Mozilla Corporation.
That vast majority. And Firefox is massively profitable, too (with a rising share of income not coming from google, up to 15% the last time I looked).
Software development was 220 out of a total 425 M$ of expenses. General and administrative coming in second at 108 M$.
I don't know exactly what comparable software companies invest, but assuming that the 220 is entirely SWE salaries this seems appropriate overhead to my mind.
Edit, all of this is 2022:
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...
> assuming that the 220 is entirely SWE salaries
With 750 employees for Mozilla Corp, that's unlikely. Even if 80% are developers that would be $350,000 salary on average.
good rule of thumb (at least in Europe) is that whatever your developer salaries are, double it to get closer to the actual operational cost.
There's lots of hidden costs, licenses, insurances, computers/servers, email hosting, document editing suites; that's before you get to the big stuff like office space and social contributions. -- then there's managers, HR etc;
Anyway, it's a reasonable rule of thumb. YMMV.
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