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Comment by blibble

2 days ago

> There are not many good revenue options available for a browser other than selling search defaults

if they had set up an endowment instead of blowing it on unrelated pointless crap for decades they would have been self-funded indefinitely

they were pulling in over $500 MILLION a year

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blibble

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glenstein  2 days ago

>if they had set up an endowment

Mozilla has had an endowment for, I think, ~15 years now, and they have invested it and grown it from around $90 million to around $1.2 billion and counting. Which now is a firewall in case of emergency, as well as a resource that's helping to stand up a VC fund which is one of their most interesting pathways to diversifying revenue.

  • blibble  2 days ago

    > that's helping to stand up a VC fund which is one of their most interesting pathways to diversifying revenue

    oh for fucks sake, that's even worse than blowing it on stupid ideas

    JUST USE THE MONEY FOR THE BROWSER

    • glenstein  2 days ago

      They already spend more on developing the browser now than at any point in the entire history of Firefox, and that's after adjusting for inflation. They ship millions of lines of new code every year and apply thousands of patches. It's probably one of the biggest and most active open source projects in the entire world.

      And just so we're clear, are you suggesting they shouldn't have an endowment at all, or that they shouldn't use the endowment to create any lines of long term revenue, or that they should but spending a fraction of a percent of it on a VC fund would not be successful? Whichever one you pick, there's at least one person who's exactly as upset at Mozilla for the opposite reason.

      Edit: I would go so far as to say I think the VC fund is the single best idea Mozilla has ever had for long term financial independence. It builds on the success they've had thus far (such as it is) raising money from search licensing, and then using that search licensing money to stand up the endowment. Now, the VC fund leverages the endowment in a way that's the most serious path to financial independence they've ever had.

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giancarlostoro  2 days ago

500 million could net you about 50 to 70 million annually if you put it all on the S&P 500... A few years of this and you're a self-funded non-profit...

  • glenstein  2 days ago

    They're doing that. Their endowment is invested and it does grow by a non-trivial amount, though I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head.

  • drnick1  2 days ago

    Reminder: Ladybird is being developed by a handful of people with contributions from the community. It's far from being complete, but it clearly shows that you don't need an enormous budget to build a Web browser entirely from scratch, let alone maintain one.