Comment by narag

The defining difference about paying money to a corporation in exchange for a product is you're paying for something already there, an agreed exchange of value. The whole point about a donation is it's given not in exchange for doing any particular task, but gratuitously.

It's not a weird sentiment to want to know what benefits a gift is providing. That's all people are asking for when they want transparency around donations: tell us how you're benefiting from it so we can feel good about gifting you.

Is it necessary? No. The point being made is that people would be happier and potentially gift more if there was more transparency. If your argument is transparency costs more than the extra gifts then the solution to that is - ironically - be transparent about it and people might gift means to make transparency cheaper and make donations viable.

When you're shopping for a paid product, you're generally trying to minimize your costs (while balancing quality). When you're donating to a free product, you're actually trying to maximize the effectiveness of your donation. If you were simply trying to minimize your cost/benefit ratio, you would donate nothing. Clearly there is a totally different mentality at play.

Consider it also from the recipient's perspective. Their benefactors are more likely to donate more money when they believe it will be put to good use. It's a complicated messaging problem, but being vague is probably not in your best interest.

People are generally happier to donate money to a charity if they know it will go to a good cause, and not the CEO's seven million dollar salary.

It also isn't that unusual for donations to be ring fenced for certain things.

The reason "nobody questions how corporations use their money" is that in 99.9% of cases when I pay a corporation money for a product, I'm doing it not for the sake of what they can do with the money, but because otherwise I don't get to use the product, at least not legally.

If instead I donate to an open-source project, I'm not doing it in order to get access to the product; I already have that. I'm doing it because I hope they will do something with the money that I value. (Possible examples: Developing new features I like. Rewarding people who already developed features I liked. Activism for causes I approve of. Continuing to provide something that benefits everyone and not just me.)

And so I care a lot what they're going to do with the money, in a way I don't if I (say) pay money to Microsoft in exchange for the right to use Microsoft Office. Because what they're going to do with the money determines what point there is in my giving it.

Sometimes, everything the project does is stuff I think is valuable (for me or for the world). In that case I don't need to ask exactly what they're doing. Sometimes, it's obvious that what happens to the money is that it goes into the developer's pockets and they get to do what they like with it. In that case, I'll donate if the point of my donation is to reward someone who is doing something I'm glad they're doing, and probably not otherwise.

In the case of Thunderbird, it's maybe not so obvious. Probably the money will go toward implementing Thunderbird features and bug fixes, but looking at the history of Firefox I might worry that that's going to mean "AI integrations that actual users mostly don't want" or "implementing advertising to help raise funds", and I might have a variety of attitudes to those things. Or it might go toward some sort of internet activism, and again I might have a variety of attitudes to that depending on exactly what they're agitating for. Or maybe I might worry that the money will mostly end up helping to pay the salary of the CEO of Mozilla. (I don't think that's actually possible, but I can imagine situations where Mozilla wants some things done, and if they can pay for them via donations rather than using the company's money they'll do so, so that the net effect of donating is simply to increase Mozilla's profits.)

And I don't think anyone's asking for anything very burdensome in the way of transparency. Just more than, well, nothing at all which is what we have at the moment. The text on the actual page says literally nothing beyond "help keep Thunderbird alive". The FAQ says "Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development." which tells us almost nothing. And "MZLA Technologies Corporation is a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and the home of Thunderbird." which tells us that donations go to a for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation (which I believe is the same entity that owns the Mozilla Corporation, but like most people I am not an expert on this stuff and don't know what that means in practice about how the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation and MZLA Technologies Corporation actually work together).

Maybe donated money will lead to MZLA Technologies Corporation hiring more developers or paying existing developers more? Maybe it'll be used to buy equipment, or licences for patented stuff? Maybe it'll be used to advertise Thunderbird and get it more users? Maybe it'll be used to agitate for the use of open email standards or something like that? Maybe. Maybe some other thing entirely. There's no way to get any inkling.

Mozilla and Wikipedia for example are causes I support. But why would I give money to them if they are going to turn around and give money to some cause I don't support (OR am actively against)? These non-profits love to shuffle money around to unrelated causes. As a non profit, supporting open source software, I think expecting a large percentage of the donation to go to engineering and not admin, social causes, etc. is a reasonable expectation.

Let’s just say that Mozilla raised CEO salaries while laying off developers. The demand of transparency is well grounded on past behavior.

If I donate, I want more devs getting paid, not a CEO parasiting the non-profit.

One look at where donations to "keep Wikipedia free!" wind up should explain all of that for you.

When the product is in dire state but the company does unnecessary things and increase CEO salary YoY with ever declining userbase, yes... Maybe the people who donates want to know. Am talking about Firefox there BTW. So it's absolutely understandable that people want to know.

Investors do very much question how corporations use their money, and that is why corporations publish quarterly financial statements and have shareholder meetings and hire accountants and auditors. Investors want to make sure that they're going to get their investment back plus profit and thus care about a company's balance sheet. Any financial transparency in non-profit donations is derived from the financial transparency required by for-profit investments.

I don't think it's that weird. If they sold it as a product then the understanding is that there is a profit motive and profits mean CEO's get paid.

If you're asking for donations and holding your cap out, the implication is that every penny will go toward development.

Mozilla should either just make it a product that you have to pay for, or sub to, or keep donations cleanly separated.

When making purchasing decisions lots of people look beyond the utility of the product to the broader behaviour of the corporation and how it impacts society. I know people who've been avoiding Nestlé for decades.

> Ironically, the demand for this increased transparency significantly increases compliance cost, which means more and more money is driven away from the actual cause toward the administrative costs.

I disagree.

If you are asking people for donations, then it is only fair that you provide transparency.

Donations are made out of pure goodwill. It is not like buying a widget from $megacorp.

I do not buy the "increased administrative costs" argument either. At a bare minimum all it would take is 5 minutes a month and a simple spreadsheet.

Because of the misuse of funds given to the Mozilla Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation.

When I pay money to buy food I don't need to ask how the shop is going to use that money: I gave money, I got food.

If I am going to donate money to a company/NGO that wants to buy food for poor people, of course I am interested in knowing how much of that money is going to salaries, how much into activities of sort, and how much in actually feeding people.

Exactly what I've been saying when people complain about how public sector spends the taxes (especially when comparing against private sector so-called efficiency when managing hospitals or schools)

Well for one, when you purchase something from a corporation, you know where the money went because you got the thing or access to the service you just paid for. With a donation you don't have that and because you're donating you probably care about whatever subject you want to improve so you'd like to know that is were your money is going instead of finding out later it just went to the CEO of whatever to blow on blackjack and hookers.

In the case of Mozilla, you actually know donating to the Mozilla Foundation does not in any way benefit Firefox or Thunderbird, which is probably the whole reason you were actually donating in the first place. Donating to the Mozilla Foundation funds all the pointless side projects they they decide to pick up and pay the CEO quite frankly an undeservedly large salary.

99% of donations get misappropriated

And yet you'd probably be upset if it turns out they wasted all the money.

It is not my domain, but I was quite surprised at the 10% processing fee expense. That’s ~$1M at their ~$10 income.

Isn’t that quite a bit high? Or am I looking at something incorrectly. Maybe someone has some suggestions for them on how to lower that amount.

That's a good explanation. It would make a lot of sense for them to link to it when they're asking for donations.

That's exactly what it means.

It was originally Minotaur (when the browser was Phoenix), then they were Firebird and Thunderbird, until the browser renamed to avoid a name clash.

For their more common meanings, like in your paragraph, as a verb you want affect, and as a noun, effect. So, when in doubt, use that as a rule of thumb.

However, both have alternative meanings as the other part of speech.

Affect as a noun means emotion or disposition, and is mostly used in psychology. Your psychologist may say you have a depressed affect.

Effect as a verb means to bring about. You might say that a successful protest effected change in society.

As a verb, in addition to “have an impact on,” affect can also mean “to pretend to have,” like “she affected an air of mystery,” although this is less common.

"Effect" and "affect" are hilariously messed-up. They have subtly overlapping definitions sometimes but other times mean totally different things. They look almost the same in writing. They can sound almost the same. In spoken English, for some senses of each word we denote what we mean by changing the sound ("affect" may be pronounced almost like "effect", or, for one of its noun definitions and a related verb definition, very differently) or stress (for "effect", in some cases we hit the second syllable a little harder than other times).

The way you used "effect" here, its verb sense of "to bring about or cause" is the one that suggests itself, which isn't what you meant.

The simple way to keep the words' overlapping meanings straight, is that it's "effect" when it's a noun, "affect" when it's a verb. "Effect" can also be a verb, and "affect" can be a noun, but those definitions don't overlap.

Your post did indeed call for "affect", as you suspected.

"Effect" as a verb means to bring about, or to bring it into existence. "Affect" means to have influence on them.

It's definitely wrong in that paragraph.

Companies will often state a subsidiary is wholly owned by the ultimate parent regardless of which tier the subsidiary is at. The Thunderbird subsidiary could be under the Firefox subsidiary and the statement would still be true.

I agree that it should be "affect". Affect doesn't look wrong to me:

  and technology choices made in Firefox can and do affect Thunderbird, just like they effect e.g. Zen Browser or Tor Browser.

I'm no expert on the rules of english, but I think maybe it would be slightly more gramatically correct to say that "choices made in Firefox can and do have an effect on Thunderbird". I would probably have phrased it like that. Maybe that's why it looks wrong to you?

English is a bit of a bastard language IIUC, and so we accept the way you've phrased it too, but in that case it should be "affect".

I hope this helps rather than making things more confusing! ;)