Comment by ryanmcbride

7 hours ago

Since most of the people here who seem wary about how their donation is getting spent, I have a feeling that "mostly on devs" probably won't cut it for them, though I assume it's true. Have you considered doing any sort of year end cost reporting where you show percentages of what money went where? If it's going where you say it is I think making that information transparent would be a free win. (I know there would be some level of effort constructing the report but I also have to assume you already have reports like this internally)

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ryanmcbride

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DoingIsLearning  6 hours ago

> Have you considered doing any sort of year end cost reporting

That very much exists, and is issued yearly.

Consolidated Financial Statements 2024-2023:

https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...

Expenses in Software Development (2024):

> 290,448,000

Total Expenses (2024):

> 588,215,000

Ryan Sipes, if you can read this, everybody online remembers the 2020 Servo team lay-offs, and the juxtaposition of the C level compensation.

If you are serious about winning back donors and trust:

- Allow for a transparent breakdown of expenses on things like external consultancy and also C level compensation

- Allow financial ring-fencing of donations. Such that my donation can only finance Firefox devs or Thunderbird devs. (Not teams, not products, not managers/VPs/Directors just developers. Everyone else's compensation should come from corporate donations or other means)

I love Firefox and Thunderbird, use both everyday, was also a yearly donor up to 2020 (now I just donate to Archive.org and KDE).

You have great products that people love but if you are serious about gaining back trust you need to show judicious spending on the top side of the org. Justifying it with we need to spend money to get fundraisers doesn't pass the community test.