Ask HN: Would you fund Mozilla to become independent of Google?

The only way I would donate to Mozilla is if the corporation is shuttered and the non-profit is disentangled from it.

Any donations you send to Mozilla today go to the corporation and are not spent on the browser. They are spent on things that have nothing to do with the core mission of the maintaining the browser.

Nobody is allowed to fund Mozilla to maintain the browser, which is the actual question you're asking.

Mozilla are doing other things that a browser, yes. And this is good. Browsers are special and don't make money by themselves, and Firefox in particular is entirely dependent on Google's money. Having alternative projects that can bring revenue (e.g. Pocket) helps them remove that singular dependency and ensure they can survive long term.

And having a specific "donate to Firefox only" would probably end in disaster. They might end up in a situation where they're forced to waste money on Firefox because that's what the donations are for while not having enough money to keep the lights on in offices. For a fun example of what happens when you have fixed budgets that don't have any flexibility, Atlanta's MARTA was founded with an agreement providing public funding, with a fixed 50/50 split between capex and opex. So they found themselves with brand new trains because there's capex budget to spend, but falling apart infrastructure because 50% wasn't enough for opex.

You state that the non-Firefox activities of Mozilla are good, as if an established fact.

I'd reason that there's no consensus on this at all. Some things might be perceived as good, some neutral or bad, and many might be perceived as well intended but ineffective.

> You state that the non-Firefox activities of Mozilla are good, as if an established fact.

No, I'm stating that it's good that Mozilla has non-Firefox activities and is trying to diversify. I've only used Pocket from them and it's good, but don't have an opinion on any of their other activities.