Let me pay for Firefox

Yet we happily do that for everything else.

Either software developers have to figure out how to out compete the CEO ghouls (without becoming CEO ghouls themselves), or we just have to accept that the CEO ghouls will take their cut. There's no version of this where you can pay for a service, but also dictate how that money is spent.

I think you are being too pessimistic. Maybe it is difficult for this to happen for Firefox due to its system already subverted. However, it is not true of OSS in general. Folks already directly donate to creators/maintainers with no executive in between.

That's true, although I will point out that we've long had a funding crisis in OSS. Tons of very valuable, very necessary OSS work is being done for no or little pay.

Add to that the value capture that happens outside of that exchange. We may say that valkey is well enough funded to continue development, but that doesn't account for the immense value that is being captured by the big cloud providers charging a premium for hosting it. Azure, AWS and GCP are only as valuable as they are because there's some software you can run on them. The cheaper that software, the more they get to charge.

This is sort of a general problem with the American system of "philanthropy". We can say that the Linux Foundation is developing the Linux kernel independently for free, and that various other companies then donate, but that ignores the fact that the Linux kernel has been tremendously valuable for those same companies. In a more real way, they are paying for the development of the kernel, but they are not paying anything even close the value they are deriving from it. Value is in that way being extracted from the Linux kernel outside of the Linux Foundation, and that looks a lot like "an executive in between".

Happily? We seem to have a choice here, ergo the expressions of preference to exercise that choice.

>There's no version of this where you can pay for a service, but also dictate how that money is spent.

Well then I’m just not going to pay.

I think that's because those everything else are products with an opaque structure, and Mozilla, and for example Wikipedia, are more transparent. Really highlights why some people don't open up, either themselves, their source code, or their organizational structure: it's just inviting endless criticism.

Adding to the point, donating to Mozilla (or Wikipedia) is optional, and paying for a product is not, legally. So if I'm buying clothing, it's whatever, I need my clothing, and the price is just the functional gateway of getting it. But in case of a Mozilla donation, I'm trying to do something good in the world. And if I discover that it's wasted, then I'm not just getting nothing - I am worse off, because I supported a bad cause.

This has been part of my conclusion too.

There's an irony that in providing people the option of not paying, you are also inviting them to find flaws in your organization to avoid paying. We are all aware that Microsoft sucks, yet there's never any doubt that you'll have to pay for a 365 subscription if you're a serious business. At the same time we'll also gladly accept that small companies don't donate to the Linux foundation, because they have to pay their bills.

By using the control we advocate for (forking projects, reducing funding, etc) we only harm the projects that afford us that control. Not paying Mozilla does nothing to reduce the control of Google over chrome. It only hurts the one browser that gives you the choice.

>Yet we happily do that for everything else.

Is it because we're >happy< to do it, or there's no choice?

What I'm trying to get at is the irony that making that choice just incentivizes everybody to not give you that choice.

Or in slightly less fatalistic words: In any entity with more than 1-2 employees you need someone to make decisions and be accountable for them. The normal solution is to have a director/CEO for this. You may be able to get away with paying them slightly less than market rates if they are doing it for a good cause, but if you want someone competent you will need to pay them a relatively high salary to compete with other employers.

Expecting Mozilla to somehow function without a CEO, unlike pretty much every other charity in the world, is just not reasonable.

Firefox's entire appeal is that it is not like every other corporate entity. Its legitimacy hinges on how far it can separate itself from intrusive corporate interests.

If Mozilla goes the same way, Firefox loses all goodwill it gathered over the years and stops being an option against Chrome et al.

We almost always have that choice. It's just unpalatable to some.

That's an interesting perspective I hadn't heard before

I'll need to think about this more but one difference that comes to mind after giving it some thought is that donations are a choice. Buying food is not really optional. I'm not going to the store and giving them 50€ because I hope they continue to operate, I give them the money as an equal exchange

There is a group of people who would choose to shop more frequently at a certain place, or tip more, if their favorite place is having trouble, but as far as I know this is only a small effect and market forces decide for 95% whether a place can continue to pay its bills. With open source software development like at Mozilla, barring other income sources, they rely on those 5%. The donators don't need to accept that their money is spent on drugs and mansions¹, the way that they do when buying groceries and the big boss might indeed use the profits in that way

¹ I have no clue what else you would do with the 7M USD a year that someone else quoted. Even at a 50% tax rate (idk what the tax rate is for someone who operates a non-profit in the USA), an average person could literally retire after six months of telling others what to do at this "non profit"

I can't get around doing it for good products that are better than their competition. Firefox isnt that. I'd pay if it meant supporting enthusiastic engineers that try to make the best browser and strive to compete with Goliath. I'm not going to pay for the inflated sallary of the CEO of a product that is worse than the competition.

Isn't this the idea of charity though? To give without expecting something in return? I think open source software had a tremendous positive impact even if some companies also made profit out of it. How would it have been otherwise? Only walled gardens with no possibility of doing anything (like forking) and probably a miserable developer experience.

You give the examples of Azure, AWS and GCP - do they really have that much secret sauce? My impression is that AWS is mostly giving a new name to open source stuff. If all would decide tomorrow to double their prices competitors will appear immediately. And my guess is that their profit is due to forgotten or over-provisioned resources of other organizations anyhow.

I think we should focus on the benefits for society of open source, not on reducing the profit that some will make from it here and there.