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Firefox Money: Investigating the bizarre finances of Mozilla
(lunduke.locals.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Technology
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This "report" is exactly what I would expect from Lunduke. It is really sad that this reactionary content comes from someone who I once thought was cool.
The only part I can agree on : the execs at Mozilla are getting paid too much in the current situation.
Now to get to the real meat.
The combined spendings to political organizations make up around 1m$. This is less than the donations made to Mozilla foundation. Considering the very political nature of the foundation, these spendings were likely authorized there.
Now, why would a technology company spend on political organisations? Well, simply put : technology is political. People trying to peddle that technology is not political are trying to sell you the status quo.
Technology companies spend insane amounts of money on lobbying.
Now, why would Mozilla spend money on left-leaning organisations? Well, simply put : left-leaning politics (though embedded in neoliberal Californian ideals of the internet) are embedded at the core of Mozilla from the start with Mozilla manifesto.
I'm not gonna get into why Lunduke thinks that these organisations are bad but consider it a red flag.
Now, what I would ask to anyone reading this : why do you think Lunduke is ignoring this? Why would Lunduke try to paint this picture?
I'd say the CEO is the only one who's overpaid. The other executives make between $200k to $370k, which is a lot of money but barely noteworthy imo.
If they're living in SF, then it's even less money. It's a lot, don't get me wrong, but it takes a lot of money to afford to live in (or around) that city.
Yeah, for sure, the CEO is the clear outlier. I just count them as an exec though that might be misusing how that term is used colloquially.
I don’t know enough about corporate finance or how Mozilla is structured, but why is the CEO the only one marked with “paid only by a related for profit”? Is this coming from money from Mozilla Corporation? Why is she the only one being paid from there and not the others? Does that maybe have something to do with the disparity in pay?
It's sad. When I discovered the Linux Action Show back in 2006 or 2007, he seemed like a fun and interesting person. But it's amazing how quickly that perception proved false. And his Twitter feed in 2020 was a dumpster fire.
Which is so fascinating given the involvement of people like Brendan Eich, and also descending from noted Libertarian and capitalist Marc Andreesen
I mean, the neolib Californian ideals of the internet was anarchist so always anti-gov but not anti-corporate. That's how you end up with compromise points in the Mozilla manifesto like this:
Principle 9
Worth mentioning that Eich came from the Netscape days and was highly influential on a technical level.
Oh yeah for sure. Foundational on the browser, and with developing JavaScript. But a shit person. I guess the Prop8 business was finally a bridge too far, PR-wise
Yeah, of course. I'm not defending Eich, just some insight on how he got there :P
Disregard everything below. I mistook the comment about neo-liberalism for a quote from this guy.
I'm leaving the text up for context, but this criticism is misdirected.
==
It says everything you need to know that he (I suspect deliberately) confuses neo-liberal for left-wing ideology.
Neo-liberal = capitalist with a smoking jacket and a fancy degree on the wall.
SV is absolute rife with anarcho-capitalist ideology. I can only dream of a version of SV that actually carries some measure of economically liberal ideology.
My guess is this guy is confusing social liberalism with economic liberalism. But, of course, that's the entire right wing schtick these days.
I might be confused but Lunduke doesn't mention neoliberalism or left-wing ideology in that article - I did.
Of course neoliberalism is to the right of what I'd consider to be left-wing and it works very much hand in hand with conservatism but it's usually socially liberal. I think Mozilla definitely fits a weird bill, it's hard to pinpoint because the principles are largely about individual rights yet the addendum definitely feels atleast socially liberal. That said, it seems most of the causes they support are left-wing.
The problem isn't that they're spending money on political causes and I wouldn't even expect them to do some false balance bs where they'd spend money on left and right wing politics, but spending money on political causes with almost zero transparency (like what do orgs do with the money, how effective are they, are they actually aligned with certain values, who is involved in these orgs, etc) seems fishy as fuck.
I didn't read the article... Are the organizations secret? I don't think it's fishy if not. Why would they need to spend time justifying things to the public like that?
These are all issues of the organizations own reporting, not anything Mozilla did. Mozilla is not responsible for disclosing the operational details of places it donates to or works with.
The laws and regulations surrounding NPOs, charities, and foundations and what they report are a whole other rabbit hole.
Ieft leaning? These orgs sound more like the typical liberal right centrist orgs from america lol