Focus. People donate for the browser but the funds are used for other purposes meaning the browser doesn’t get the attention it should. If you think it’s not a distraction to even distribute funds it is because you have to at least spend time and energy picking between options
Then they're doing it wrong, because exactly zero donations to the Mozilla Foundation go to Firefox, that's a Mozilla Corporation project. To support the browser, purchase their side services instead.
Which was GP's point, people (rightfully imo) assume that donating to Mozilla helps the browser.
Mozilla is being misleading and is the one who should be criticized, not the person who's donating to them and didn't read the fineprints regarding where the money is going.
The Foundation website also states it, but they try to weasel word their way around it: Firefox is not listed as one of their programs but as being maintained by the Corporation, which shares its revenue back to the Foundation (not the other way around).
How is Mozilla funding a private Google Photos alternative “competition against a world of Chromium”?
Maybe you didn’t follow the thread close enough — the complaint isn’t that funding Firefox is counterproductive, but that shoveling dollars to a non-Firefox product does nothing to help Firefox compete against Chrome/Chromium, which is kinda hard to argue against, no?
I don't know how it relates to anything else happening in the world but it seems like a good idea. People use Google photos, people look for alternatives.
I self-host Immich and its definitely my favorite web photo system. One thing with Ente that aligns more with Mozilla's approach to data however is end-to-end encryption, which Ente has, but Immich doesn't. So I can see why Mozilla funded this option instead.
I personally wish that self-hosting was a more reliable and simplified process for the average person such that simpler and more powerful software like Immich was the best choice for all.
Self hosted Immich doesn't need end-to-end encryption, and the lack of it enables a number of very useful server-side features. If your end-to-end encryption has not undergone a security audit, it's as good as if there was no encryption at all.
Yes, that was kind of my point. Self-hosted negates the need, but most can't self host.... so that leaves end-to-end encryption the best intermediate step.
I've been using Immich for over a year. "Maintenance" boils down to weekly docker compose pull and a restart. There's semantic search, deduplication, mapping, face recognition etc etc. I do not miss Google Photos at all, and can recommend Immich without any reservations to anyone with even basic understanding of docker compose.
The documents you linked to show that 2022 they have a billion and something in net assets 513 million in cash (up from 378 in 2021). Cash flow from operating activities was 147 million in 2022 and 197 million in 2021.
So according to the documents you linked, Mozilla is doing extremely well financially.
Also according to your documents, they spend the vast majority of their money on developing Firefox.
If they continue to grow alternative revenue streams as they have in the last couple of years, they will be in a position to develop Firefox without Google funding in the intermediate future.
From a quick look, only the client is open source. The server software is still privative. Why did Mozilla fund this? There is no shortage of libre software of self-hosted image servers in need of funding.
And yes I did but stopped last year when it became clear they are spending money on projects I don't care about https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/