DDoS

July 13, 2025
Mozilla Firefox is a browser that has not been doing too well recently. Its worldwide desktop market share is hovering around 5% these days, something yours truly considers a reasonable assumption. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit org that releases (in tandem with the Mozilla Corporation, which actually employs most of the developers) the Mozilla Firefox browser. An Internet netizen that used to work for the Mozilla Corporation started a discussion earlier this year that actually Mozilla should "let him pay" for using Firefox. To translate this, the user is not asking to be allowed to donate to a non-profit corporation, but rather is asking for the non-profit corporation to charge for the right to use its web browser, which anyone can freely fork and provide for free. Confusing, I know.
The Hackers seem to be mostly concerned with where such funds would go, as it is indeed true that the Mozilla Foundation CEO was compensated more and more money (to the tune of ~$7 million) while the browser was bleeding revenue. Then resigned. As an aside, that revenue is mostly paid by Google, another web company that offers well-known competitor browser Google Chrome, currently impacted by antitrust litigation. Some speculate that should Google be actually severly wounded by antitrust, it would no longer have any reason to keep paying Mozilla, putting its finances further in the red. That is, of course, if Mozilla even cares about Mozilla Firefox in the year 2025, as it continues its pivot towards Mozilla AI.
Brief aside notwithstanding, various Hackers point out that they would love to pay for Firefox, and that it would work to wean it off the ad revenue. Again, this puzzles the author, as they can actually donate to the Mozilla Foundation right now. Perhaps these Hackers believe that if the Mozilla Foundation directly charged for the Mozilla Firefox browser, then that money would actually go to the Mozilla Firefox browser. Conceit is the finest armor a Hacker can wear, after all.