Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

Posted by donutshop 10 hours ago

Comments

Comment by mittensc 9 hours ago

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report.

> The nonprofit, also the parent of Firefox, is investing in artificial intelligence startups that are working on safety and governance issues in AI.

Why?, they want to go bankrupt?, do they like burning money?

I would understand investing in AI Tech... Brilliant if they use Mozilla contributors.

I would understand but investing in other startups... with due diligence and something that might make a difference

> that are working on safety and governance issues in AI.

what... why... what the hell... that's governments job, not mozillas...

Comment by crystal_revenge 9 hours ago

> that's governments job

Why do people take these AI "safety" research projects at face value? The real reason you need AI that is "safe" and "governable" is so that when you start having it promote advertisers content or support the current administration, you don't have to worry about it going "off the rails" and promoting a competing product to criticizing the administration.

I'm sure plenty of researchers in this space also believe they are working for the good of humanity, but I suspect the real am is much more practical and perfectly aligned with the business interests of all the companies sponsoring this type of work.

Comment by storus 9 hours ago

We currently can't do "AI safety" even in bleeding edge alignment research so investing into some startups in that area is just burning money. Current LLMs/ViTs have non-zero probability of producing something unsafe and it's their inherent trait.

Comment by zer00eyz 7 hours ago

> Current LLMs/ViTs have non-zero probability of producing something unsafe

Show me on the LLM where the "unsafe" result is that doesn't already exist inside its training data set? Go ahead I will wait.

Comment by al_borland 6 hours ago

> promote advertisers content ... promoting a competing product

Where is the value of AI when the responses are compromised like this? I could say the same thing about Google Search, which is one of the reasons I stopped using it.

Are we betting on the masses not caring that they're being lied to for profit?

Comment by madeofpalk 9 hours ago

Uh, I mean, I think we've seen first hand that generally one aspect of safety we want is to not produce sexualised images of children.

Comment by js8 8 hours ago

Is it even an attainable goal? It seems an NN with less than say 4 billion parameters will be able to do that. The cost of training will likely go down with more models being available. Unless we lock down the computing for majority of people, I don't see how we can prevent someone creating a CSAM model in their garage.

I don't want to see CSAM created, but the totalitarian control required is too much for my taste (and frankly it's preferable for that person to use NN than to go out and hurt actual children).

Not to mention even locked down technology is often being abused by the privileged.

Comment by adrianN 8 hours ago

People can draw naked children with a stick and some dirt. I’m not sure that preventing the creation of fictional csam is the best use of our resources if we want to protect minors from abuse.

Comment by rainonmoon 7 hours ago

The best use? Probably not. But if I built a website that let people generate extremely convincing unlimited photos of you wearing an SS uniform and forcing your dog to smoke meth and sent them to everyone you’ve ever met, this might seem like a less worthy hill to die on. Or is that just a sticks and dirt thing too?

Comment by jorgenrodder 4 hours ago

Oddly specific... Did that really actually happen to you?

Comment by madeofpalk 3 hours ago

The goal is not to prevent someone from making their own model do what they want, but to prevent your model from doing what you don't want, like generate CSAM or non-consentual sexually explicit photos.

I don't understand how its controversial that someone/some-company might not want their products to be known for that.

Comment by js8 2 hours ago

It's a bit odd requirement, but.. OK. I mean who is the malicious actor here, the AI, the human user or the AI provider?

If the AI, then we shouldn't give it an agency (user should always vet the output). If it's the user, the AI is irrelevant to the question. And if it's AI provider, why would they train AI on such materials in the first place.

The whole enterprise of this kind of safety doesn't make much sense to me. If the AI is not able to follow so clear user instructions it's not ready for prime time and must be under human supervision at all times. (And subtle hallucinations on topic seem to be both more dangerous and more of a problem than blatant random production of explicit images, anyway.)

Comment by observationist 9 hours ago

They want NGO grant money. They look at the latest and greatest buzzwords for government policy spending and tailor their efforts towards acquiring that money, 99% of which will go to salaries and bonuses, 1% of which will be spent on the mission du jour.

Mozilla is a deeply corrupt and failed organization.

Comment by rrr_oh_man 8 hours ago

> Mozilla is a deeply corrupt and failed organization.

Can you elaborate?

Comment by observationist 8 hours ago

See: Firefox, management churn, alienation and discarding of community, etc.

Some of us who donated money and supported Mozilla and Firefox are deeply, deeply disappointed and disgusted.

Principles are meaningless to non-human corporate entities, and I'll never donate to a non-profit, charity, or other institution again for the rest of my life.

Comment by abnercoimbre 7 hours ago

A great deal of greed exists within many non-profits. (It's frankly obscene when you do your research.) That's not to say some don't serve the public well, but the legal structure of a non-profit isn't by itself enough to deter corruption.

Comment by joquarky 1 hour ago

I'm sure a lot of shady activity can be found if someone does some kind of bulk analysis on IRS 990 forms.

Comment by trolleski 9 hours ago

But compromised Mozilla's solution will then be passed as 'independent' so that a corrupt government can accept it without officially kneeling to BigTech. Publicity stunt a'la foundation.

Comment by mrdependable 9 hours ago

I assumed they meant data governance.

Comment by sdellis 9 hours ago

Except that government, at least in the U.S., is not doing their job. This administration doesn't want to regulate AI.

Comment by noo_u 9 hours ago

Whether or not it is the government's job is to be regulating a specific thing is not as straightforward of an issue as it may seem.

Comment by dralley 9 hours ago

The charitable entity known as the Mozilla Foundation and the development entity known as the Mozilla Corporation are not the same. Nothing wrong with the foundation doing these things with their spare cash, it literally does not impact Firefox at all.

Comment by dotBen 9 hours ago

The concern, I think, is that their spare cash is dwindling and thus financial prudence might be beneficial - especially for those who rely on the core Mozilla propositions like Firefox.

Comment by pseudalopex 9 hours ago

Mozilla's assets increased again in their most recent financial statement.[1] Investing in AI startups will have high risk however.

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...

Comment by input_sh 9 hours ago

> is that their spare cash is dwindling

They're an NGO, you can just... look this up, it's public.

Comment by noo_u 9 hours ago

This might be financial prudence of sorts - doesn't something like 80% of their yearly monetary contributions come from Google, particularly for search partnerships? If they are concerned that Google will start paying them less because search has diminishing future returns, diversifying their income sources through investments in AI might be a good idea.

Comment by pseudalopex 9 hours ago

Mozilla's AI investment strategy is more than Mozilla Foundation spending spare cash.[1]

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/ledger/

Comment by poszlem 9 hours ago

That’s one interpretation. Another is that people typically support foundations not simply because they “do good,” but because they advance a specific cause the donor personally values. For example, if I donated to a foundation focused on developing cancer treatments, and that same foundation later shifted its efforts to addressing melting ice caps, I would likely feel frustrated, since that was not the purpose for which I chose to support it, and I don't really care that both actions "do good" in the world.

Comment by mrandish 8 hours ago

> people typically support foundations

While I agree with the general point that non-profit donors have a legitimate interest in the use of funds, in the particular case of the Mozilla Foundation, I believe the vast majority of that money is from placement fees Google paid to be the default search engine in Firefox. As the pay-for-placement market has evolved and Firefox's browser share has fallen, this income has also fallen dramatically.

On the general point about non-profit donations, legally non-profit's use of funds are governed by their board of directors and charter, which often are not constrained in ways donors may assume, hence the need for due diligence prior to giving.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

Mozilla Foundation's 2024 revenue was 60% investments, 28% program service revenue, 11% contributions and grants.[1]

Most of program service revenue was from Mozilla Corporation. They paid Mozilla Foundation a small part of their revenue for trademark licenses, legal services, and so. And most of Mozilla Corporation's revenue was from Google.

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation_Form_99...

Comment by mrandish 8 hours ago

Although I haven't looked at the actual reports in a long time, I think that's consistent with my understanding. The Google money (program service revenue) was a much higher percent in the past, creating the $1.4B nest egg. Now the Google money is greatly reduced and the majority of the income is from the nest egg.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

I intended the percentages to support your point donations were little of Mozilla Foundation's revenue. But you missed Mozilla Corporation held most assets.

Comment by mrandish 4 hours ago

Yes, I didn't take your post as disagreeing. I appreciated the current data since I haven't looked lately.

Comment by csense 9 hours ago

I would rather Mozilla spend their money focusing on reducing Firefox's enormous memory usage or maintaining Thunderbird.

They could build interesting protocols into Firefox like IPFS or ENS, or develop alternatives. $1.4 billion can accomplish a lot -- if you stay in your lane and don't yeet it into a capital intensive field with uncertain returns like AI.

Comment by threatofrain 7 hours ago

Thunderbird? That entire product category is passing out of cultural consciousness.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

In 2026, Mozilla will continue to invest and leverage our assets to help tip the balance of AI toward openness, agency and trust. We anticipate $~650M in expenditure across the portfolio to run our core businesses, generate revenue, drive mission impact, and grow new opportunities in 2026: Approximately 80% of expenditure on core products: Continued, substantial investment in core products like Firefox and Thunderbird.[1]

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/ledger/

Comment by this_user 10 hours ago

How about building a "rebel alliance" to take on Chrome instead?

Comment by MarsIronPI 7 hours ago

No, they have a deal with the Empire already. The Empire pays them to not actually rebel.

Comment by konart 9 hours ago

No money in that.

Comment by blibble 8 hours ago

no money in "AI" either

(unless you're nvidia/tsmc)

Comment by layer8 9 hours ago

Are they being chased by Jabba the Hutt’s bounty hunters?

Comment by kitsune1 9 hours ago

It's frustrating because Chrome is superior in every way except ad blocking.

I only use Firefox because of my hate for ADs.

Comment by abbe98 9 hours ago

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report.

$1.4 billion would be a very good start for an endowment which one day could maybe fund, a browser?

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

The article described this misleadingly. Mozilla in 2026 intend $~650M in expenditure. 80% on core products like Firefox and Thunderbird. 20% on expanding into AI.[1] Their 2024 total expenses were $588M.[2]

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/ledger/

[2] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...

Comment by yborg 9 hours ago

>Creating a rebel alliance to fight the Empire

>Receive most of their funding from the Empire

It's a trap!

Comment by maelito 9 hours ago

Firefox has no PWA installation hook. Please focus on what matters...

Comment by shrubble 9 hours ago

Changing the Firefox icon to a womp rat in a gun sight is not going to make more people want to use the browser; but fixing, enhancing the browser’s capabilities will.

Comment by guizadillas 9 hours ago

You had ONE JOB Mozilla, ONE JOB

Comment by mjhay 9 hours ago

Correct, it’s to make their non-profit executives rich.

Comment by Insanity 8 hours ago

So much negativity about Firefox in these threads. Could they be doing better? Absolutely, but without them we’d have almost no browser choice today.

Even if you don’t care too much about FF itself, they also own the Gecko engine on top of which other browsers are built.

Personally I’ve been using Zen for the past year and it’s been a pretty good experience. I should add a disclaimer that I’m not a frontend dev, so can’t speak to dev tooling.

Comment by timcobb 8 hours ago

> Could they be doing better? Absolutely, but without them we’d have almost no browser choice today.

They deserve it. The one thing people need from Mozilla is for it to fight browser monoculture, which is critical the free and open web. "They had one job." But, to the great detriment of humanity (I don't think I'm exaggerating), they're failing. That sucks.

> Personally I’ve been using Zen.

Thanks, I didn't know about Zen, I'll check that out. I'm on Brave, but would rather not be.

Comment by estimator7292 4 hours ago

Nobody, nobody wants or needs yet another AI startup burning billions of dollars.

We need an alternative to Chrome and a team and leader willing to make that happen.

Mozilla loves to spew endless words about their "mission" to improve the internet. Shoveling more money on the fire that's consuming the entire internet is counterproductive. Do you know what would improve the internet and users' freedoms? A browser that can compete with Chrome.

Mozilla is more interested in fat executive bonuses than actually doing anything.

Comment by GuestFAUniverse 5 hours ago

How about training a LLM by distributing workloads to the gazillion of bored gamers via GPU-enabled BOINC jobs? -- not just folding@home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOINC_client%E2%80%93server_te...

The estimated are in the 10-100 Petaflop range. Should be good enough for training.

Comment by lanyard-textile 9 hours ago

>“It’s that spirit that a bunch of people are banding together to create something good in the world and take on this thing that threatens us,” Surman told CNBC in an interview. “It’s super corny, but people totally get it.”

If you have to explain why you chose the name, it might not be a good name :/

Comment by bhhaskin 8 hours ago

Mozilla you have one job. Make the browser. That's it, that's all you need to do!

Comment by pseudalopex 9 hours ago

Did the article not link or name the report? Or did I miss it?

They meant State of Mozilla 2025 seemingly.[1]

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/

Comment by smsm42 8 hours ago

I think "reserves" and "extremely risky investment fund" are supposed to be different things?

Then again, given Mozilla Foundation's stellar record of taking on massive corporations and crushing them, and given that they themselves not owe their very financial existence not even a little bit solely to donations from a certain mega-corporation, maybe it's not that risky - more an assured success.

Comment by pjmlp 8 hours ago

I just want to keep using Firefox, but it is getting really hard.

Thanks for starting Rust, I guess, at least it was directly related to improving Firefox.

Comment by MarsIronPI 7 hours ago

I'm still using Firefox because of uBlock Origin, and the UI is only kept tolerable by the continued existence of VimFX. If VimFX ever stops working for real, I'll be reconsidering my browser options.

Comment by omnicognate 10 hours ago

It's like watching the standards-based web commit suicide.

Comment by Jugglewhoa 9 hours ago

Firefox has burned enough goodwill with me over the years. Them putting ads in the URL bar was the last straw and I switched to LibreWolf. Haven't looked back since, its basically a drop in replacement and works with all my previous container/add on workflows. May need to mess with fonts, but that's it.

Comment by DeepYogurt 9 hours ago

Please just don't

Comment by Etheryte 9 hours ago

Even Apple conceded that building it from scratch is prohibitively expensive. Mozilla would do better to use that money for the browser, but then again, Mozilla has never known how to operate. It's a mere miracle fluke that they're not bankrupt.

Comment by tomashubelbauer 8 hours ago

I'm just glad I was there for Mozilla's peak. Hopefully I'll get to experience Ladybird's next.

Comment by some_furry 10 hours ago

How about building a better AI-free browser first, Mozilla?

Is that too much to ask for?

Comment by pseudalopex 9 hours ago

Growing and investing in Firefox remains our biggest priority. Mozilla Corporation’s leading aim is to grow as a meaningful, differentiated browser, trusted by over 200mil people. In 2025 the team made great progress shipping tab groups, vertical tabs, smart tabs, many sidebar integrations with AI companies and more. Mozilla Corp welcomed Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the first technologist to serve as CEO in over 15 years. In 2026 there will be a focus on building tools and features for those who want AI, and for those who do not. We are the only browser who does this - and likely the only one that will.[1]

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/tools/#corp

Comment by direwolf20 9 hours ago

Ah, replicating things that already exist as extensions. So useful.

Comment by arxari 9 hours ago

In inferior execution, Sideberry is still miles ahead compared to the "native" option

Comment by some_furry 9 hours ago

> In 2026 there will be a focus on building tools and features for those who want AI, and for those who do not. We are the only browser who does this - and likely the only one that will.[1]

I don't want any AI features to exist in the Firefox source code, since this increases Firefox's attack surface for no real gain to the product I want to use. The AI-enabled browser should be a separate product line for people who want that.

Comment by ldng 4 hours ago

Don't bother. Moz management don't give a shit and haven't been giving a shit for a LONG time. It's like the f*cking magas, the more you tell them no, the more they double down ...

I'm done. Starting to look for an alternative.

Comment by ddtaylor 10 hours ago

I have zero trust in Mozilla with their ability in the marketplace currently. I held out using their products while they stagnated for nearly a decade because I value the privacy they once provided.

Mozilla has failed to compete in the browser landscape and it feels icky most of the stuff they have attempted to do, which didn't even yield them any money.

Great work, you robbed the bank and you're still poor and everyone hates you.

Comment by ahartmetz 9 hours ago

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Mozilla had some distractions, yes, but Firefox is a fine browser, and it supports full-featured uBlock Origin including on Android.

Comment by horsawlarway 9 hours ago

Firefox is mostly fine despite the actions of Mozilla Corp. Not because of them.

Transparently - I've been relatively deep in the extensions space across every major browser (Chrome/Safari/Edge/Firefox).

Based on my interactions with their browser team during this process - I'm no longer a supporter of Firefox. I want to credit the engineers and support personnel I interacted with there for doing their best despite their company policies, but their policies became insane (And since you mentioned ublock - here's Gorhill, the author, expressing basically the same opinion here: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco...)

I won't recommend using it: I don't think it's trying to serve its users, I don't think it's trying to serve their developers. I think it's coasting on historical good will, and it's essentially been on life-support as a cash grab from Google since they laid off their engine team in 2020.

Combined with increasingly non-sensical product releases (ex - this one) and "security marketing" that doesn't match reality... I find the whole thing fairly distasteful at this point.

Comment by wolvoleo 9 hours ago

It is a fine browser but as its marketshare keeps declining it works less and less well because webdevs don't bother testing for it anymore.

I'm already getting tons of captchas from the likes of cloudflare in Firefox on Linux. Because somehow I'm suspicious. That's not the sign of a browser doing well.

Comment by guizadillas 9 hours ago

Firefox is a fine browser despite of Mozilla

Comment by timcobb 8 hours ago

Yeah I already basically daily drive Brave after using FF for years, sadly :(

Comment by sparcpile 10 hours ago

The sooner the AI bubble pops and takes all of these companies out, the better the world will be.

Comment by epiccoleman 9 hours ago

Which companies do you expect to be taken out?

Google and Microsoft will obviously remain. I have a hard time envisioning that OpenAI or Anthropic will go under - especially Anthropic, who are reportedly raking in billions from Claude subscriptions.

Just from my armchair predictions, it's not really any of the juggernauts who have to worry, but rather the many companies springing up to try SaaS offerings with LLMs at the core. A bubble pop there could certainly cause some strife, but I'm just not seeing the mechanism by which these too-big-to-fail tech companies and the heavily invested "frontier AI companies" are going to suddenly cease to exist.

I think the dotcom bubble is a fairly apt metaphor in the key sense that the web didn't go anywhere - just a lot of small players lost their tickets on the gravy train. "Big tech" as it existed at the time of the bubble pop trundled along and continued making gobs of money.

Comment by estimator7292 4 hours ago

Mozilla is probably doomed in the long term. I think they're in the exact same boar as Microsoft, and wholly lack the self-reflection required to turn the ship around.

Firefox will continue to languish while Mozilla execs receive 8-figure bonuses until there's nothing left to extract.

Comment by sparcpile 8 hours ago

OpenAI and Anthropic are bleeding money and both need hundreds of billions of dollars in the next couple of years to break even. Oracle is highly overleveraged and I am hoping that the bubble takes them out. You can find the gory details at Ed Zitron's blog. https://www.wheresyoured.at/premium-how-the-ai-bubble-bursts...

Comment by bluescrn 8 hours ago

> Google and Microsoft will obviously remain

Microsoft seem to be pushing all kinds of users away in all directions at the moment while focused on the AI bubble*. Once it bursts/deflats, will they come back?

Or are we looking at a post-Windows future, where MS just focuses on cloud stuff?

(Or will there be a 'we learned from our mistakes, honest' Windows 12 that wins people back in the same way that Win10 did after Win8?)

Comment by rootnod3 10 hours ago

Already packed an emergency stash of popcorn just to sit back and watch that fabulous disaster.

Comment by usrbinbash 9 hours ago

For me it's nachos, homemade cheese-and-cream-and-onion-and-garlic dip, and some fine wine.

Comment by wolvoleo 9 hours ago

The problem is, when multi trillion dollars go poof everyone is going to feel the pain, even those that wisely stayed away from investing in the bubble.

Comment by semiquaver 9 hours ago

And like I everything they’ve ever done in the last 20 years it will fail.

Comment by fooker 9 hours ago

Mozilla can seemingly focus on anything except Firefox.

This is almost like GRRM trying hard not to focus on Winds of Winter.

Comment by tokyobreakfast 7 hours ago

Hey Mozilla, fix your bullshit browser first, you owe it to its 8 remaining users.

Comment by ewuhic 8 hours ago

How about those wankers build a browser instead

Comment by trolleski 9 hours ago

They are controlled opposition, for goodness sake!

Comment by bossyTeacher 9 hours ago

Mozilla has great ideas but just because YOU have a great idea it does not mean that you are the best entity to implement it. Mozilla is going to bankrupt itself by spending an excessive proportion of its money on moonshots. They would have way more impact if they redirected all that money into a great browser AND educating normies about privacy. Like way bigger impact.

Right now, Mozilla keeps fighting wars it cannot win.

Comment by 9 hours ago

Comment by miroljub 9 hours ago

No, just don't.

Given the Mozilla track records and bias, looks like they need another woke LLM that is woker and DEI-er (is that even a word?) than the existing major models.

I'd rather they focus on finally bringing Firefox back where it belongs, instead of spending resources on useless identity wars.

Comment by mikkupikku 9 hours ago

Wowz just like Star Wars! Heckin updoots xD

Sorry, I can't take Mozilla seriously when they're doing anything other than Firefox or Thunderbird. Enough of this crap. Dressing it up with juvenile capeshit references doesn't help.

Comment by wolvoleo 9 hours ago

Yes please let them focus on making Firefox economically sustainable without Google. Then worry about all the fluffy dogood stuff

Comment by dralley 9 hours ago

The problem is that there is no way to make Firefox economically sustainable without Google (or some other search provider, but google won that war comprehensively). Browsers are fully commoditized and subsidized. Funding the browser with a combination of outside revenue sources and search deals is the way everyone does it.

Comment by wolvoleo 9 hours ago

It can, they just need to approach it not like a big corporation with a multi million dollar a year CEO but as a grassroots project.

If something like KDE can build a whole desktop on a shoestring budget with some donations, Firefox can too. And I'd gladly donate to it. Problem is I can't because you can only donate to the foundation. And I don't want to fund their dogood distractions, just firefox.

Besides, the search deal will end one way or another. Either Firefox will lose so much marketshare that Google no longer bothers, or the DoJ will finally ban the search deals. Relying on it is ultra stupid.

Comment by dralley 9 hours ago

With all due respect a web browser is much more complicated than a desktop environment. Firefox is like 30 million lines of code, much of which is active attack surface. A high performance JIT JavaScript engine alone might be more complex than KDE. Random people can fix UI bugs and contribute to simple desktop apps in a way that they likely cannot in general do with the deep internals of a browser.

Comment by ori_b 9 hours ago

With all due respect, that's all the more reason to put all the resources they can behind browser development, rather than scattering it across unrelated projects.

Comment by wolvoleo 9 hours ago

KDE includes a web browser. Which spawned Safari in fact.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

KDE removed KHTML and KJS. Falkon is a QtWebEngine wrapper.

Comment by wolvoleo 8 hours ago

Yeah but they did make it. They just dropped maintaining it because it wasn't really being used.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

KHTML and KJS weren't really being used because KDE couldn't keep them useful.

Comment by peaseagee 9 hours ago

And Chrome!

Comment by rascul 8 hours ago

KDE has already created a browser engine, a browser, and a JavaScript engine.

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814523

Comment by pseudalopex 8 hours ago

I like KDE. But their small funding hurts development.

Comment by j-bos 9 hours ago

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report.

Back of the envelope math says that's worth 50-70 million dollars a year, taking into account inflation. A cracked developer is worth 1/2 a million per year, both of Mozilla's core offerings are OSS so benefit from free code contributions. Is that not enough for a dozen highly paid software engineers, a well paid CEO and infra? This is ignoring future donations.

Comment by mrandish 8 hours ago

> Back of the envelope math says...

It sounds like you haven't looked into Mozilla Foundation's history regarding CEO salary, bonuses and overall use of funds.

Comment by bjord 9 hours ago

what is the math you're doing, exactly?

also, I don't think a dozen devs is enough to support a competitive browser

anyway, companies are far(!) from just devs

Comment by eesmith 8 hours ago

I think an important outside revenue source they haven't tapped is sovereign wealth funds from countries that want to ensure there's a way for its citizens to use domestic web sites without depending on an opaque binary blob.

Of course this funding would come with some pretty big strings attached. Including perhaps "no AI in the core system."

Comment by bossyTeacher 9 hours ago

If it focused JUST on Firefox and appealed to the privacy conscious tech community which is relatively small but wealthy, they could make it sustainable via a combination of open source support and donaitons imo.

Comment by pseudalopex 9 hours ago

Investing in AI startups is their strategy to become sustainable without Google seemingly.

Comment by ganelonhb 9 hours ago

cringe

Comment by mystraline 9 hours ago

And this is why I will NOT:

donate to this sham foundation

Buy their Thunderbird pro mailservice

Or shovel money in any of their other hair-brained schemes.

Comment by renewiltord 9 hours ago

Haha this seems doomed because the community reflexively hates this technology.

Comment by ramesh31 9 hours ago

Anthropic is the rebel alliance. Or more like the Free French, who refused to collaborate. But having billions to train is table stakes now. No cheeky upstart is ever going to beat physics like that.

Comment by zb3 9 hours ago

Ah, so that's why firefox bugs are open for 10+ years and there's no one to work on these.. screw them.

Comment by hiprob 8 hours ago

By the way, if anyone is looking to switch from Firefox, Floorp is also heavily invested in AI.

Comment by self_awareness 9 hours ago

Mozilla isn't even able to run an established browser, and they want to create new tech? Please.

Comment by neoyagami 9 hours ago

For fk sake!

Comment by PlatoIsADisease 9 hours ago

Conspiracy theory time? Conspiracy theory time.

I think the trillion dollar companies have enough money, they can hire people as 'plants'.

Okay, before this is marked as crazy talk: Historically this has happened, this isnt a new invention. A company needs to survive, not be ethical. Using third parties give plausible deniability.

I look at the atrocious state of LibreOffice, and I'm pretty sure someone from Microsoft is screwing things up. Might just be a little bit of friction and fake concern over a useful change. Maybe they even find someone who already does this and fund it as a full time job.

I look at Firefox, and I wonder if Google somehow is significantly influencing things there. Google keeps Firefox alive to prevent anti-trust. But they make sure funding is diverted from browser to wasteful projects.

When I worked for a fortune 20 company, we had a major, irrational push away from python into Microsoft Power Automate. Other people were convinced either our director was a Microsoft plant, or was getting some sort of kickback.

Here is my question:

What is the business called where people do this? Like if these companies paid a third party, what is this categorized as? (For instance, paying for reddit upvotes and comments is called 'Reputation Management')

Comment by burningChrome 9 hours ago

Co‑opetition?

Some have used the term "Strategic accommodation".

Interesting you bring this specific Mozilla/Google example up since this is the closet thing to seeing this happen in real time:

https://www.opensourceforu.com/2025/09/court-ruling-secures-...

"Courts and press have noted that Mozilla relies heavily on Google’s search‑default payments, which keep Firefox viable. Recent antitrust proceedings have wrestled with whether (and how) to restrict these payments: a judge ultimately allowed Google to continue non‑exclusive payments to distribution partners like Mozilla while barring exclusivity and some tying/bundling—an outcome many observers said preserved Mozilla’s “lifeline” without materially threatening Google’s core position. That is textbook co‑opetition coupled with what many would call strategic accommodation."

Comment by zb3 9 hours ago

But at least it seems we have powerful Linux plants at Microsoft, they're doing great :)

Comment by ihsw 9 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by tokai 10 hours ago

Ah yes, go fight some of the companies with the highest ever investment numbers. Anything else than focusing on that one browser that is a cornerstone of the free web

Comment by jrm4 10 hours ago

Ah yes, Mozilla, that organization that has no record whatsoever fighting companies with the highest ever investment numbers; like who do they think they are?

Comment by wolvoleo 9 hours ago

Look at how well they've been doing. They're just scraping by with a minimal and declining market share propped up by cash from their single biggest competitor.

They're not fighting anything. They're being paid to be a weak antitrust excuse.