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Mozilla Giving $1 Million To Open Source Projects It Relies On (mozilla.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the leading-by-example dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has been a big part of the open source community for a long time, and their main projects rely heavily on independent open source work. They've now announced the Mozilla Open Source Support program, which aims to give back to the projects they rely on, and to also reward other projects that make the community stronger. Mozilla has allocated $1 million to award to these projects — to start. This appears to be Mozilla's efforts to fix a problem we've become painfully aware over the past year and a half: huge portions of the modern web rely on critical bits of open source software whose developers have minimal resources. The company has already begun to compile a list of the projects they rely on. Hopefully it will inspire other organizations to support the open source software projects they rely on as well.

68 comments

  1. painfull ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem I have become painfully aware of is that open source projects with to much money on their hand start to smell suspiciously like their closed source counterparts.

    And that is not just over thew past year and a half.

  2. Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nice of them to give 0.3% of their funding to projects they couldn't live without.
    They piss away more than this on considerably less useful projects.

    The cynic in me says that $1 million isn't far off the value of this as a purely PR exercise.

    1. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't this payment also mean that these open source apps are adopting the greedy, evil, quasi-capitalistic model of charging money for software?

    2. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't this payment also mean that these open source apps are adopting the greedy, evil, quasi-capitalistic model of charging money for software?

      F/LOSS software can be distributed at whatever price the market will bear. The essential part of free/libre software is access to the source code. Some software developers and organisations only charge for service/support contracts while others offer community edition (no fee) and professional/enterprise edition (fee).

    3. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      The essential part of free/libre software is access to the source code.

      Essential for what, exactly? Access to code doesn't help fix 10-year old bugs. Even developers familiar with the code base take weeks to months to add a simple feature. An outsider, who has no understanding of the code, will take even longer to get anything done.

      All open source does is drop a nuke into its area of computing. Once the open source software is entrenched in a certain area, no commercial software is viable anymore. For example, open source firefox has ensured no commercial browser will exist for a long time, if ever. That's because a commercial product can't easily compete with a product priced at $0. So you're stuck with the slow, buggy firefox for a long time, because no one will bother developing an alternative.

    4. Re: Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, to answer your question: "Essential" for it to meet the definition.

      That's all "essential" meant right there.

    5. Re:Drop in the bucket by KGIII · · Score: 1

      For example, open source firefox has ensured no commercial browser will exist for a long time, if ever. That's because a commercial product can't easily compete with a product priced at $0. So you're stuck with the slow, buggy firefox for a long time, because no one will bother developing an alternative.

      Edge, Safari, and Internet Explorer all still exist as commercial browsers. There are probably others, one might include Chrome in the list, but that's enough to make me scratch my head at your statement. I can't actually speak on the usability of any of them, nor for Firefox really, as I use Opera which is based on Chromium.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    6. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wasn't IE offered free to users to bankrupt Netscape? IE was a pre-emptive strike against Netscape threatening the Windows monopoly. It's not a commercial browser and neither are Chrome or Safari. Opera is perhaps the only commercial browser but it has a miniscule marketshare.

    7. Re:Drop in the bucket by KGIII · · Score: 1

      They're all commercial - you pay for them when you pay for the OS. I'm not sure if Chrome fits but it seems to - you buy the ChromeOS and you get Chrome with it. That makes them commercial.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    8. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reminds me of this.

      https://www.freebsdnews.com/2014/11/19/whatsapp-donates-1-million-dollars-freebsd-foundation/

      That's not a bad chunk of change to provide machines, network access, and just code. It's not like Mozilla has to pay for Firefox commercials on TV, or anywhere actually. Everybody knows it's there and it is still the best option, and cross-platform.

      The PR with Firefox is just word of mouth. You know it's good because the Internet says so. It has a history of being well liked. This $1 million seems exactly mechanical to keep coders eating food with lights on while they provide a service to society. The code remains open too so.. great. No need to reinvent wheels in the future, you can re-use pre-existing intellect if you want to.

      If Mozilla were to start logging keystrokes and sending it to the company, or recording your voice and camera etc... It would be shitcanned. So it goes with Microsoft Shitcan OS 10 and backported spyware/malware/adware shit in 7/8/8.1.

      If even .00001% of Microsoft spy shit was in Firefox... it'd be goner. Microsoft is paying to pretend they are still relevant. Trust is long gone. There is no need for me to cite how or why... it is already common knowledge.

    9. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      F/LOSS software can be distributed at whatever price the market will bear.

      Which is $0.

      The essential part of free/libre software is access to the source code.

      Rubbish! This is precisely the reason for the FSF's opposition to what it terms "tivoization" and the also to the SaaS model of software.

      Some software developers and organisations only charge for service/support contracts while others offer community edition (no fee) and professional/enterprise edition (fee).

      That model is fine if you are offering a product that needs support to a market that wants it and is willing to pay for it. These elements align relatively infrequently.

    10. Re: Drop in the bucket by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Well, to answer your question: "Essential" for it to meet the definition.

      That's all "essential" meant right there.

      Definition of what? Certainly not "free/libre software".

    11. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know it's good because the Internet says so.

      One day you will learn that you don't believe everything you read on the internet. The reality is fewer people are using Firefox now than ever before, their mobile platform is a complete also-ran non-starter and has so little influence that they have been forced to capitulate on DRM in a desperate attempt to remain relevant.

      Everybody knows it's there and it is still the best option, and cross-platform.

      Yeah that must be why it has less than 10% of browser usage. Why do the apologists ignore its failure and its declining market share and still claim it is "the best option". People are abandoning and actively choosing other browsers because it is *NOT* the best option.

    12. Re:Drop in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One day you will learn that you don't believe everything you read on the internet.

      I didn't believe everything said on BBS's in the 80's either. I decide on the best browser by literally.. using.. every .. single.. fucking.. one.. of.. them... on every platform. I don't use a browser "because of the headcount". The market share metric is explicitly skewed when Android phones are Google phones and they literally ship with Google Chrome on them. That metric is explicitly skewed exactly the same way with IE, Edge, and Safari. Come down from your clouds kid and pay attention to superior reasoning.

      Yeah that must be why it has less than 10% of browser usage.

      I use Firefox on 8+ different Operating Systems even this exact second. Now do tell me how "they" counted how many I use. There is no "they" that count that. "They" count devices sold and shipped with their "native" browsers. Do you actually think ALL websites aggregate all their hits and unique IP addresses then send their unique browser id's to heysheepcheckoutmybrowsermarketshare.com? Companies aggregate their own data based on devices shipped.

      Notice who does aggregate browser data. The government. No shit Sherlock.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

      Market share market share market share. Market share doesn't imply the best. In fact, any phone manufacturer that decides to put some hokey ass app on their phone that nobody wants at all gets market share in the millions immediately.

      So even bloatware has sky high fucking market share.

      Is this the only reason you don't determine which browser you use by market share? Nope. You can also factor in things like how many cunts fist pump a browser based on market share. It just might be the douche software of the year. Like you just did. You would also probably be shocked to recognize I too have Android devices. I contribute to that "market share" without ever using that browser. Chrome ships on phones and tablets. And I don't use them. I use Firefox. What got counted though? They know they gave me Chrome. They shipped it and can count sales figures. They have to count it. They have to report it. So they know. They rely on advertising that data to dickheads like you who think "muh market share muh market share look how awesome oh fuck marrrrrket sharrre". Learn today dickhead. Congratulations you just got fractionally smarter. Celebrate with some nuts on your chin.

      Now how would you determine which browser is the best? The way I find out is I use every-single-mother-fucking-one-of-them on every-single-mother-fucking-platform and I find out. Conclusion? Even in the early days of Mozilla Suite, Mozilla was the best. I am constantly looking for them to fuck Firefox up because brainstorm kids like yourself are always trying to look like you are so clever with "progress". Any progress.. just feel special about it.

      Like this queef.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering

      Firefox has great extensions and it's cross platform. There are portable versions as well. It is open source. There are forks. It doesn't spy on you like Chrome does. It doesn't spy on you like IE/Edge do (Because Windows itself is spyware). You don't have to use Mac OS X's walled garden "ecosystem" to use it like Safari. It surpasses other Linux and BSD browsers but in *nix world you have many many options. I know this because I am not brand new hollering market share market share like some fucking tool.

  3. serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hope that they'll give preference to projects that are minority friendly. Not giving such a preference would be tantamount to reinforcing the phallocratic caucasiopatriarchy that dominates the IT profession today.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by pr0nbot · · Score: 5, Funny

      As a left-handed disabled black Jewish ginger bi-trans BSD user, I demand you send me the aforementioned monies.

    2. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hope that they'll give preference to projects that are minority friendly. Not giving such a preference would be tantamount to reinforcing the phallocratic caucasiopatriarchy that dominates the IT profession today.

      They should give preference to projects that produce good software.

    3. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm a handicapped pansexual asian vegan lesbian.

      Why hasn't from Mozilla anyone contacted me yet? When I deal with liberals I usually get pushed right to the front of the line. It's great!

    4. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

      Looks like you are participating in step 2.

    5. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You were first in line until you said "asian". it's 2015, asians are no longer in the "Under Represented Minority" class and are now just barely above straight white male. Go ahead, try to get into a big university with an asian name.

    6. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by KGIII · · Score: 1

      MIT would like to have a word with you. ;-)

      No, I don't really care. Yes, there are a lot of Asian people there - I stopped by the campus, about two months ago, and the stereotypes are true. It's full of Asians. I look Asian to most people so I guess I'd fit in now.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    7. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by behrooz0az · · Score: 1

      Are you currently female?

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
    8. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by pr0nbot · · Score: 1

      I reject your gender categories, oppressor!

    9. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably in a hot'n'heavy taco eating session with AniMoJo.

    10. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by behrooz0az · · Score: 1

      Sorry, it was for scientific purposes. I was doing this:
      There are ~14 million jews in the world.
      7 million of whom are women.
      10% are left handed that makes 700K.
      If 13 percent are black it makes 91K.
      1.8% bi-sexual that makes 1638.
      20.8% are disabled that makes 340
      35.7% are obese that makes 585.
      (just multiplied those 2 numbers) 7.42% are obese and disabled that makes 121
      and 804 are either obese or disabled.
      Now I made myself feel bad with math.

      (using US stats because 40%+ of jews live in the US and a lot of them in canada)
      source: wolfram and google

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
    11. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by behrooz0az · · Score: 1

      shit, I missed ginger.
      It's between 1% and 2%.
      that's makes you unique.
      121 * [1%, 2%] = [1.21, 2.42]

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
    12. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by pr0nbot · · Score: 1

      (FWIW I think you're also calling BSD users fat.)

    13. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by behrooz0az · · Score: 1

      And DOS users. don't forget those, ever.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
    14. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      With a mind that sharp, you should be at Harvard or Oxford.

      In a jar of formaldehyde.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. I have a different idea? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How about using that money to hire people that still remember how a browser should work?

    Just sayin'.

    1. Re:I have a different idea? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

      Why don't you go in and correct it? Afterall, that's the beauty of Open Source!

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    2. Re:I have a different idea? by JMJimmy · · Score: 1

      At a certain point that's no longer the case. Systems become too integrated and any mention of changing them is met with derision and ego.

    3. Re:I have a different idea? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At a certain point that's no longer the case. Systems become too integrated and any mention of changing them is met with derision and ego.

      Please, leave systemd out of this, it is not related to the article. Posting about it on every story is killing Slashdot.

    4. Re:I have a different idea? by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Simple. Mozilla has started becoming a closed monoculture that refuses changes because they'd rather add things in that the average person doesn't need. If you need any proof of that, compare firefox to palemoon(branch). FF is roughly double the size of PM, but the latter can do everything the first one does. And has a better memory footprint.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  5. I knew I'd see OpenSSL on that list... by bmajik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Instead of LibreSSL.

    Mozilla is big enough that they can have an opinion on how the web should work, and the web will move.

    They should dump OpenSSL and invest in a winner.

    --
    My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
    1. Re:I knew I'd see OpenSSL on that list... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LibreSSL is nothing without OpenSSL. Like so many OSS forks in general, they are just a bunch of one-time posers.

    2. Re:I knew I'd see OpenSSL on that list... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm glad they are. Because without them, we would be left with a stinking pile of horse shit that nobody is brave enough to check for contagions.

    3. Re:I knew I'd see OpenSSL on that list... by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Like so many OSS forks in general, they are just a bunch of one-time posers.

      Doubtful. OpenBSD has a reputation for forking software and making it more secure. They've been doing it for longer than Mozilla existed.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re:I knew I'd see OpenSSL on that list... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      LibreSSL kind of hurt themselves at the start of the project when they said they wouldn't be making it cross-platform.
      I think it does work on every platform people actually use these days, but I think that is what scared people away from it initially.

      I agree with you though, LibreSSL is much more likely to end up secure.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:I knew I'd see OpenSSL on that list... by Njovich · · Score: 1

      This is just a list of software they rely on, not an opinion piece or a list of software they will fund. Are you saying they rely on LibreSSL? It's not like they currently use either one in Firefox.

    6. Re:I knew I'd see OpenSSL on that list... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They probably won't fund it. Mozilla's browsers rely on their in-house NSS.

      Which is good.

      (It's pretty difficult to avoid OpenSSL in the open sauce world these days anyway. It's either that or GnuTLS.)

  6. MUA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wish they would invest it in their MUA, (Thunderbird) - so it had good interactions with calendar and a good address book. Still fighting to get rid of Outlook here....

    1. Re:MUA by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      AND integrate built-in GnuPG support AND fix the performance issues.

    2. Re:MUA by Teun · · Score: 1

      Indeed, and transfer from GTK to something with a future like QT.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    3. Re:MUA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How's wxWidgets these days?

    4. Re:MUA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, SMIME support is beautiful in Thunderbird.

    5. Re:MUA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Terrible.

    6. Re:MUA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wxWidgets hasn't evolved much in several years. I still use it, but given its limitations and outdated design, I may move on to Qt next year. I don't like Qt that much, yet I don't see any reasonable alternative (GTK is not that great on Windows).

    7. Re:MUA by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Yes, but a good e-mail client should support BOTH S/MIME and GnuPG by default.

    8. Re:MUA by eionmac · · Score: 1

      Concur. Three thrice Three times.

      --
      Regards Eion MacDonald
  7. Starving People in this Country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mozilla doesn't need $1M. They should use all that money to help the poor.

    1. Re:Starving People in this Country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're not "giving away" money. They are giving grants to fund proposed work on the open source projects. So they should use the money to give jobs to the poor. CAPTCHA: habitats

    2. Re:Starving People in this Country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If I were Mozilla, I would be giving some money to Bernie Sanders to support his campaign. If we can get Sanders elected, that will be more beneficial to future prosperity than continuing to float OpenSSL.

    3. Re:Starving People in this Country by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      And you spend all your spare time and spend all your spare money on feeding the homeless, I assume?

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  8. zlib by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems that zlib (libz) didn't make the list. CAPTCHA: fadeout.

    1. Re:zlib by Gerv · · Score: 1

      Er, it's a wiki. Add it.

  9. More companies should do this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So many multi-billion dollar companies raking in money from open source projects like Linux. More companies should invest money back into those important projects.

    1. Re: More companies should do this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Many of those multi billion dollar companies you speak of are corporate members of (donors to) organizations like the Linux Foundation, who do exactly what you are saying. Many others (and many of the same) contribute code directly.

  10. OpenBSD by JBMcB · · Score: 1

    Cripes, OpenBSD is a HUGE fork of nearly everything from FreeBSD. Runs pretty damn well.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    1. Re:OpenBSD by Moridineas · · Score: 2

      OpenBSD started as a fork of NetBSD, actually. All of the BSDs cross pollinate to a large degree, however.

    2. Re:OpenBSD by JBMcB · · Score: 1

      I thought they originally forked from NetBSD then started aligning more with FreeBSD, as FreeBSD had a more up-to-date codebase.

      --
      My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    3. Re:OpenBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No. OpenBSD is still much closer to NetBSD than to FreeBSD.

      The only thing close to FreeBSD is Dragonfly, and that's only because they forked from it.

  11. Kudos to Mozilla for this one by iampiti · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I dislike the direction Firefox is taking as much as anyone but gotta congratulate Mozilla for this initiative.
    I'd be nice if companies which depend on other open source software did the same too (I'm sure many already do).
    Also, although I don't like it, I understand they got to make money to keep going and so I understand why they do things like the new sponsored squares in new tabs.

  12. Is Mozilla that fucked up? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is a fraction of one percent of their revenue.

    Even Microsoft contributes 100x more.

    Can these shitheads at Mozilla get any lower?

  13. NTP by FeelGood314 · · Score: 0

    NTP is used directly or indirectly by most of the web. It's also a project that is largely maintained by a very small number of people.

  14. Some projects may actually have to much money by Casandro · · Score: 1

    And Mozilla is probably one of the best examples. They used to make a browser, now they implement every miss feature they can find, from DRM over HTTP/2 to binary Javascript.
    Instead of saying, "We want a simpler web", they just continue on with layer after layer of complexity, making it harder for competitors to write their own browsers.

    Of course they also do great stuff like investing into codec research, however they more and more behave like any big company.