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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.

37 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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."
    2. 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.

    3. 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."
    4. 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".

  2. 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 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."
    3. 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)
    4. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by pr0nbot · · Score: 1

      I reject your gender categories, oppressor!

    5. 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)
    6. 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)
    7. Re:serviscope_minor is taking a vacation by pr0nbot · · Score: 1

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

    8. 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)
    9. 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."
  3. 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 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...
  4. 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 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."
    2. 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."
    3. 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.

  5. 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 CronoCloud · · Score: 1

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

    4. Re:MUA by eionmac · · Score: 1

      Concur. Three thrice Three times.

      --
      Regards Eion MacDonald
  6. 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.

  7. 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. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. Re:zlib by Gerv · · Score: 1

    Er, it's a wiki. Add it.

  11. 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.