Post #2214994
2025-12-20 10:18 UTC
@FrankauLux@mastodon.social @Doomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place LibreWolf doesn't accept any donations, so everyone involved is working for free. No one will work for free to maintain Gecko or Firefox, that's for sure.
Without Mozilla to maintain Gecko and Firefox itself, these forks will lag behind in security and feature updates, and will ultimately shut down.
It's the sad reality that browsers are massive undertakings that have to handle an overwhelming amount of backwards compatibility and stability, along with ensuring their JS engines are continuously updated and maintained, because new exploits show up frequently.
Servo earns $6433/month (as per their latest blog post), and Open Collective estimates their annual budget to be $76,010.
A non-profit org (https://www.techpolicy.press) estimates that Google spends at least $1-2B/year on Chrome, Chromium, and the web platform. Firefox in comparison spent at most $396M in 2022, with another $29M as the operational expenses for Mozilla Foundation.
Browsers are horrifyingly expensive 🥲
Replies (1)
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@pierstoval@mastodon.social 2025-12-31 22:38
@alextecplayz@techhub.social @FrankauLux@mastodon.social @Doomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place we should find a way to make the fsf's creed true one day: public software that's critical for everyone in the world should be made free and funded by countries. Certain western countries could donate 100k€ or 200k€ each per year to a nonprofit org that creates a public browser (let's start with firefox), countries people vote for features, priority is given to BC policy, cross compatibility and stability. I know, it's end-of-the-year-utopia but still..