The question is more "Do these events and keynote speakers in Zambia have anything to do with browser development?" This isn't supposed to be a generic non-profit charity, it's a non-profit for supporting web browser development. If only 5% of the funds are going toward the browser or related technology, the organization is corrupt.
In 2023, Mozilla spend $230 million dollars on software development. And then they also $6 million on "Grants and Fellowships" (which supports many "green field" open source software initiatives), $1 million on Events (under which the event you're worried about probably falls), and $7 on travel (which probably also includes lots of travel to things like C++ conferences and browser standards conferences and other things that you probably would agree are very mission related, along with the event in question).
So—just out of this subset of expenses, there's probably some other stuff you could take issue with—Mozilla spent money in a 94% ratio on browser development, and 6% on "other stuff", of which probably .001% was this conference in Africa. And I think it's arguable that a lot of that "other stuff" is related technology! But even ignoring that, talking about how we can use the open web to improve life for people in third world countries is exactly the kind of thing that I, personally, would like Mozilla to be doing. And I'm happy for them to spend <5% of their budget on it.
Of Mozilla's $653 million in 2023 income, $496 million was spent, but only half was on development ($260). Fair enough. But realize mozilla does not exclusively develop a web browser. Instead, they also make Pocket, Firefox Relay, Firefox VPN, Mozilla Monitor, AI products, ect. So probably only 1/3rd of their income is going to browser development, which is pretty bad.
> Only because you assume that they should only be working on browser development.
Why not? This isn't Oxfam, this is Mozilla. To an outsider, the assumed point for all these other endeavors was to be profitable to provide more money for browser development. When that money doesn't primarily provide for that something seems sketchy.
Mozilla has basically never been 'just' a browser company. It's probably confusing for people who don't pay attention to stuff, but it's not for the rest of us.
They were expressing their own opinion, that's not an assumption. The relevance of opinion to nonprofit organizations is mediated through donation or other forms of support.
Sure but their opinion seems informed by their flawed assumption that a large software company that makes a browser is primarily only a browser company despite that not being the reality to situation. Life is easier if you interact with reality as it actually is instead of arguing against a version you've made up in your head.
"Corrupt" is too strong. Just unfocused. You can say it is disqualifying for making donations personally, and I think that is a pretty reasonable take. Many people have exactly the same quibble with Wikimedia.
No, not in general. Only if done dishonestly or for corrupt purpose (e.g. self-enrichment). It also is not totally clear that these activities are actually outside the scope of the nonprofit's mission.
Yes, in general. If we stop pretending that non-profits are purpose bound and just a generic bag of money that is to be used for whatever the board thinks is a good idea then there is little point in having different non-profits in the first place.
