Marc Andreesen owes his riches to Netscape whose ashes became Mozilla. I don’t understand why he doesn’t give the Mozilla foundation and endowment such that the interest on the endowment would fund work solely on the browser. They could then just work on the browser and nothing more.
No need to do marketing, have a venture arm, millions for management, etc. it could be a group of 10 or 20 really awesome engineers and maybe a bunch of passionate open source folks contributing.
Will he do it? No. Do I wish he would? Yes. Would I if I could? Hell yes because there needs to be a viable alternative to chrome and how is that possible when chrome butters their bread and pays their bills?
Or! The some hundreds of millions they did get from Google they just out in an endowment and then shrink staff (start with management) until they can live comfortably off the interest…
Right. The money would be a gift to a foundation where he couldn’t control it. A no strings attached 100% tax deductible gift to the foundation with the only strings that they focus on the browser and survive on the interest, and lay off unnecessary management (10-20 dedicated web engineers and a PM and an HR person what else do you need).
But do you also want the browser beholden to the parent company of its direct competitor?
This is a fantasy land hypothetical of course as we know exactly the kind of guy Marc is, he’ll want a say.
If it does go the foundation model as I’ve suggested (purely paying bills on the interest earned by the endowment and by donations) then perhaps it can’t afford to pay for 350+ engineers. That’s just the facts.
They’ve made $37.5M from investment income in 2023. [1] (That’s where I’m getting the 350 engineers figure from: $37.5M / $100k = 375.)
I’m not sure how risky their investments are. Also, I’m excluding donations altogether. If you can help prepare a more realistic model I’d be happy to share it!
It was doable, and it is doable, and they are doing it.
Like any other organization, Mozilla consists of people. Some of them might not care about the browser and are just here for the money – of course they want Google’s money, too! But I believe most want to do the right thing – the problem is, the focus has been lost for quite a while now.
No need to do marketing, have a venture arm, millions for management, etc. it could be a group of 10 or 20 really awesome engineers and maybe a bunch of passionate open source folks contributing.
Will he do it? No. Do I wish he would? Yes. Would I if I could? Hell yes because there needs to be a viable alternative to chrome and how is that possible when chrome butters their bread and pays their bills?
Or! The some hundreds of millions they did get from Google they just out in an endowment and then shrink staff (start with management) until they can live comfortably off the interest…