alt Hacker News> MZLA Technologies Corporation is a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and the home of Thunderbird.
I guess I don't understand why the open-source email client with zero revenue potential is managed by a for-profit subsidiary, nor why that for-profit subsidiary is begging for donations.
Shouldn't this whole thing be managed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation?
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Not that it answers your question, but the move happened in 2020 to "hire more easily, act more swiftly, and pursue ideas that were previously not possible".
This is just organizational structure. "For-profit" doesn't mean "profitable". Also, the organization is "wholly owned" by a non-profit, so if there are profits declared in the form of dividends, those dividends are sent to the non-profit.
Note that many non-profits have exceptionally high-paid executives and "contractors".
Regulatory requirements on non-profit organizations are very high, and those organizations are, in fact, very limited in what they can do and how they receive their money. There are very good reasons for a non-profit to own for-profit entities, and, similarly, for philanthropic organizations to organize as for-profit entities.
Please no. The Mozilla Foundation has lost their way. I don't want them messing with my favorite email client.
I don't see them begging anywhere, I only see someone sharing a link to their donate page.
For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird, as in if you give it money it goes straight into Thunderbird. Many people here pretend to wish to be able to give money directly to Firefox, yet when they can do that for Thunderbird, people here are still finding bullshit reasons not to do so. Pick a lane.