Mozilla has allowed cryptocurrency donations since 2014. But it was not until 2022 that this possibility erupted into controversy on Twitter.
It is a seemingly banal message, posted on Twitter on December 31, which ignited the powders. A few hours before the New Year, the official account of the Mozilla foundation, which publishes Firefox, announced to Internet users the availability of a new method to make a donation: make a payment via the BitPay platform, for those who want to send them units. of cryptocurrency.
Mozilla’s father turns on Mozilla
If the tweet does not make too many waves at the start, one reaction in particular launches controversy: it isa published message January 3 by a certain @jwz on the social network. But far from being an average commentator, one among others, this obscure pseudonym in fact hides Jamie Zawinski, an American computer scientist who turns out to be the founder of… Mozilla.
The interested party accompanied the first years of Mozilla, by registering the domain name mozilla.org. He is known to have contributed to Netscape, a browser that existed between 1994 and 1998, when the company was acquired by AOL. Jamie Zawinski left Mozilla in 1999, almost 23 years ago, after disagreements over technical guidelines for the browser.
And the least we can say is that the father of Mozilla is very upset against Mozilla.
” Hi, I’m sure whoever runs this account has no idea who I am, but I founded Mozilla and I’m here to say ‘go show yourself’ and ‘fuck that’. Everyone involved in the project should be terribly ashamed of this decision to partner with Ponzi scammers who are cremating the planet. », We read.
Jamie Zawinski’s fiery remark is just the face of a series of other comments to match, in the image of Peter Linss : ” Hey Mozilla, I guess you don’t know me either, but I designed Gecko, the engine your browser is built on. And I’m 100% with @jwz on this point. It is. What. This. Mess. You were supposed to be better than that. “
Under Mozilla’s tweet as under that of @jwz, similar interventions can be easily found with more or less flowery language. But that’s not all: among the most annoyed Internet users, there are also people who consider this decision to play around with BitPay and cryptocurrencies. as a major cause of divorce.
The reactions do not accuse Mozilla of making appeals for donations or of going through a particular transaction service to process the payments.
What is criticized is that the foundation is entering the Bitcoin loop, given all the criticisms that are addressed to cryptocurrencies on their energy-intensive nature, with an excessive impact on electricity consumption to run all the activity of mining, and the fear that they will lead to a Ponzi scheme, in short, a scam.
Therefore, in view of the increasingly sharp criticisms that emerge against cryptocurrencies, their usefulness and the way they are produced, the apparent rapprochement of Mozilla with this world accused of speculating in a vacuum, is perceived, in the eyes of these Internet users, as a behavior which does not correspond to the manifesto of the foundation for a healthier Internet.
Not to mention its commitments to the climate:
A delayed controversy
What is appealing, however, is the timing: it turns out that Mozilla has already accepted donations in cryptocurrency for a very long time. We covered the news in November 2014, over seven years ago – which in web time is a huge gap. And at the time, the reactions were much less heated than today.
At the time, Mozilla was following a trend visible in the United States: several organizations, such as Greenpeace, Sea Sheperd and the Red Cross, had decided to accept donations made in bitcoins. We have also seen liberal structures, like LibreOffice, get started. However, some partnerships with BitPay, which was the service oftentimes, ended over time.
Mozilla has, it seems, decided to continue in this direction, changing to the passage of payment provider. Before, it was Coinbase which was responsible for recovering the amounts paid by Internet users, before transferring them to the foundation. But since then, it’s BitPay, which accepts Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP, Shiba Inu and stable coins.
The outrage of many Internet users towards Mozilla may be surprising given the long-standing acceptance of cryptocurrency donations by the foundation to obtain funding through an additional channel, always with the aim of increasing its independence. financial towards Google – which remains the main provider of funds.
This late awakening of Internet users for a deal with Coinbase and then BitPay is a sign that people had no idea until now. Or, if it did, it hadn’t sparked a scandal then. Without doubt, the concerns that are usually associated with cryptocurrencies, such as the ecological impact, were perhaps not as significant between 2014 and 2022.