annual report and independence issues

[Eric Moore]

From tb-planning Digest, Vol 132, Issue 5:

"Dirk inquired about the status of the financial report, Ryan replied
that he now has a draft he is happy with which will get sent out to the
council soon."

On Sept 21, 2020 I asked "why the continued delay in a annual report?
Back in April the first one supposedly was going to be available in a
couple of weeks." Ryan replied:

"No intentional delay, I planned to release the report as the election
begun - but, as you know, the world got crazy and elections have been
delayed. I apologize for not sharing information sooner, but I will
share it with the election list, hopefully today or tomorrow."

1) Why wasn't the annual report released in time for the election?

2) Why the silence?

3) There have been multiple recent meeting notices that talk about Ryan
presenting financial information to the Council, but nothing about ever
releasing any of it to the community.

There has NEVER been a financial report, just occasional tidbits. There
are always excuses. Please (have somebody other than Ryan) clarify the
Council's intentions/policy.

4) The project became a "new wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla
Foundation, MZLA Technologies Corporation" over a year ago to "allow us
to explore offering our users products and services that were not
possible under the Mozilla Foundation."

What has been done that couldn't be done before?

5) The last meeting minutes state:

"Philipp does not think that helps us, as the statement can be read as
if the Council's leadership of the project is questioned. MZLA is
only a financial home. Christopher, Ryan and Magnus agree"

Does this mean that the Council/Directors has the freedom to decide
whether or not Mozilla CPG is to be enforced within the community, and
to set their own policy how/when to enforce it?

Please clarify how much independence we still have as a fully owned
subsidiary.

For example before we became a subsidiary there was a mutual agreement
that if our needs changed we could find a new fiscal/legal home. I had
assumed we've permanently lost that choice.

Can Mozilla sell us, seize our funds or "tax" us? Please don't reply
that is irrelevant as it would never occur. That is not the issue.




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[Ryan Sipes]

Hey Eric,

I know you said you explicitly didn't want to hear from me, but I'll
share why I haven't shared the report yet. As the dust settled around
the elections and the year drew to a close, I thought I'd gather up the
last of the 2020 data and publish it. I just recently got final data for
December (yesterday).

It shouldn't have taken this long and I sincerely apologize, but the
past 12 months have been exceptionally hard and busy, and this report
kept getting pushed back.

Ryan

[Philipp Kewisch]

> On 18. Feb 2021, at 7:29 PM, Eric Moore <emo...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> 5) The last meeting minutes state:
>
> "Philipp does not think that helps us, as the statement can be read as if the Council's leadership of the project is questioned. MZLA is
> only a financial home. Christopher, Ryan and Magnus agree"
>
> Does this mean that the Council/Directors has the freedom to decide whether or not Mozilla CPG is to be enforced within the community, and to set their own policy how/when to enforce it?

Thunderbird is still a project under the Mozilla umbrella, therefore it counts as a Mozilla project where the CPGs apply. This has been the case under the Mozilla Foundation (and before), and has not changed with the move to MZLA.

That said, there are some degrees of freedom as to how it is enforced, just like each project within Mozilla will have a community manager handling CPG cases who makes front line decisions, working together with the Mozilla CPG team as necessary.

What my statement means is that Thunderbird's leadership is the council, and if there were a statement from the board this may falsely make the impression that the board is controlling the day to day activities. The board provides us with support in achieving what we would like, and making sure the council is acting within legal and compliance boundaries.

>
> Please clarify how much independence we still have as a fully owned subsidiary.
>
> For example before we became a subsidiary there was a mutual agreement that if our needs changed we could find a new fiscal/legal home. I had assumed we've permanently lost that choice.

The move to MZLA has not impacted this, the choice is not permanently lost.

>
> Can Mozilla sell us, seize our funds or "tax" us? Please don't reply that is irrelevant as it would never occur. That is not the issue.

In theory, yes. In most cases the financial home has the financial liability and can ultimately control the funds.

Philipp
(opinions are my own, not speaking in an official capacity)

[Tanstaafl]

Hi Ryan,

That only addressed his first two questions...

I'm actually very interested in his #4...

Was the Thunderbird Project recently (about a year ago according to
Eric) "made a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Corporation"?

If so, was this discussed on the list? Anywhere where regular users
would have noticed? I admit I haven't had time to be as active as I may
have wanted over the last couple of years, but hopefully I would have
seen something about something this huge (to me) in one of my news feeds.

So... is the Thunderbird Project beholden in any way to Mozilla
Corporation? I certainly hope not. I just dumped Firefox after 20 years
of almost radical support (that waned considerably over the last 5+
years when Mozilla started ... making a lot of confusing changes and
decisions that made it appear they were in a hurry to just destroy
Firefox). I did this after they exposed their ultra radical PC/Identity
cancel-culture agenda that is ironically 100% diametrically opposed to
their own long standing motto.

Also - if this is true, is it also true this not a relationship that can
be detangled by the Council if desired?

A 20 yr Mozilla user wants to know...

Charles

On 2/18/2021 1:35 PM, Ryan Sipes wrote

[Magnus Melin]

#4 has a very simple explanation - I do believe this was mentioned
before: creating open source software is not a charitable cause
according to US tax laws, so to be able to spend our funds on hiring
developers having it as a corporation was necessary (same way as there
is Mozilla corporation for Firefox). As a foundation only a small
percentage of the turnover could be spent on development.

 -Magnus