This is great! While the headline uses the absolute dollar amount to attract eyes and look big, I am more impressed by the list of results in the article. Previous awards from Mozilla have led directly to improvements in Tor, Python documentation, Kea DHCP, and security audits of NTP services.
As someone who donates a small amount to Mozilla monthly, this makes me feel good about my choice.
Hmm, it looks like the Caddy web server got $50,000 at one point (in 2016 apparently). They were the ones who recently decided (in mid 2017) that it was a good idea to add HTTP headers advertising the names of their sponsors to their open source version. Then, when someone forked their project, they filed a GitHub issue one hour later accusing the fork of trademark infringement! See the discussion here:
As to this year's MOSS recipients, Ushahidi received almost $200,000. They're a Kenya-based startup that was the darling of the Nairobi tech scene a few years ago but have increasingly come under criticism for their leadership during a recent sexual harassment scandal:
Furthermore, one of their affiliated startups, who was making a "rugged" router powered by OpenWRT, was violating the GPL and was being quite dismissive and condescending to those of us who pointed out that they should be releasing the source code of their product. I covered this on my personal blog at the time:
I'm not sure why people are so worked up over caddy. The http header "feature" got promptly removed, and the trademark infrigment claim is necessary for them to avoid dilluting their trademark. Furthermore, they politely told the fork maintainer about the infrigment, it's not like they sent a bunch of threatening lawyers...
That's true. If we are being pedantic, though, it does mention an amount ("half a million"), which turns out to be the number of dollars they awarded ($539,000). So I will stand by statement that the headline mentions the "dollar amount." :-)
From the article: "The biggest amount ($194,000) went toUshahidi, an open source software platform for crowdsourcing, monitoring, visualizing, and responding to reports from people caught up in political turmoil or subject to governmental or vigilante abuse. They are working on making it easier to securely submit reports, and documentation on how to deploy Ushahidi while minimising risk to the hosts."
Wireless mesh fully distributed world here we come! :)
Just looking at it at a glance, 50% of the money went to what appear to be political/activist projects/websites "masquerading" as "Open-Source", namely "Ushahidi" (194k/35%) and "RiseUp" (100k/18%). The latter only really putting their "help site" on github: https://github.com/riseupnet. I don't personally count "open-source" or "any one can contribute" websites/platforms as actual open-source.
Both the above donations are individually much larger in monetary amounts than what Mozilla gave the last time around to actual "code" open-source projects (amounts: 10k, 25k, 30k, 50k) such as Tor/LLVM/etc.
Honestly, I was really excited to see what open-source projects were going to be getting some (I would assume "much needed") funding behind them, but I was disappointed with yet more politics. Except for Webpack, definitely kudos to Mozilla for funding their work on WebAssembly.
These are cool projects. I wish they also contributed to some of the addon projects that make Firefox so unique. Greasemonkey and Vimperator come to mind. But surely others have good suggestions too.
I'd much rather they limited their donations to organizations with still-breathing warrant canaries (e.g. not RiseUp).
Maybe I'm cynical, but I think that non-profit organizations with dead national security warrant canaries cannot accomplish technical or social activism as effectively as they might have in the past.
I don't understand how an organization so concerned with privacy can hand over private unencrypted user data to the FBI and then nonchalantly pass it off as OK because those users violated the "letter and the spirit" of their "social contract". This is a massive design failure on RiseUp's part and should not be taken lightly.
Did you read the thing whose link you are responding to? The design has indeed been altered:
> We have taken action to ensure that Riseup never again has access to a user’s stored email in plaintext. Starting today, all new Riseup email accounts will feature personally encrypted storage on our servers, only accessible by you.
I'm not thrilled with the action that was taken, complying with the sealed warrant. I suspect Riseup isn't either. But I also think it would be ridiculous to expect Riseup admins to go to jail to protect people using their service to extort others. I definitely wouldn't have been willing to either if I were in their place.
It would be awesome if we could get some security audit funding focused towards rust projects. For example an audit of rustls pki and co, so we can start pushing the rust ecosystem forward without having to depend on c/c++ projects like openssl for production use. Fingers Crossed :D
>$100,000 to RiseUp, a coordination platform used by activists across the political spectrum, to improve the security of their email service;
However, RiseUp has shown to be leftist several times[1]. If I was a right wing activist or something similar, I would not use RiseUp, because of the serious conflict of interest of the owners of the platform.
There's nothing wrong with RiseUp being leftist, but I expect Mozilla to be neutral politically, except when something related to free software is at stake in politics.
[1]Apart from their logo being a reference to the anarcho-communist flag, they've said "[...] We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression." (https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/01/responding-to-antifa...) I'm sure I'd find other similar quotes if I looked it up.
Mozilla isn't neutral politically, though there isn't a specific political alignment that is endorsed. That is, it's issue-focused, rather than partisan.
Maybe I didn't word my comment correctly. But I thought of politically neutral as not left-wing nor right-wing, not openly supporting capitalism nor being openly against capitalism. I wouldn't be surprised by Mozilla pushing privacy, free speech and copyright related political agendas, but I am surprised by it supporting a left wing organization.
"Mozilla" isn't a man in a room smoking a cigar, it's a building full of relatively young and well-educated people, in San Francisco.
If a leader does anything to lose a consensus of respect from their workers (and ultimately authority over them) the long term productivity of the organization is imperiled. Firing everyone except the leader isn't going to be a good option.
Politics is a contentious issue, no matter how much people wish it wasn't. Involvement in it makes you polarizing, whether you like it or not.
Do I believe in marriage equality? Absolutely, yes.
Am I personally outraged that Eich donated that money? Not at all.
Is it reasonable for him to expect to maintain authority and influence over a building full of relatively young and well-educated people, in San Francisco, after publicly (though perhaps inadvertently so) working against marriage equality? Of course not. Morals aside, it's a low probability outcome.
I really don't want to rehash this discussion, but there is one important inaccuracy in your presentation of what happened that keeps being propagated. As far as I could tell at the time, the people who Brendan would have had "authority and influence" over by and large didn't seem to feel that he should go. Some of them were fairly conflicted about the whole thing, but in the end felt that the things Mozilla works on should be important across the "traditional" left/right spectrum. And please don't forget that pretty much everyone who worked with Brendan was already aware of the donation, since it had been gone over in the press in 2008. So it's not like there was important new information coming to light for the people who he would have "authority and influence" over.
There were some comments on twitter calling on him to resign from some people at the Mozilla _Foundation_ (not to be confused with the _Corporation_), starting with one of the then-interns, iirc. The irony is that those particular people wouldn't have had any interaction with Brendan anyway...
Of course the reporting on the whole thing blew everything completely out of proportion, like the media usually does.
Oh, one other inaccuracy: I'd guess something like 1/3 of Mozilla's employees are in the SF bay area. Others are in other places, with a variety of cultural and political outlooks. So assuming that "Mozilla" is well-represented by "young, well-educated people in San Francisco" is not a great idea.
I would say that a CEO’s authority and influence does need to extend well beyond the people they work with day-to-day (though I doubt this is a point of disagreement).
Do you have any thoughts on the parent discussion?
My main thought on the parent discussion is that it should be possible for two reasonable people to cooperate on achieving a goal, including a political goal, even if their politics otherwise do not align very well (or at all). If a "left-leaning" organization is organizing encrypted email, and you want to push for encrypted email, it may make sense to support them in that endeavor even if you disagree with their other goals. If the Koch brothers are pushing for an end to asset forfeiture and you think that needs to happen, feel free to push with them, even if you disagree with other things they do.
Of course there may be other tradeoffs, and maybe there are other organizations that aim for the same goal that are more closely aligned with one's views, and then it may make sense to support those. But the important thing for me is not having everything decided by ideological litmus tests. Results matter more than affiliations, at least for me. I'm not sure that's true of everyone...
You are mixing up two different things here. It's true that individuals inevitably have complex, multidimensional views on reality and, therefore, need to concentrate on cooperation based on shared interests. An organization, particularly one based on volunteering and donations, on the other hand, can and should choose a narrow set of goals and pursue them without taking any more sides than necessary. Otherwise people may and will withhold support for that organization because they disagree with its secondary goals.
Political bias is generally supposed to be bad for business, and the current tendency of tech companies to take active political stance is a sign that something very rotten has happened to the public discourse. Indeed: entire sectors of society (mass media, universities, now tech companies) are becoming increasingly hostile towards still widespread conservative views, excluding huge sections of the population from political debate and deligitimizing their views. That population is now oppressed and unable to advocate their views in a public way, but they can still vote, so now USA has leftist mass media going nuts over the election of President Trump. But it's not going to end there: when the conservatives realize that Trump has failed to turn this oppression around, it might come to violence and who knows what else.
> An organization, particularly one based on volunteering and donations, on the other hand, can and should choose a narrow set of goals and pursue them without taking any more sides than necessary.
First, even given a narrow set of goals you can end up with other organizations that are aligned with your organization on some but not all of those goals.
Second, my point is that when someone _is_ aligned with your organization on its narrow set of goals, they may be worth working with even if you may disagree with other goals they have. The devil is, as usual, in the details.
This line of thinking is that it's acceptable to fire a CEO of a company for not having the same political views of employees. Do you not see how rediculous that is?
> If a leader does anything to lose a consensus of respect from their workers (and ultimately authority over them) the long term productivity of the organization is imperiled.
So the leader has to go because employees can't separate work life from home life? Usually it's the other way around with companies being to over bearing of en employees private life.
> Is it reasonable for him to expect to maintain authority over a building full of relatively young and well-educated people, in San Francisco, after publicly (though perhaps inadvertently so) working against marriage equality? Of course not. Morals aside, it's unrealistic proposition.
Yes, because his opinion on gay marriage is irrelevant to his work as a CEO, just as my activities on the weekend should have no bearing on my job.
I have to imagine it would be hard to separate your work life from your home life when you know your boss doesn't believe that you have the right to your home life.
> The separation is necessary is there to protect people from being fired for having unpopular opinions because it's not an argument we want to follow to it's logical conclusion.
We can follow it to it's logical conclusion because it happens all the time. People get fired for unpopular opinions frequently. This case is interesting because the unpopular opinion is "political" to some. I would contend that breathing is political.
I can't answer any of the hypotheticals you present because they are exactly that: hypotheticals. It would require additional context for me to give a personal opinion on any of them. Even with that, your or my opinion on the situation would be irrelevant to the employees who are actually part of the organizations in question. They would be taking action to fix something within their organization that they found to be uncouth. Why shouldn't they be able to?
I am getting the impression that you see a clear line between what belongs at work and what belongs at home. How do you define it?
> We can follow it to it's logical conclusion because it happens all the time. People get fired for unpopular opinions frequently.
In most of the Western World that would be illegal and you'd have a clear cut wrongful termination case.
> I am getting the impression that you see a clear line between what belongs at work and what belongs at home. How do you define it?
Most of it is incredibly clear, what I do at home or while I'm not representing the company is none of the companies business, what I do at work is the companies business, there are only a few places where the line is blurred. The first is posting from company property (like I'm doing now), I'd say this should be either completely prohibited or allowed, and if it's allowed they shouldn't be able to police what I say. The second is on social media, companies and governments have definitely pushed beyond what should be allowed here, anything I post on facebook is only relevant to the company if I'm representing them or divulging private information. The third is lunch room or water cooler chatter, I'd argue people should be allowed to share their opinions here, but it's blurry enough that most people just stay away from anything remotely controversial in these environments.
The distinction being made that I see is that a CEO of an organization has different expectations placed upon them than any other employee. So, this home vs. work separation makes sense in most cases, but not when it comes to the CEO role.
He was fired for something he did several years before being CEO. Your standard is that the CEO can't have personal opinions not only while they are CEO bit the can't have held a controversial opinion in their life.
> So the leader has to go because employees can't separate work life from home life?
Yeah, and bad companies. But a leader has to lead. And it wasn't just employees having issues. The CEO is the face of the company, and if they can't lead either employees nor can they effectively be the face of the company, they have to go.
> Yes, because his opinion on gay marriage is irrelevant to his work as a CEO, just as my activities on the weekend should have no bearing on my job.
Your activities don't involve being a leader or being the face of the company. If you can't do that, you can't do your job as CEO. This happens all the time. See Equifax as the latest example. The CEO wasn't personally responsible for the security issue. But he was the leader, and his priorities sets the companies priorities. He leads, and his failure in leadership is what fundamentally failed the company.
If you think a CEO and a junior level employee have the same responsibilities and are graded on the same metrics, you are sorely mistaken.
> The CEO is the face of the company, and if they can't lead either employees nor can they effectively be the face of the company, they have to go.
And yet no one has explained why a guy holding particular political views can not effectively be the face of the company. If one does believes in gay marriage rights, can they effectively be the face of the company? Clearly, many people oppose that view, so let's oust every CEO out there who donated to gay rights campaigns.
What differentiates between these two CEOs with opposing views on gay rights in this respect is only how much public outrage there is about their biography. Somehow, people holding left views tend to be much louder than people holding right views. Which, without a doubt, has a lot to do with leftist bias in the mass media. So, taking your statement to its logical conclusion, what you are suggesting is we give up any sense of fairness and work ethic and bow to our mass media overlords because they have the microphone.
> And yet no one has explained why a guy holding particular political views can not effectively be the face of the company.
I'm pretty sure they have, many times, but you presumably don't agree - which is perfectly fine but don't say it's not been explained!
(To recap: someone with exclusionary views, donating money to promote and enforce those exclusionary views, cannot effectively be head of a company specifically promoting inclusionary views.)
You raise an interesting objection. Some questions in this regard:
1) What does inclusivity have to do with Mozilla's core business, namely open-source Internet software?
2) Can any organization declare inclusivity as one of its core values and start enforcing it by firing every person in position of power who holds an exclusionary view on any subject? By the way, there are more people in positions of power than just the CEO. Every person in the corporate hierarchy, except perhaps the lowest, holds power over other people. The exact same argument you make about the CEO can be made about a VP, a CTO or a teamleader. They all represent their group in front of everyone else and they are all looked up to by their inferiors.
3) What is an exclusionary view? Is it one advocating that people in certain category deserve less than in another category? But by that logic, you hold an exclusionary view: after all, you support the idea that people with particular views should not occupy positions of power.
4) Why is it a good idea for an organization to declare holding exclusionary opinions a punishable offense? I can tell you why it is a bad idea. Quoting an excellent comment [1] below, "there's something wrong with injecting ideology into everything, that is, dividing everything in the world into what supports your ideology and what doesn't, making all judgments based on it, and shunning all who don't share your ideology. All must prove their purity and loyalty or be excommunicated. It's a very dangerous approach, and a quick glance at history books will tell you what's at the end of this path."
The life is a complex, non-binary (in fact, multidimensional) thing, and we all err in some regard, including yourself. You don't want to be discriminated based on your opinions, unless you overstep the boundaries of law.
> Can any organization declare inclusivity as one of its core values
Yep.
> and start enforcing it by firing every person in position of power who holds an exclusionary view on any subject?
In the US, probably, although it may depend on which state and precisely which exclusionary views are in play. In the UK, maybe, depending on what those exclusionary views are.
> But by that logic, you hold an exclusionary view
I do, yes. Well done! I hold many exclusionary views but they are all targeted at people who people who want to exclude or hurt others for what I consider bullshit reasons.
> "All must prove their purity and loyalty or be excommunicated."
Nonsense.
> You don't want to be discriminated based on your opinions
I am 100% behind discriminating against people who hold opinions that another class of person is lesser than them.
Not everyone who opposes gay marriage thinks of gays as lesser than them. Some oppose it for religious reasons, for example. Also, what about views on other exclusionary policies? Wherever you live, I'm sure many people in your country think that no foreigners have an inherent right to gain citizenship and residence in your country. Perhaps even you feel that way. This is an exclusionary view and therefore should be punished by prohibiting those people from holding positions of power... right?
Besides, you are still missing the main point. Discriminating against people for their opinions is nonconstructive - by excluding them from dialog, oppressing them in daily lives and proudly putting your intolerance to their views on display, you just make them angry and more entrenched. That kind of demonization might feel really nice (when you're on the giving end of the stick), but it works against liberal values in the long run. Where do you think Trump and Brexit came from?
I agree that there's not much new in Mozilla being more left-wing than right-wing, even open-source is practically software communism, but man this dead-beat horse of Eich, again, and still not telling the whole story as it happened, just because you want to push your political agenda.
The witchhunt on Eich was primarily by the media, that of course had found the most exciting story in the tech industry in a long time.
And as far as we know, Eich stepped back by himself. Maybe he was pressured to do that, but until you can find evidence for that, you're being dishonest, if you tell the story different.
And lastly, yes, it was said by Mozilla that they should have reacted earlier, but that was not in the context of throwing Eich out, like you turn it, it was in the context of clearing that situation up, maybe talking to Eich, so that he makes a public statement about it or whatnot, before the public pressure gets big enough for him to step back. Because this story had become public at an earlier date already, Eich just wasn't yet CEO then, so it got much less press coverage.
Thanks for linking that. I agree that whether or not stepping down was voluntary is an important question. But the answer is right there in your link. That whole memo is nothing else than a manifesto saying "Brendan had to go". Your only possible counterargument seems to be that the memo might have been just a PR move, while in fact he stepped down voluntarily. But, when you think of it, publicly saying "Brendan had to go" is not much different from actually making him go in the sense that in both cases the organization makes a bold political statement on behalf of its employees, its contributors, its supporters and with consequences for its users.
> except when something related to free software is at stake in politics.
They're the Mozilla Foundation, not the Free Software Foundation.
The free software movement has always been intertwined with more or less radical political movements to lesser or greater extents over time. It's only relatively recently that "open source" is primarily the thing you do so you have a GitHub profile that will land you a 100k paycheck.
Because there are people of various political ideologies that contribute to Mozilla and to free software. If tomorrow Mozilla decided "we support X ideology", then the organization would lose credibility and support from a lot of people. If the Mozilla CEO wants to do that, then fine, we'll find another organization to support and to look up to.
>And requesting the latter to be politically neutral is... well.
I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
> I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
My point (now edited into the comment) was that political activism has been intertwined with free software for a long time. Just think about the absurdity someone complaining about leftist politics at Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation. This intertwining isn't some new thing, and it shouldn't be surprising.
> I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
But for many of the original strong advocates for free software, there was an enormous link between larger political issues and free software.
You can argue that those links aren't fundamentally necessary or have eroded over time, but to deny them is an anti-historical understanding of the free/open source software movement.
> then the organization would lose credibility and support from a lot of people. If the Mozilla CEO wants to do that, then fine, we'll find another organization to support and to look up to.
Open source wasn't always so mainstream. My money is that the people who have been around for decades aren't fased by these sorts of threats.
>political activism has been intertwined with free software for a long time.
Only in the sense of privacy and civil freedoms e.g free speech, copyright. Not in the sense of capitalism/socialism, collectivism/individualism, more taxes/less taxes. In this case, Mozilla supported an organization that is openly against capitalism. I would have applauded Mozilla if they'd supported an organization in favor of free speech, privacy, freedom of information, etc. But that wasn't the case. Capitalism is a gray area for the free software community: some support it, others fight against it.
The difference is back then it was OK to be political about American politics because it only affected Americans. Now technology touches every part of the world and information travels in seconds via social media.
There are a lot of software developers I used to respect and followed on Twitter whom I stopped following because I got sick of their American politics tweets. I'm sure it's the same dynamics with American celebrities tweeting about Donald Trump. Most of the world don't care about Donald Trump nor want to hear about some privileged rich Americans complaining about their politics.
They havre their own shit to worry about and don't have time to be force-fed all the American political propaganda.
I can understand individuals being political, but if you're an organization like Mozilla, you have a clear goal, and that is NOT left politics. They should aspire to be as neutral as they can.
Neutrality is not something anyone should ever aspire to. It is something you do when it is otherwise correct, not something you set out to do. To do otherwise is contradictory and absurd.
If they come out in support of an issue, they will also gain support from people on that side of the issue.
Free software goes pretty strongly against market capital as a philosophy.
It goes against the idea that people will pay for things they need/want. It goes against the idea that commerce will spawn progress.
That's fine, and people don't need to be that ideological. But if you want to promote free software, then: basic income, single payer, the 30 hour week, greater research spending, stronger practice of public domain-ing government financed work will all help
And lots of more left-leaning orgs will go along that.
There's something wrong with injecting ideology into everything, that is, dividing everything in the world into what supports your ideology and what doesn't, making all judgments based on it, and shunning all who don't share your ideology. All must prove their purity and loyalty or be excommunicated.
It's a very dangerous approach, and a quick glance at history books will tell you what's at the end of this path.
There are other priorities and issues in the world. Many who don't share your ideology do important things, deserve support, and in fact it's important to all of us to have a diversity of opinions in the world. Personally, I'm not so sure in my beliefs that I would rule out all the others.
>The Riseup Collective is an autonomous body based in Seattle with collective members world wide. Our purpose is to aid in the creation of a free society, a world with freedom from want and freedom of expression, a world without oppression or hierarchy, where power is shared equally. We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression.
x We value, support, and engage in struggles for human liberation, the ethical treatment of animals, and ecological sustainability. We join in the fight for freedom and the self-determination of all oppressed groups. We oppose all forms of prejudice, authoritarianism, and vanguardism.
x We organize on the basis of autonomy, mutual aid, resource sharing, participatory knowledge, social advocacy, anti-oppression work, community creation, and secure communication.
x We work to create revolution and a free society in the here and now by building alternative communication infrastructure designed to oppose and replace the dominant system.
x We promote social ownership and democratic control over information, ideas, technology, and the means of communication.
x We empower organizations and individuals to use technology in struggles for liberation. We work to support each other in overcoming the systemic oppression embedded in the use and development of technology.
>Economy — In a free society the means of production should be placed in the hands of the people, empowering communities to organize meaningful employment, and provide a responsible and sustainable standard of living which tries to meet the needs of all people.
While I agree with your statement in general, I take issue with your italicizing of "ethical treatment of animals, and ecological sustainability" as either revolutionary or socialist. These are political issues but do not intrinsically belong on a left/right scale.
Animal treatment is about drawing boundaries on what's considered humane vs. inhumane. Animal activists define that boundary so that it mandates humane treatment not just for humans but also for animals. Ethical stance, yes. Political, yes. Socialist/revolutionary, no.
Ecological sustainability is about whether you take a short-term vs. long-term view on profiting off nature and survival as a species. If you believe this is a "socialist" position to take, you have been successfully brainwashed by U.S. party propaganda that has coopted a legitimate issue and transformed it into partisan identity politics.
Agreed. Mozilla as a tech company should stay out of politics IMO. "Picking" a political side will alienate at least 50% of the users (if not more as the left typically is < 50%). As a loyal user for years and contributor to Firefox I will start looking for tech somewhere else.
The tendencies in the US of tech companies coming out of their political closets is disturbing, at best. It worries me that this is being normalized and that it starts to lean toward corporatism as well in some cases.
Leftist != socialist, especially in the United States where in context someone like Justice John Roberts is seen as a moderate, and most politically mainstream democrats (pre Bernie) would be considered if not rightwing, at least centrist leaning toward conservative in many other Western countries.
Tor regularly does stuff (conduct studies, update UI and censorship circumvention methods, etc.) to help people in oppressive regimes. Mozilla has donated to Tor. Are you against that?
If not, then consider that Mozilla is taking a political stance in that situation too by deeming those oppressive regimes as something to be bypassed.
It is not unlikely that capitalism is oppressive to certain groups of people (poorer groups everywhere in the world), and RiseUp has a mission to help alleviate that oppression. Again, not different from what Tor has done.
The difference is that we've always known (or at least assumed) that Mozilla is anti-censorship, but can't assume it's anti-capitalist. Not everyone agrees that capitalism is oppressive, but anyway, that's a technical discussion.
They haven't stated "Mozilla is against capitalism because it's oppressive blah blah blah".
From the principles that they've declared one can infer that they would help people in totalitarian regimes (any decent organization would).
Then you misunderstand what a 501(c)3 is and what it can do politically[0]. I expect Mozilla to get right up to the line of what is acceptable for that type of organization and probably cross it multiple times, because it appears no one is actually held to account unless the violations are flagrant.
Donating $100k to an email service that claims to attempt to keep the US Government from snooping your email[1] doesn't even come close, IMO.
Mozilla giving money away is totally expected. You may not like who they gave the money to, but that's totally within your rights. If you look at what RiseUp says they do[0], it's that they run an email system that they attempt to keep the US Government out of. I am being led to believe that you don't agree with their reasons why, which is fine by me.
I think focusing on the right vs. left continuum both detracts from any good that Mozilla desires through their contribution. To be more specific, I think this continuum is actually too restrictive, misleading, and not a sufficiently accurate representation of the political views of individuals and organizations.
In my opinion, the best model that I have seen for discussing politics actually focuses on the expansion or contraction of freedoms across the three dimensions: personal, economic, and political. By focusing on policies, we avoid using labels to describe one another, and evaluate actions based on outcomes (both consequences and outcomes). In this model, more freedom along an axis is not necessarily a good thing if it results in a loss of freedom along another axis e.g. slavery could be described as an economic freedom of one demographic to restrict the personal freedoms of another. Through this lens, Mozilla might be funding a cause that they believe preserves personal freedoms of all individuals against the encroaching economic freedoms of corporations with respect to computer security, privacy, and whatever other choices an individual can make in the growing digital world, which is consistent with my understanding of Mozilla's stated mission.
Possibly things have changed since the article you linked to was written, but the article they refer to as being by RiseUp is currently credited to an anonymous antifa supporter.
From a skim it wasn't clear to me why it was being attributed to RiseUp.
As someone who donates a small amount to Mozilla monthly, this makes me feel good about my choice.