"The Official Community-Driven Support Web Site for Firefox" = this is users helping other users support forum. There are maybe 2 or 3 developers who help out here for a few minutes each day or each week to answer support questions for the project they are involved with, otherwise it's all users, or addon developers.

From where I sit, it looks like there are 5 or 6 of us volunteers who answer like 80% or the postings that are answered, and another 5 or 6 who answer the rest. We need more volunteers who are somewhat experienced with using Firefox, especially when it comes to Mac OSX.

As far as that 6%, if I truly thought that of the 36,000 postings (the counters were reset in July 2010 with new forum software) I have made here over the past three years only helped 7.46% of the time, I would quit "wasting my time" trying to help other users. When I look at the list of the threads that I was the first helper to answer a question, half the time it looks like the OP never bothered to return to view what help I had posted and respond that the information helped them or not.

I doubt if 1/10 of the users who are helped bother to mark their thread as solved. And many don't bother to mention the exact fix that worked for them, which doesn't help other users solve the same or a similar problem, or even provide a response at all, beyond their original posting.

As far as that 34% not being answered at all, why not spend 5 or 10 minutes a day here and help us out? If there were 10 or 20 more Firefox users who did that everyday for just 5 or 10 minutes, maybe that wouldn't be the case and every posting would be answered.

Perhaps Mozilla could spend a small part of its multi-million dollar annual revenue - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10102297-92.html - it gets from Firefox and create/staff a real support system. But then again, maintaining the "non-profit" myth is what gets folks like you to do their work for free.

It's actually quite ingenious. Create the idea of a non-profit, volunteer-based community that uses Microsoft as it's boogeyman, which of course brings in all sorts of free labour for the cause, and then quietly generate millions in profit from Google and elsewhere. So how much of the $75+ million in revenue did you get for your dedication? The check's in the mail?

Users appreciate the work that you and the other volunteers do here.... Mozilla appreciates it more. You and the rest of the "community-driven" devotees have been duped. Indeed, why are you wasting your valuable time?

Oops, the numbers are off a little given that the above article was reporting 2007 figures. To update the record, Mozilla generated $104 million in revenue in 2009 - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/mozilla-posts-2009-revenue-surge-google-diversification-issue-remains/41937

But heck, what's a 30 million dollars difference amount to anyway for a "non-profit" volunteer organization like Mozilla. Can't wait to see what the 2010 figures show...

By the way, has anyone ever given a cash donation to the Mozilla foundation?

More facts and stats from the horse's mouth - http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/annualreport/2009/sustainability.html

"Total assets as of December 31, 2009 were $143 million compared with $116 million at the end of 2008, an increase of 23 percent. Unrestricted net assets at the end of 2009 were $120 million compared with $94 million in 2008, a 28 percent increase."

"Mozilla consolidated expenses for 2009 were $61 million, up approximately 26 percent from 2008 expenses of $49 million. Mozilla operating expenses in 2009 continued to remain highly focused on people and infrastructure."

"At the end of 2009, Mozilla was funding approximately 250 people working around the world."

Yes, Mozilla is indeed doing very well but they're a bit worried about the IRS audit that is currently going on.

Now, if we take the figure from the 2008 cnet article that 80% of expenses are spent on Mozilla employees as a relatively stable benchmark for 2009, we see that employee salaries averaged out to around $200,000 dollars annually for each employee, which obviously isn't what each employee is actually getting paid, but what it does mean is that given typical corporate scaling of salaries, some folks in this non-profit are making lots and lots of money.

The individuals who should be the most upset about Mozilla's unwillingness to invest even a fraction of its profits into building a real and responsive user support system are the collective-community-driven-volunteers who commit their free time so Mozilla can continue to cash in big time at their expense. A brilliant model!

Again, Firefox users appreciate the work that you and the other unpaid/unacknowledged volunteers do here.... Mozilla appreciates it more.

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