Drink Coffee, Support Mozilla

MikeCapone writes "Heavy coffee-drinking Mozilla fans take notice, MozillaZine has a story on how some coffee company has dedicated a selection of gourmet coffees to helping the Mozilla foundation. Only half the profits go to Mozilla, but the coffee seems good..."

Hmmm Max Havelaar...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the coffee farmers?

Do they get a fair share?

First things first, I'd say ;-)

Re:Cool

[kasperd]

But coffee is supposed to be hot, not cool.

Good deal...

[Seehund]

Then again, you could buy your coffee elsewhere, at less RIDICULOUS prices [rjtarpleys.com], and instead donate directly [mozilla.org] to mozilla.org.

Have you ever considered...

[Krapangor]

...to stop drinking coffee and send all the money to them instead.
This would be much better for your health and for the project.

Re:Good deal...

[Seehund]

For the lazy ones; it costs about US$ 10 per pound.

Maybe coffee is more expensive in the US. I'm in Sweden (second largest coffee consuming nation after Finland IIRC), and coffee typically costs ~ US$ 2-4 per 1/2 kg. (1 lb = 0.45359237 kg). Maybe $ 5-6 for "luxury blends" in specialized stores.

But I hear that US-ians generally don't tend to use too much coffee in their water... Maybe this is the reason. ;)

Re:Good deal...

[dk.r*nger]

...at less RIDICULOUS prices ...

Well, I guess this isn't your average cheap "three bags of 500 grams, $7.95" coffee, but once you get acustomed to - not even really good coffee, but decent, eveyday coffee, about $5-$5.50 pr 250 grams is not unfair - and that's without donating to anything but the coffeestore-owners BMW.

I'm spoiled, I can't drink the cheap crap anymore.. I just can't..

What is "fair"?

[squarooticus]

Seems to me that "fair" is whatever they're able to get for it on the free market. Otherwise, there's some kind of favoritism/inverse rationing going on, which is hardly "fair" since not everyone is allowed to compete.

Remember spiderman?

[Bananenrepublik]

Remember how Stan Lee got nothing from the spiderman movies? ( /. story here [slashdot.org]) It's all a matter of creative accounting.

Re:1/2 is HUGE

[hendridm]

It's good to encourage companies to support open source, but you could also donate [mozilla.org] the amount you paid for the coffee and be assured 100% of it is going towards Mozilla.

On second thought, it's miles ahead of what most of these leeches who can't fathom why anybody would PAY for a Slashdot subscription yet visit this site throughout the day to bitch about it.

Re:1/2 is HUGE

[Accipiter]

I thought of the 100% to Mozilla argument.

It's good in the fact that 100% of the money goes to Mozilla, but on the other hand, where's the attention? By actually promoting Mozilla via the coffee purchase, not only are you donating to Mozilla, you're telling the company "Hey, this is a good idea. You're doing good here." and you're promoting the attention the project receives as a result. And just maybe, it could encourage others to do the same.

Donations don't get press coverage unless they're in ridiculously large amounts. But when a company has pledged to donate a portion of its profits to a worthy cause, it gets more attention.

Which is why this story is on Mozillazine and Slashdot. A simple donation wouldn't have done that.

Great Marketing.

[Soaps]

So they donate some of their profits in turn have an endless number of slasdot readers see their name, we buy a bag, i think they are banking on the number of bags sold making up for the lost profits. then they get great publicity on slashdot. somebody in their marketing will either get a fat bonus if it works or a boot to the curb if it flops

Re:Remember spiderman?

[ihummel]

I would hope that if they did try to pull some crap like that, Mozilla would blow the whistle that they're weren't getting anything out of the deal. A web-based business should fear thousands of enraged geeks.

If you think this is expensive...

[Stonent1]

When's the last time you went to starbucks? Their whole bean coffee is about 15$ a bag around here.

Re:What is "fair"?

[squarooticus]

My quibble is with the use of the word "fair," implying somehow that those who buy "fair-trade" coffee somehow have the higher moral ground. Of course, they can feel better about themselves that they are giving a miniscule number of coffee producers more money than the others are getting, but calling it "fair-trade" is simply propagandizing. Come up with some more accurate description, like "leftist feel-good" coffee.

Hmmm

[uarch]

On University of Michigan's central campus alot of students raised a fuss and got the local coffee shops to offer fair trade coffee.

Maybe someone should do the same for Mozilla coffee on the engineering campus. There are only two coffee shops up there and they go through ALOT of coffee. Besides, its all the EECS kids loading up on coffee before the shops close anyway ;)

Re:Hmmm Max Havelaar...

[r00zky]

Considering that to be "Fair Trade" certified, coffee should be bought to farmers at a minimum(sp?) of $1.26 per pound (see here) [globalexchange.org] and normal selling price goes for $0.50 per pound... it's possible.

But even if it's "Fair Trade" it's still quite unfair to me if the farmers only gets ~13% (in the case of $10/pound) of sale price...

Re:Good deal...

[holzp]

$10 is nothing for us computer programers - it takes you an extra three minutes to earn the diferance

you have a job? programming computers? and at $200/hour? I assume its programming a time machine which you used to take you back to 1999.

Re:Good deal...

[IGnatius T Foobar]

$10 is nothing for us computer programers - it takes you an extra three minutes to earn the diferance and the results are worth it.

...he says, just before being laid off and replaced with an Indian programmer whose weekly salary is about the equivalent of the cost of a cup of coffee.

Re:What is "fair"?

[nlinecomputers]

"With the profits generated from receiving fair wages, coffee growers can invest in health, education, and environmental protection."

And do they? I ask because many of these programs are just feel good bullshit designed to take money away from people that want to do the right thing. I.E. a con job.
]
Other then splitting the lower class in two groups what have you accomplished?

Well, getting even one half of the lowest class up to the next ladder is a good start. Secondly, encouraging people to buy Fair Trade products, hits the profit margins of the exploitative producers driving them either towards fair trade practises or out of business. If they try to treat the farmers even more brutally, they'll lose them to the fair trade programs and start to get even worse publicity.

True but you also risk starting a class war in those places as the companies try to keep their hold on the status quo. You can end up doing more harm then good. Don't know if that is the case here as I honestly don't know enough about it to judge.

Re:What is "fair"?

[Raafje]

On a larger scale, I'd say yes: supply and demand might keep prices in check (although it's still not the end all - be all rule of economy)
On smaller scale (such as coffee bean farmers) producers can be forced into selling for less than (the fair) market price, because they can't reach the right markets without aid of traders.