Mozilla Foundation eyes Bitcoin donations

Purveyor of an open web, Mozilla (known for its Firefox browser) is contemplating accepting bitcoins in its fundraising efforts.

Reddit user taliesan -- who identifies himself as Geoffrey MacDougall, head of development at the Mozilla Foundation -- has been picking the brains of the Bitcoin community, asking for resources as the company researches whether to take donations in the cryptocurrency. "There are a number of people on my team advocating for it, as well," he said.

First kicked off two days ago, the thread on the Bitcoin subreddit has received favorable reactions from fellow users, some of whom said they'd donate to contribute to a free and open internet, "a shared goal of both the Mozilla project and the Bitcoin project."

Earlier in April, Mozilla introduced a JavaScript API called navigator.mozPay() to simplify online payments within the Firefox OS.

The announcement -- in a blog post written by Kumar McMillan, a senior web developer focused on Firefox OS projects -- described some of the challenges of existing online payment systems, which include limited options, cumbersome management and security issues:

In most cases, the user has to type in an actual credit card number on each site. This is like giving someone the keys to your expensive car, letting them drive it around the block in a potentially dangerous neighborhood (the web) and saying please don’t get carjacked!

While Bitcoin was mentioned only in the last paragraph of that post, the comments raise hints that Mozilla is keeping an eye on the digital currency. This has been a recurring theme on the annals of reddit. Six months ago, a user tried to jump-start a campaign to "convince Mozilla to accept Bitcoin."

As demonstrated by MacDougall's latest thread, Mozilla seems to be listening.