7 ms·

I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of

I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. See, that's one of the weirdest problem in FOSS: the fans hold them to a way too high standard, making it twice as hard to thrive. Once because it's hard to make money as an open source, benevolent product in a world of free for all. And another time because the very people that should be supporting you will always say you don't do enough.

coldtea 7y ago
>I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. No, right now I'm not paying a dime to companies that don't provide me with the products I want. Parent is talking about being a customer, not a charity.
- moonlit 7y ago
  Parent is confusing product owner or a developer with being a customer. Most of stuff he requested is already there.
- zeendo 7y ago
  The parent is not only talking about the products they receive but how that money is spent. Those assurances are pretty impractical and I doubt any company can reasonably be held to that kind of standard.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Well, a company where what you buy is "how the money is spent" (since browsers are free anyway), better provide it...
    - zeendo 7y ago
      What would it even mean, though? It would just let them free up other, unencumbered funds, for things that aren't browser related when they would have otherwise been spent on the browser. Surely the influence of "wow look at all this money coming in from browser development" is going to influence them to invest it there? If you don't think that then you don't trust them enough to give them money. And that's fine. But this idea that it makes sense to try to put strings on the very small amount of money we're talking about here...seems to imply some naive notion that you one could operate without trusting Mozilla...
maxsilver 7y ago
I generally agree with this (FOSS fans can be wildly too demanding, especially for the tiny amount of cash donated) But is the comment above really too high a standard? If a paid version of Firefox doesn't (1) at least strip the adware out, and (2) actually fund Firefox development, then what would even be the point? If you want to blanket donate to everything Mozilla, you can already do that today. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
- sokoloff 7y ago
  I think a default search engine and default first tab is fine as two examples where that list of demands is excessive. And depending on what “no network connections to third-party hosts unless I’ve explicitly opted in” means, this probably breaks CDNs, multi-host content serving, and lots of common js distribution mechanisms in ways that normal users will find confusing and result in “Firefox doesn’t work” if that’s the default it ships with.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    I'm not sure why that is excessive, except that Mozilla made (maybe still does, I'm not sure) most of their money from getting paid to put search engines as their default. How hard is it to pop a dialog in the installer or on first run to let you pick? I don't think that is unreasonable. And the default tab just means loading a blank tab up. The last time I used Firefox, this was already a setting that you could pick.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      When I last installed it, the default tab was the Firefox home page (or some other Mozilla landing page), which seems perfectly reasonable to me. I find a lot of open source software insufficiently opinionated. Can't decide? Make it an option. Want to be "fair" to all? Make it an option and prompt the user during installation! As a user, I like when I have options but when some kind of sensible default has been pre-selected to shorten the time and mental effort between deciding to install and the first "wow" moment.
moonlit 7y ago
I am not a fan of using “this” in a discussion but seriously, a million times this. You’ve clearly identified a real issue. FOSS users like parent believe they have a birth right to the software they’re using, including making decisions for the direction product is taking.
- inetknght 7y ago
  > including making decisions for the direction product is taking If I am the product, I expect to be able to participate in choosing the direction. Businesses ignore that, of course, and look what that's dealt them in reputation. If I pay for something, I expect to be able to participate in choosing the direction. Businesses don't typically ignore paying customers.
- horsawlarway 7y ago
  This is a user stating what it would take to make them a paying customer. This is not about FOSS. Full stop. The title is literally: "Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall" Mozilla is free to ignore that feedback and sell whatever product they want. The parent user is free to not buy it. > FOSS users like parent believe they have a birth right to the software they’re using, including making decisions for the direction product is taking. This is not the conversation we're having. Shut up about it.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  Mozilla already makes millions from us using Firefox. There's nothing to feel bad about.
inapis 7y ago
I agree. Unfortunately, I've seen this more demanding behaviour primarily from tech savvy people. Programmers/Engineers (me including) can have wildly esoteric demands. Only after did I start running a business, did I re-adjust my expectations of myself and that of others. That said, fortunately, Firefox is still common of a tool which is used by the general public and I think they'll pay. This would have been a painful process had this been a library which was exclusively used by devs but browsers etc can escape that unreasonable expectation. P.S. I don't think GP is making some extra-ordinary demands but I won't be surprised if someone will demand the heaven and moon from Firefox for 10 USD a year. Absolutely will not be surprised.
dazzawazza 7y ago
This is just people: I make games. Players want 100 hours of unique experience, DRM free, DLC free and oh free. Plus they want all their features and bugs fixed or they threaten you. The reasons for this are complicated but just like FOSS, videogames have convinced players we can provide them with the moon on a stick when in reality it's a photo of the moon and they need to provide the stick.
- Konnstann 7y ago
  Are you saying the pervasive DRM which degrades performance, day 1 DLC practices, and sectioning up content that used to come with the $60 game I bought are not problems with the game dev industry? Yeah there are some people who want exactly what you said, but the majority just want a complete experience. I'm perfectly fine with a 20 hour game with no DRM(or at least no denuvo) and DLC after a few weeks of the game being out. I'll pay full price for it too. What I don't pay for is a game that costs $60, has 10 hours of content that are riddled with bugs, a "beta" two weeks before release, day 1,2,3 patches because it is broken, runs at 3/4 of the fps it should because of Denuvo, and has day 1 DLC and a $30 season pass (which doesn't cover all the DLC from that season, just some), and content walled off by pre-order.
  - sidlls 7y ago
    Consumers bear the brunt of the blame for this. I worked at a few AAA game shops when DLC was just starting to be a thing. Consumers drove that by their habits: they demanded add-ons and extras that took enormous effort to develop but didn't want to pay as much as a third or half the original purchase price, so we tinkered with smaller releases at much lower price points and consumers ate it up. Then as mass development by indies offering free apps took off the "problem" got worse. Consumers now expect apps, including games, to have a tiny purchase price or be free and to pay a-la carte for things they want.
    - magduf 7y ago
      This is absolutely correct. If this stuff didn't work, then consumers wouldn't buy it, and the game companies would go out of business or change their practices. Game companies are highly profitable, therefore this strategy, as horribly as it sounds, is apparently a successful one which consumers are happy to fund with their disposable income. Games are a luxury; this isn't something like ISP access or cellular service that you basically need these days to fully function and participate in modern society. If people really didn't like the practices of the game companies, they could easily just not buy any games and do something else with their free time. The consumers are absolutely to blame here.
el_cujo 7y ago
To be fair, most of these points are just asking them to NOT include a feature by default, rather than demanding they build something new before paying up.
orblivion 7y ago
On top of the usual way in which people (such as myself) can become self-entitled if we're not careful, there's also the concern that FOSS has a need to point toward "true north", while the realities of the market tend to blow us to the west. Until someone comes up with that magical business plan (and I'm still hoping for this), these things will always be in tension. The best solution I can think of for the moment is to always express our demand FOSS without compromise, but no matter what show appreciation for them for getting as close as they can, so long as they seem to be trying at least (unlike, say, Android at this point). If we don't demand true north, the ship will drift further and further west and we forget our mission. If we don't show appreciation, they'll fail to see the point and give up the journey entirely.
Spivak 7y ago
I feel like most of these demands aren't too onerous because they're pretty much all in the form of "hey this thing you're doing that takes time and effort to do -- don't." Like it would be one thing to demand lots of features that require effort to develop but the parent is literally asking to pay more for less. It is very normal for donations to foundations to have stipulations about what they're allowed to be spent on which is why developement (not in the software sense) pushes so hard for donors to allow spending in the general fund. I have no problem letting Mozilla spend my money as they see fit but I absolutely understand people who are only interested in Firefox.
- ufo 7y ago
  No search engines installed by default seems strange. It is much easier to switch or remove search engines than to add them.
magduf 7y ago
>I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them Examples, please. I'm not sure that I am, except perhaps in places where I don't have a lot of choice (e.g., my ISP). If your examples include things like Spotify, I don't use online music services. If your examples include things like Office 365, I sure as hell don't subscribe to that.

coldtea 7y ago

>I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. No, right now I'm not paying a dime to companies that don't provide me with the products I want. Parent is talking about being a customer, not a charity.

moonlit 7y ago
Parent is confusing product owner or a developer with being a customer. Most of stuff he requested is already there.
zeendo 7y ago
The parent is not only talking about the products they receive but how that money is spent. Those assurances are pretty impractical and I doubt any company can reasonably be held to that kind of standard.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Well, a company where what you buy is "how the money is spent" (since browsers are free anyway), better provide it...
  - zeendo 7y ago
    What would it even mean, though? It would just let them free up other, unencumbered funds, for things that aren't browser related when they would have otherwise been spent on the browser. Surely the influence of "wow look at all this money coming in from browser development" is going to influence them to invest it there? If you don't think that then you don't trust them enough to give them money. And that's fine. But this idea that it makes sense to try to put strings on the very small amount of money we're talking about here...seems to imply some naive notion that you one could operate without trusting Mozilla...

maxsilver 7y ago

I generally agree with this (FOSS fans can be wildly too demanding, especially for the tiny amount of cash donated) But is the comment above really too high a standard? If a paid version of Firefox doesn't (1) at least strip the adware out, and (2) actually fund Firefox development, then what would even be the point? If you want to blanket donate to everything Mozilla, you can already do that today. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/

sokoloff 7y ago
I think a default search engine and default first tab is fine as two examples where that list of demands is excessive. And depending on what “no network connections to third-party hosts unless I’ve explicitly opted in” means, this probably breaks CDNs, multi-host content serving, and lots of common js distribution mechanisms in ways that normal users will find confusing and result in “Firefox doesn’t work” if that’s the default it ships with.
- thrower123 7y ago
  I'm not sure why that is excessive, except that Mozilla made (maybe still does, I'm not sure) most of their money from getting paid to put search engines as their default. How hard is it to pop a dialog in the installer or on first run to let you pick? I don't think that is unreasonable. And the default tab just means loading a blank tab up. The last time I used Firefox, this was already a setting that you could pick.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    When I last installed it, the default tab was the Firefox home page (or some other Mozilla landing page), which seems perfectly reasonable to me. I find a lot of open source software insufficiently opinionated. Can't decide? Make it an option. Want to be "fair" to all? Make it an option and prompt the user during installation! As a user, I like when I have options but when some kind of sensible default has been pre-selected to shorten the time and mental effort between deciding to install and the first "wow" moment.

moonlit 7y ago

I am not a fan of using “this” in a discussion but seriously, a million times this. You’ve clearly identified a real issue. FOSS users like parent believe they have a birth right to the software they’re using, including making decisions for the direction product is taking.

inetknght 7y ago
> including making decisions for the direction product is taking If I am the product, I expect to be able to participate in choosing the direction. Businesses ignore that, of course, and look what that's dealt them in reputation. If I pay for something, I expect to be able to participate in choosing the direction. Businesses don't typically ignore paying customers.
horsawlarway 7y ago
This is a user stating what it would take to make them a paying customer. This is not about FOSS. Full stop. The title is literally: "Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall" Mozilla is free to ignore that feedback and sell whatever product they want. The parent user is free to not buy it. > FOSS users like parent believe they have a birth right to the software they’re using, including making decisions for the direction product is taking. This is not the conversation we're having. Shut up about it.
ubercow13 7y ago
Mozilla already makes millions from us using Firefox. There's nothing to feel bad about.

inapis 7y ago

I agree. Unfortunately, I've seen this more demanding behaviour primarily from tech savvy people. Programmers/Engineers (me including) can have wildly esoteric demands. Only after did I start running a business, did I re-adjust my expectations of myself and that of others. That said, fortunately, Firefox is still common of a tool which is used by the general public and I think they'll pay. This would have been a painful process had this been a library which was exclusively used by devs but browsers etc can escape that unreasonable expectation. P.S. I don't think GP is making some extra-ordinary demands but I won't be surprised if someone will demand the heaven and moon from Firefox for 10 USD a year. Absolutely will not be surprised.

dazzawazza 7y ago

This is just people: I make games. Players want 100 hours of unique experience, DRM free, DLC free and oh free. Plus they want all their features and bugs fixed or they threaten you. The reasons for this are complicated but just like FOSS, videogames have convinced players we can provide them with the moon on a stick when in reality it's a photo of the moon and they need to provide the stick.

Konnstann 7y ago
Are you saying the pervasive DRM which degrades performance, day 1 DLC practices, and sectioning up content that used to come with the $60 game I bought are not problems with the game dev industry? Yeah there are some people who want exactly what you said, but the majority just want a complete experience. I'm perfectly fine with a 20 hour game with no DRM(or at least no denuvo) and DLC after a few weeks of the game being out. I'll pay full price for it too. What I don't pay for is a game that costs $60, has 10 hours of content that are riddled with bugs, a "beta" two weeks before release, day 1,2,3 patches because it is broken, runs at 3/4 of the fps it should because of Denuvo, and has day 1 DLC and a $30 season pass (which doesn't cover all the DLC from that season, just some), and content walled off by pre-order.
- sidlls 7y ago
  Consumers bear the brunt of the blame for this. I worked at a few AAA game shops when DLC was just starting to be a thing. Consumers drove that by their habits: they demanded add-ons and extras that took enormous effort to develop but didn't want to pay as much as a third or half the original purchase price, so we tinkered with smaller releases at much lower price points and consumers ate it up. Then as mass development by indies offering free apps took off the "problem" got worse. Consumers now expect apps, including games, to have a tiny purchase price or be free and to pay a-la carte for things they want.
  - magduf 7y ago
    This is absolutely correct. If this stuff didn't work, then consumers wouldn't buy it, and the game companies would go out of business or change their practices. Game companies are highly profitable, therefore this strategy, as horribly as it sounds, is apparently a successful one which consumers are happy to fund with their disposable income. Games are a luxury; this isn't something like ISP access or cellular service that you basically need these days to fully function and participate in modern society. If people really didn't like the practices of the game companies, they could easily just not buy any games and do something else with their free time. The consumers are absolutely to blame here.

el_cujo 7y ago

To be fair, most of these points are just asking them to NOT include a feature by default, rather than demanding they build something new before paying up.

orblivion 7y ago

On top of the usual way in which people (such as myself) can become self-entitled if we're not careful, there's also the concern that FOSS has a need to point toward "true north", while the realities of the market tend to blow us to the west. Until someone comes up with that magical business plan (and I'm still hoping for this), these things will always be in tension. The best solution I can think of for the moment is to always express our demand FOSS without compromise, but no matter what show appreciation for them for getting as close as they can, so long as they seem to be trying at least (unlike, say, Android at this point). If we don't demand true north, the ship will drift further and further west and we forget our mission. If we don't show appreciation, they'll fail to see the point and give up the journey entirely.

Spivak 7y ago

I feel like most of these demands aren't too onerous because they're pretty much all in the form of "hey this thing you're doing that takes time and effort to do -- don't." Like it would be one thing to demand lots of features that require effort to develop but the parent is literally asking to pay more for less. It is very normal for donations to foundations to have stipulations about what they're allowed to be spent on which is why developement (not in the software sense) pushes so hard for donors to allow spending in the general fund. I have no problem letting Mozilla spend my money as they see fit but I absolutely understand people who are only interested in Firefox.

ufo 7y ago
No search engines installed by default seems strange. It is much easier to switch or remove search engines than to add them.

magduf 7y ago

>I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them Examples, please. I'm not sure that I am, except perhaps in places where I don't have a lot of choice (e.g., my ISP). If your examples include things like Spotify, I don't use online music services. If your examples include things like Office 365, I sure as hell don't subscribe to that.