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This most common thing I write on HN is that I can’t believe I can’t pay to use Firefox. “How will we ever earn money here at Mozilla? All we have is this worl

This most common thing I write on HN is that I can’t believe I can’t pay to use Firefox. “How will we ever earn money here at Mozilla? All we have is this world class web browser that provides massive value to millions of people, but we refuse to directly monetize. Oh whatever will we do?”

vkou 6y ago
Charging money for the browser will quickly push them down to single-digit marketshare, and will make "works on Chrome, ship it" the only correct way to develop for the web. If you want to pay for using their browser, you could always donate to them.
- leeoniya 6y ago
  the donations never went to firefox. it was dispersed to many of their other misguided and failed revenue gen efforts. they redirected a ton of servo engineers to focus on VR/Magic leap, ffs.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Both of those projects were part of MoCo, not MoFo, and so your donations would not have gone to them either.
  - firefix 6y ago
    Yes. The money should gone towards dev, but also testing. According to the author, the problem contributing to this misprioritization was that “Firefox exists just to give Mozilla a seat at the table when the web is defined,” such that they didn’t care if it was the best. I doubt that’s true. Few want second, third, or fourth place. So let’s assume they wanted it to be the best. Where did it go wrong? As much as Rust is great and FF was a great project to try it out on, I’m not convinced that FF needed a full rewrite, and in my experience there were significant problems with performance as Rust wasn’t fully there and the developers didn’t test adequately on all platforms, which they should’ve pushed more for if the funds were there.
  - octoberfranklin 6y ago
    > they redirected a ton of servo engineers to focus on VR/Magic leap, ffs. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. The day I found out about that I stopped using Firefox and switched to qutebrowser.
- wussboy 6y ago
  Not with a freemium model, which is what would make the most sense for Mozilla, IMHO.
leeoniya 6y ago
also completely baffled by this. i'd have happily paid $100/yr if it went directly to firefox dev, not their other marketing shenanigns. they fired so much talent to focus on junk to drive revenue, that it's not something i can do anymore. very sad.
- ygjb 6y ago
  It's weird that when I tell my kids that when they want to help, but they won't help in the way that someone needs help, that they aren't actually helping, they understand it. Mozilla has buckets of money, between the Corporation and the Foundation. They are separate, for good-ish reasons? But they are separate. If they start allowing customers or businesses to pay for Firefox, then they will have to provide an entirely different level of support. They will need a billing and support team that is beholden to those paying customers. It will shift the focus that Firefox has on attracting and retaining users to attracting and retaining paying users. It will mean they need to meet various warranty and regulatory requirements around the world, and potentially introduce new business risks and liabilities related to those requirements (e.g. non-compliance with specific regional legislation). What you are asking for is to pay Mozilla for Firefox, and to get there you need a radical shift in the organization that supports and ships Firefox. Or, you could do what the rest of folks who want to support Firefox do, and make a donation in the way that Mozilla is signalling is the best way to support Mozilla's mission and Firefox development. If that isn't good enough for you, track down an OSS contributor to Firefox, and give them money. Direct action for the win!
  - curryst 6y ago
    > support Mozilla's mission and Firefox development. That's the rub here. Mozilla's mission is a much larger scope than just Firefox. Some people want to support Firefox, but don't want to donate to Mozilla's mission. One such reason is because it's important to have more than one browser implementation. There's no way to support that without Mozilla allocating some portion of your donation to some unrelated part of their mission.
    - 6y ago
eptcyka 6y ago
I might pay for Firefox now, but I wouldn't pay for Firefox 5 years ago, when I started using it. As a consumer, it's really hard to start paying for something that used to be free.
zhte415 6y ago
As a world-class browser, Opera did that route. Opera died. I believe that might be in thinking but far from an insider in either, simply a happy Firefox user since 0.7 and Netscape before that.

vkou 6y ago

Charging money for the browser will quickly push them down to single-digit marketshare, and will make "works on Chrome, ship it" the only correct way to develop for the web. If you want to pay for using their browser, you could always donate to them.

leeoniya 6y ago
the donations never went to firefox. it was dispersed to many of their other misguided and failed revenue gen efforts. they redirected a ton of servo engineers to focus on VR/Magic leap, ffs.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  Both of those projects were part of MoCo, not MoFo, and so your donations would not have gone to them either.
- firefix 6y ago
  Yes. The money should gone towards dev, but also testing. According to the author, the problem contributing to this misprioritization was that “Firefox exists just to give Mozilla a seat at the table when the web is defined,” such that they didn’t care if it was the best. I doubt that’s true. Few want second, third, or fourth place. So let’s assume they wanted it to be the best. Where did it go wrong? As much as Rust is great and FF was a great project to try it out on, I’m not convinced that FF needed a full rewrite, and in my experience there were significant problems with performance as Rust wasn’t fully there and the developers didn’t test adequately on all platforms, which they should’ve pushed more for if the funds were there.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  > they redirected a ton of servo engineers to focus on VR/Magic leap, ffs. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. The day I found out about that I stopped using Firefox and switched to qutebrowser.
wussboy 6y ago
Not with a freemium model, which is what would make the most sense for Mozilla, IMHO.

leeoniya 6y ago

also completely baffled by this. i'd have happily paid $100/yr if it went directly to firefox dev, not their other marketing shenanigns. they fired so much talent to focus on junk to drive revenue, that it's not something i can do anymore. very sad.

ygjb 6y ago
It's weird that when I tell my kids that when they want to help, but they won't help in the way that someone needs help, that they aren't actually helping, they understand it. Mozilla has buckets of money, between the Corporation and the Foundation. They are separate, for good-ish reasons? But they are separate. If they start allowing customers or businesses to pay for Firefox, then they will have to provide an entirely different level of support. They will need a billing and support team that is beholden to those paying customers. It will shift the focus that Firefox has on attracting and retaining users to attracting and retaining paying users. It will mean they need to meet various warranty and regulatory requirements around the world, and potentially introduce new business risks and liabilities related to those requirements (e.g. non-compliance with specific regional legislation). What you are asking for is to pay Mozilla for Firefox, and to get there you need a radical shift in the organization that supports and ships Firefox. Or, you could do what the rest of folks who want to support Firefox do, and make a donation in the way that Mozilla is signalling is the best way to support Mozilla's mission and Firefox development. If that isn't good enough for you, track down an OSS contributor to Firefox, and give them money. Direct action for the win!
- curryst 6y ago
  > support Mozilla's mission and Firefox development. That's the rub here. Mozilla's mission is a much larger scope than just Firefox. Some people want to support Firefox, but don't want to donate to Mozilla's mission. One such reason is because it's important to have more than one browser implementation. There's no way to support that without Mozilla allocating some portion of your donation to some unrelated part of their mission.
  - 6y ago

eptcyka 6y ago

I might pay for Firefox now, but I wouldn't pay for Firefox 5 years ago, when I started using it. As a consumer, it's really hard to start paying for something that used to be free.

zhte415 6y ago

As a world-class browser, Opera did that route. Opera died. I believe that might be in thinking but far from an insider in either, simply a happy Firefox user since 0.7 and Netscape before that.