3 ms·

But how to monetize? Place ads somewhere in the application?

by ape4 5y ago

lucideer 5y ago
Any option whatsoever to donate to Firefox (specifically as a project, not to Mozilla) would at least be a start. I'd happily sign up to a monthly subscription. Would it bring in equivalent sums to search deals: of course not. But I think it would be at least a not-insignificant addition.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mtmail 5y ago
  There is a monthly donation option for Mozilla https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ I don't understand why "any option whatoever to donate" must exclude non-Firefox projects. In my opinion that is the start, available right now.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    Mozilla Foundation donations do not go toward Firefox development.
    - coldpie 5y ago
      Suppose at some point hypothetically, Moz Foundation donations exceeded Google's payments. Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. While Firefox is the most important thing Mozilla does in my eyes, I also like their non-Firefox work, so I'm happy to fund them. If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available. So I donate. How they spend the money in the meantime is up to them.
      - lucideer 5y ago
        > Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. What makes you presume this? > If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). > I also like their non-Firefox work I also like some of their non-Firefox work, but none of it is unique/essential. If Mozilla stopped all their other work tomorrow, and only developed Firefox, there would still be good alternatives out their to their other works (e.g. Lockbox->Bitwarden, MozVPN->Mullvad). Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer, and most truly open alternatives are incredibly small niche projects like Dillo or Otter Browser that aren't really very mainstream-usage-ready.
        coldpie 5y ago
        > The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). I don't disagree, but I also don't think this discussion is related to whether or not folks should be donating to Mozilla right now. My giving them a donation doesn't restrict them exploring other funding options, which they do seem to be doing, with Pocket and their VPN services and the like. > Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer Right. So my thinking is: suppose Google funding dries up some day. From there we have two possible universes: Mozilla looks at their incomes and sees 80% of the missing funding is coming from donations. Or they see 10% is coming from donations. In the first case, they could scale down their non-core features and continue Firefox development on that donations revenue. In the second case, they would have to find some alternative income stream, which is difficult and full of uncertainty, or shut down and Firefox dies. Personally I favor the first universe, where Firefox is funded through voluntary donations. So I donate to make the first universe more likely. And there's no downside to me donating now, since it's totally cool with me if they use my money to fund their non-Firefox work in the meantime.
    - zaarn 5y ago
      So, rather, you'd want to see Mozilla fail and Firefox die?
      - lucideer 5y ago
        I want to see Firefox succeed. Mozilla doesn't seem to be making the best moves to ensure that right now.
        zaarn 5y ago
        It's either donating or contributing work hours to the FF codebase, otherwise it's not really conducive towards ensuring FF succeeds.
        lucideer 5y ago
        I'm not sure what you're saying exactly? Many people from the community contribute freely to the FF codebase, and the Firefox project also employs paid engineers to work on the codebase. Funding to pay those engineers comes from Google. Donations to Mozilla do not go toward paying those engineers. I think it would be great if individuals who aren't in a position to write code for FF could contribute donations to a fund that pays FF engineers.
wongarsu 5y ago
That didn't go over well when Opera did it
konaraddi 5y ago
By default, there are ads in Firefox on the new tab page: sponsored top sites tiles and sponsored content from Pocket.

But how to monetize? Place ads somewhere in the application?

by ape4 5y ago

But how to monetize? Place ads somewhere in the application?

Any option whatsoever to donate to Firefox (specifically as a project, not to Mozilla) would at least be a start. I'd happily sign up to a monthly subscription. Would it bring in equivalent sums to search deals: of course not. But I think it would be at least a not-insignificant addition.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mtmail 5y ago
There is a monthly donation option for Mozilla https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ I don't understand why "any option whatoever to donate" must exclude non-Firefox projects. In my opinion that is the start, available right now.
- lucideer 5y ago
  Mozilla Foundation donations do not go toward Firefox development.
  - coldpie 5y ago
    Suppose at some point hypothetically, Moz Foundation donations exceeded Google's payments. Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. While Firefox is the most important thing Mozilla does in my eyes, I also like their non-Firefox work, so I'm happy to fund them. If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available. So I donate. How they spend the money in the meantime is up to them.
    - lucideer 5y ago
      > Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. What makes you presume this? > If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). > I also like their non-Firefox work I also like some of their non-Firefox work, but none of it is unique/essential. If Mozilla stopped all their other work tomorrow, and only developed Firefox, there would still be good alternatives out their to their other works (e.g. Lockbox->Bitwarden, MozVPN->Mullvad). Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer, and most truly open alternatives are incredibly small niche projects like Dillo or Otter Browser that aren't really very mainstream-usage-ready.
      - coldpie 5y ago
        > The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). I don't disagree, but I also don't think this discussion is related to whether or not folks should be donating to Mozilla right now. My giving them a donation doesn't restrict them exploring other funding options, which they do seem to be doing, with Pocket and their VPN services and the like. > Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer Right. So my thinking is: suppose Google funding dries up some day. From there we have two possible universes: Mozilla looks at their incomes and sees 80% of the missing funding is coming from donations. Or they see 10% is coming from donations. In the first case, they could scale down their non-core features and continue Firefox development on that donations revenue. In the second case, they would have to find some alternative income stream, which is difficult and full of uncertainty, or shut down and Firefox dies. Personally I favor the first universe, where Firefox is funded through voluntary donations. So I donate to make the first universe more likely. And there's no downside to me donating now, since it's totally cool with me if they use my money to fund their non-Firefox work in the meantime.
  - zaarn 5y ago
    So, rather, you'd want to see Mozilla fail and Firefox die?
    - lucideer 5y ago
      I want to see Firefox succeed. Mozilla doesn't seem to be making the best moves to ensure that right now.
      - zaarn 5y ago
        It's either donating or contributing work hours to the FF codebase, otherwise it's not really conducive towards ensuring FF succeeds.
        lucideer 5y ago
        I'm not sure what you're saying exactly? Many people from the community contribute freely to the FF codebase, and the Firefox project also employs paid engineers to work on the codebase. Funding to pay those engineers comes from Google. Donations to Mozilla do not go toward paying those engineers. I think it would be great if individuals who aren't in a position to write code for FF could contribute donations to a fund that pays FF engineers.

wongarsu 5y ago

That didn't go over well when Opera did it

konaraddi 5y ago

By default, there are ads in Firefox on the new tab page: sponsored top sites tiles and sponsored content from Pocket.