As free-to-play games have demonstrated, you don't need an overwhelming majority of people to pay. There are even ways to find out if it is going to work, such

As free-to-play games have demonstrated, you don't need an overwhelming majority of people to pay. There are even ways to find out if it is going to work, such as say a crowd source campaign to pay for n years of browser maintenance and development with various levels of branded merchandise so people can signal their allegiance at conferences. So far I've just seen a donation link for the foundation, which gets a lot of hate because it funds all the stuff lots of potential donors want Mozilla to stop doing.