6 ms·

Not to defend Mozilla (they have lots of issues), but it feels they're in an impossible position: * their revenue comes mostly from Google, they need to divers

Not to defend Mozilla (they have lots of issues), but it feels they're in an impossible position: * their revenue comes mostly from Google, they need to diversify * but nobody will pay for a browser, so they need to offer other services * then everyone criticises that they shill their other services and should instead focus on the browser Realistically, what should they do to stop relying on money from their competitor and be continue their mission?

joelthelion 1y ago
Very hard decision, but I wonder if they could reduce costs by going to lower cost countries. Aren't they still mostly based in the silicon Valley?
timmg 1y ago
> their revenue comes mostly from Google, they need to diversify Arguably, they get more revenue than what they need to fund browser development. So they could be banking a fair amount. That would allow them to build an endowment that might keep them funded in perpetuity. I think there’s an option where they don’t diversify and don’t act like a tech startup and do fine. Maybe Wikipedia is a model for them.
- maccard 1y ago
  > Maybe Wikipedia is a model for them People who have a problem with Mozilla the org tend to have a problem with Wikipedia the organisation too in my experience.
  - Gud 1y ago
    Maybe there is an overlap but my main concern with Mozilla is their funding model.
    - maccard 1y ago
      Like I said, that’s what people have a problem with. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106982
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- ethbr1 1y ago
  For concrete numbers (albeit circa 2022), this was previously posted on HN: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest... Tl;dr -- They do make more money than they spend on software development. They save a bunch of it and have a decently sized account (not near endowment levels though: they'd need to 3x+ it). They also spend a lot on other random shit, and compensate their executives well for how poorly they're doing.
mordae 1y ago
I'd pay for browser. I send money to KiCad, Blender and others. I see no reason not to support Firefox. They'd have to lay off all the leeches, though.
MzHN 1y ago
Thunderbird is fully funded by donations[1] Of course Thunderbird's budget is in a different magnitude than Firefox but I'd guess the amount of users is also in a different magnitude. As far as I know there has never been an attempt to fund Firefox by donations. You can _only_ donate to Mozilla, which does not go to Firefox development. People keep saying it wouldn't work but it has also never been attempted so we do not know for sure. [1] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...
AndrewDucker 1y ago
I'd pay for a browser. I pay for a search engine, and for an email client (Thunderbird).
dbdoskey 1y ago
There is nothing to defend there. They could have easily: * Made the donations go directly to funding the browser development. Right now I don't know if it even possible to donate purely just to browser development * They could have easily opened a services/consultancy arm, similar to igalia. A great and easy way to fund browser development. (How igalia has funded servo development in the past) * Create a for-pay enterprise support. In the past a lot of government organizations wouldn't use Chrome due to how the Chrome updates worked. They could have made a killing in government contracts just around that And these are just a few simple income directions that are pretty common in other OSS projects. Instead they did braindead ideas like being a VPN reseller, giving away Pocket, and other things no one wanted or asked for.
- cge 1y ago
  > * Made the donations go directly to funding the browser development. Right now I don't know if it even possible to donate purely just to browser development The problem goes beyond them making it impossible to donate purely to browser development: they have arranged their structure such that you cannot donate to browser development at all. The Mozilla Corporation develops Firefox; it is a for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, and donations to the foundation can't be used for the for-profit browser development subsidiary at all. They've built their entire legal structure around reliance on Google's payments.
  - einsteinx2 1y ago
    Yeah it’s super frustrating. I donate $50/mo to Ladybird development and would do the same for Firefox tomorrow if they gave me any way to actually do it. I have no interest in funding their foundation initiatives.
  - pseudalopex 1y ago
    Few for profit companies accept donations. The compliance costs exceed the expected revenue. You can fund Mozilla Coporation by paying for Mozilla VPN, Mozilla Monitor, Firefox Relay, or MDN Plus.
bachmeier 1y ago
> nobody will pay for a browser Not as long as it's illegal to do so. You'd literally have to hack their bank account to pay for their browser.
drcongo 1y ago
I pay for a browser. I pay for Orion even though it's my tertiary browser.
dale_glass 1y ago
The problem for me is that Mozilla's side projects seemed unfitting, like their whole AI venture. The thing is that I fully believe that Mozilla has a lot of experts in web-related software development, and have no reason to believe they have any particular competence in AI tech. So all the AI stuff seemed immediately off to me, like they were just jumping on the latest bandwagon. I also don't believe their AI projects are particularly valuable. * Summarizing pages -- okay, this might be rarely useful. But I don't personally have much need for it, and I believe that the competition is probably better. I understand the privacy angle, but I don't think it works for my case. If I was summarizing all the things, then yeah, probably I'd be concerned about the privacy implications of feeding a good chunk of my web traffic to ChatGPT. But I don't. My needs to summarize are rare and mostly things like lengthy public news articles. And in such cases I don't want to sacrifice quality, so if ChatGPT does a better job there, that's the tool I'll go with. * Fakespot and Deep Fake Detector to me are fundamentally fishy in that I don't believe they can possibly work properly. I have very little trust in such services and have a feeling they may be doing more harm than good.
KaiMagnus 1y ago
At this point only the power users are left anyways, so I wonder if a paid, or at least freemium, browser for power users might actually work. Kind of sounds like Arc. But nowadays we rarely get new features and when they do come out, they’re often unpolished, so I wonder if the browser has much of a future. They’d have to step up their investment in FF to be competitive for sure. All I can say is that spite plays a big part in why I’m using FF, not good if you want to gain users and make money.
KingOfCoders 1y ago
"but nobody will pay for a browser" People paid $7B through Google for a browser. The money did not come from the private bank account of Google executives, it was payment for people going to Google with their search. "then everyone criticises that they shill their other services and should instead focus on the browser" I agree it's way too late now, but had they put $7B into the foundation to pay for browser development, they could develop the browser for the next hundred years with no other income.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  > People paid $7B through Google for a browser. Advertisers paid $7B, for access to captive eyeballs. Users paid $0, directly.
  - KingOfCoders 1y ago
    Advertisers didn't pay Mozilla. Google did pay for me using their Search as a Firefox user.
kgwxd 1y ago
i'm in for $50 a year if they just keep up with web standards, security patches, ensure ublock origin can continue to run as-is, and leave the UI alone forever.
nialv7 1y ago
Ladybird is building a browser with a couple million dollars, why can't Mozilla do the same? The total amount of donation Ladybird got so far probably isn't enough to pay half of a year's salary of Mozilla's management, this is absurd. We don't need strategy, we don't need vision, or any of that kind of bullshit. We just need a team of good developers sitting down and write a browser.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  "The symphony doesn't need a conductor; they just need to play good music." Leonard Bernstein was a fraud who added no value... "The sailors on board a ship don't need a captain; they just need to sail." Admiral Nelson could have been replaced by democratic voting and focus groups. Reality: Anarchy only works in very small settings.
  - nialv7 1y ago
    "a group of developers" =/= no leadership. Do you think the current Mozilla CEO helps with Firefox development in any way?
- const_cast 1y ago
  > Ladybird is building a browser with a couple million dollars, why can't Mozilla do the same? 1. Ladybird isn't currently competing with Mozilla or anyone, so this is hypothetical. 2. It's a different problem space, because Mozilla is maintaining a decades old browser. 3. Mozilla is developing a very good browser considering how much money they have. They're competitive with Chrome on features and performance, while Google is dedicating much more money towards Chrome.
WhyNotHugo 1y ago
> nobody will pay for a browser, so they need to offer other services A lot of us would be willing to donate monthly, but not to a browser which includes proprietary components, first-party ads and first part-spyware. Also, such a huge proportion of their income goes to fund their C-suite, it’s ridiculous.
- maccard 1y ago
  I’ve been writing c++ and working in web adjacent space for 15 years. I’ve regularly thought about setting up a kickstarter for 6 months of my salary that if I reached it, I would start a patreon and work full time on Firefox, in public. The developer of the ladybird browser has a pattern page where he makes £760/month [0]. That wouldn’t even pay rent for a 1 bed flat where I live. If 200 people donated £10/mo, it still wouldn’t be minimum wage for me in the UK. So realistically, how much would you donate and how often?
  - einsteinx2 1y ago
    I assume you mean Patreon when you wrote pattern? You’re ignoring their main source of donations from users which is Donorbox (I donate $50/mo there for example which is not counted in your number) and significant money from larger sponsors which pays multiple dev salaries on Ladybird, including the main developer I would imagine since he works on it full time. Meanwhile Mozilla makes it literally impossible for me to donate to Firefox development as they only accept donations to their foundation which they don’t use to fund Firefox, and have Firefox under their for profit corporation which I can’t donate to.
    - maccard 1y ago
      Sorry, I did mean patreon. > I donate $50/mo there for example which is not counted in your number Great, we just need 149 more people to commit to that for a year for it to be viable. > You’re ignoring their main source of donations from users which is Donorbox Which I don't have numbers for. > and significant money from larger sponsors which pays multiple dev salaries on Ladybird I'm not ignoring them. I'm specifically responding to the comment of "A lot of us would be willing to donate monthly". Based on their sponsors page, there's (at least) $400k of sponsors there. That's what paying for 7 full time developers. > Meanwhile Mozilla makes it literally impossible for me to donate to Firefox development as they only accept donations to their foundation which they don’t use to fund Firefox, and have Firefox under their for profit corporation which I can’t donate to. I never said otherwise. You're the person who who decided to bring Mozilla into a thread of privately funding donations to work specifically on Firefox and _not_ mozilla.
0xTJ 1y ago
I wish it was normalized and easier to contribute to open-source projects that you use. I have recurring donations for Thunderbird and KiCad, and I make occasional one-time donations to the likes of KDE. I don't see a clear way to donate specifically to the development of Firefox, and I also think that it would feel like it's just funding a machine to drive more Google traffic. I also have a monthly donation to Internet Archive, which I highly recommend everyone do. It's a very important service; if you use it occasionally I'd recommend at least a one-time donation, and if you use it regularly, a recurring one is even better! Ladybird should be interesting once it's ready; I'm happy to see a fully-new browser entering the space. That gene pool has gotten far too shallow.
- cassianoleal 1y ago
  I'd also love to see an actual browser based on Servo.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    The Verso browser is in progress: https://github.com/versotile-org/verso https://github.com/versotile-org/verso
rollcat 1y ago
My take: - The Mozilla Foundation should be publicly funded, with Firefox being considered a reference implementation for all web standards; Google should be considered a "gatekeeper", and fined for introducing de facto "standards" into mainline Chrome without going thru the W3C. Perhaps the W3C should be regulated as well. - Efforts like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive should be considered public libraries, and publicly funded. - Privately-owned platforms with vast libraries of knowledge - like Youtube - should be required to allow easy and on-demand export to the Internet Archive (subject to the copyright owner's chosen license). The question is, who is the "public" in "publicly funded". The EU and the US could cover the majority, but considering that the entire world's population is reliant on those products/services, perhaps that's a matter worth raising with the UN. Am I exaggerating here? Heck no, livelihoods of billions of people depend on these things. It takes one of the "top 5" corps to pull the rug and cause worldwide chaos.
- milesrout 1y ago
  [dead]
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Whole lotta "shoulds" there. Who is the worldwide authority that has the power to declare Firefox a web standard? Google being "fined for introducing de facto "standards" into mainline Chrome without going thru the W3C" is... wow, a leap of legal imagination. That is not how anything works. None of this is realistic. We need attainable goals, using concrete steps. Getting Google declared a monopoly: one step. Keeping that ruling intact through the following years: another step (Hello, Microsoft in the 1990's). Establish web standards, beyond the current skeletal concepts: a BIG step.
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    > None of this is realistic. We need attainable goals, using concrete steps. Well you know, that's just like, your opinion, man.[0] Surely it makes sense to have overarching goals, that you can then divide up into little concrete stepping stones. Whether or not your big goal is possible or worthwhile is something you can keep examining along the way. Incremental change is the only kind that you can make happen, but without big-picture direction you'll just skitter around local maxima. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-xI1384Ry4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-xI1384Ry4
JohnFen 1y ago
> but nobody will pay for a browser I'm not so sure this is true. There are a few successful for-pay browsers. What's crazy, though, is that even though I'd be happy to give Mozilla money for Firefox, they don't provide a way to do that.
- beej71 1y ago
  Seconded. I've often wondered what the development cost is and how many ways we'd have to split that at $10/mo.
- pseudalopex 1y ago
  What for pay browsers are profitable? And what engines do they use? Mozilla Corporation develop Firefox. You can give them money by subscribing to Mozilla VPN, Mozilla Monitor, Firefox Relay, or MDN Plus. Few for profit companies like Mozilla Corporation accept donations. The compliance costs would exceed the revenue in most cases.
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    > You can give them money by subscribing to Mozilla VPN, Mozilla Monitor, Firefox Relay, or MDN Plus. Isn't that just funding those services? Why should I have to subscribe to services I don't want or need instead of paying for the product I actually use? That's nuts.
    - pseudalopex 1y ago
      What for pay browsers are profitable? And what engines do they use? > Isn't that just funding those services? No. The purpose of selling services was to reduce Firefox's Google dependence. > Why should I have to subscribe to services I don't want or need instead of paying for the product I actually use? The costs of supporting your precise preferences would exceed the expected revenue probably if the existing options are unacceptable to you. Would you pay for a Firefox edition with features you didn't need? Other browsers have parts of Mozilla's services for free. Safari, Brave, and Opera can hide IP addresses. Safari, Chrome, and Edge can monitor passwords. Safari can hide email addresses. Mozilla's services are Firefox Plus. Or you could make the services a gift to someone who wants them. Everyone would benefit. Most people will not pay for something they can get without payment. Few people willing to pay for something they could get without payment will refuse if something they don't need but can ignore effortlessly is added to the exchange. People opposed to paying for something they don't need but can ignore effortlessly have further demands often. Firefox must be Mozilla's sole product. Donations must be Mozilla's sole support. DRM support must be removed. Mozilla must allocate donations to specific features.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"but nobody will pay for a browser, so they need to offer other services" Why will no one pay for a browser Why are web browsers available for free I'm submitting this comment using software I downloaded for free, like a web browser But it is not a web browser like Mozilla's The software I'm using is not supported by advertising No developers were paid to write it What makes Mozilla's software different Is it really better than software that is not supported by advertising Better for www users, better for software developers, better for advertisers What if it is better for one group but worse for another I'm in the www user group

joelthelion 1y ago

Very hard decision, but I wonder if they could reduce costs by going to lower cost countries. Aren't they still mostly based in the silicon Valley?

timmg 1y ago

> their revenue comes mostly from Google, they need to diversify Arguably, they get more revenue than what they need to fund browser development. So they could be banking a fair amount. That would allow them to build an endowment that might keep them funded in perpetuity. I think there’s an option where they don’t diversify and don’t act like a tech startup and do fine. Maybe Wikipedia is a model for them.

maccard 1y ago
> Maybe Wikipedia is a model for them People who have a problem with Mozilla the org tend to have a problem with Wikipedia the organisation too in my experience.
- Gud 1y ago
  Maybe there is an overlap but my main concern with Mozilla is their funding model.
  - maccard 1y ago
    Like I said, that’s what people have a problem with. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106982
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
ethbr1 1y ago
For concrete numbers (albeit circa 2022), this was previously posted on HN: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest... Tl;dr -- They do make more money than they spend on software development. They save a bunch of it and have a decently sized account (not near endowment levels though: they'd need to 3x+ it). They also spend a lot on other random shit, and compensate their executives well for how poorly they're doing.

mordae 1y ago

I'd pay for browser. I send money to KiCad, Blender and others. I see no reason not to support Firefox. They'd have to lay off all the leeches, though.

MzHN 1y ago

Thunderbird is fully funded by donations[1] Of course Thunderbird's budget is in a different magnitude than Firefox but I'd guess the amount of users is also in a different magnitude. As far as I know there has never been an attempt to fund Firefox by donations. You can _only_ donate to Mozilla, which does not go to Firefox development. People keep saying it wouldn't work but it has also never been attempted so we do not know for sure. [1] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...

AndrewDucker 1y ago

I'd pay for a browser. I pay for a search engine, and for an email client (Thunderbird).

dbdoskey 1y ago

There is nothing to defend there. They could have easily: * Made the donations go directly to funding the browser development. Right now I don't know if it even possible to donate purely just to browser development * They could have easily opened a services/consultancy arm, similar to igalia. A great and easy way to fund browser development. (How igalia has funded servo development in the past) * Create a for-pay enterprise support. In the past a lot of government organizations wouldn't use Chrome due to how the Chrome updates worked. They could have made a killing in government contracts just around that And these are just a few simple income directions that are pretty common in other OSS projects. Instead they did braindead ideas like being a VPN reseller, giving away Pocket, and other things no one wanted or asked for.

cge 1y ago
> * Made the donations go directly to funding the browser development. Right now I don't know if it even possible to donate purely just to browser development The problem goes beyond them making it impossible to donate purely to browser development: they have arranged their structure such that you cannot donate to browser development at all. The Mozilla Corporation develops Firefox; it is a for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, and donations to the foundation can't be used for the for-profit browser development subsidiary at all. They've built their entire legal structure around reliance on Google's payments.
- einsteinx2 1y ago
  Yeah it’s super frustrating. I donate $50/mo to Ladybird development and would do the same for Firefox tomorrow if they gave me any way to actually do it. I have no interest in funding their foundation initiatives.
- pseudalopex 1y ago
  Few for profit companies accept donations. The compliance costs exceed the expected revenue. You can fund Mozilla Coporation by paying for Mozilla VPN, Mozilla Monitor, Firefox Relay, or MDN Plus.

bachmeier 1y ago

> nobody will pay for a browser Not as long as it's illegal to do so. You'd literally have to hack their bank account to pay for their browser.

drcongo 1y ago

I pay for a browser. I pay for Orion even though it's my tertiary browser.

dale_glass 1y ago

The problem for me is that Mozilla's side projects seemed unfitting, like their whole AI venture. The thing is that I fully believe that Mozilla has a lot of experts in web-related software development, and have no reason to believe they have any particular competence in AI tech. So all the AI stuff seemed immediately off to me, like they were just jumping on the latest bandwagon. I also don't believe their AI projects are particularly valuable. * Summarizing pages -- okay, this might be rarely useful. But I don't personally have much need for it, and I believe that the competition is probably better. I understand the privacy angle, but I don't think it works for my case. If I was summarizing all the things, then yeah, probably I'd be concerned about the privacy implications of feeding a good chunk of my web traffic to ChatGPT. But I don't. My needs to summarize are rare and mostly things like lengthy public news articles. And in such cases I don't want to sacrifice quality, so if ChatGPT does a better job there, that's the tool I'll go with. * Fakespot and Deep Fake Detector to me are fundamentally fishy in that I don't believe they can possibly work properly. I have very little trust in such services and have a feeling they may be doing more harm than good.

KaiMagnus 1y ago

At this point only the power users are left anyways, so I wonder if a paid, or at least freemium, browser for power users might actually work. Kind of sounds like Arc. But nowadays we rarely get new features and when they do come out, they’re often unpolished, so I wonder if the browser has much of a future. They’d have to step up their investment in FF to be competitive for sure. All I can say is that spite plays a big part in why I’m using FF, not good if you want to gain users and make money.

KingOfCoders 1y ago

"but nobody will pay for a browser" People paid $7B through Google for a browser. The money did not come from the private bank account of Google executives, it was payment for people going to Google with their search. "then everyone criticises that they shill their other services and should instead focus on the browser" I agree it's way too late now, but had they put $7B into the foundation to pay for browser development, they could develop the browser for the next hundred years with no other income.

IAmBroom 1y ago
> People paid $7B through Google for a browser. Advertisers paid $7B, for access to captive eyeballs. Users paid $0, directly.
- KingOfCoders 1y ago
  Advertisers didn't pay Mozilla. Google did pay for me using their Search as a Firefox user.

kgwxd 1y ago

i'm in for $50 a year if they just keep up with web standards, security patches, ensure ublock origin can continue to run as-is, and leave the UI alone forever.

nialv7 1y ago

Ladybird is building a browser with a couple million dollars, why can't Mozilla do the same? The total amount of donation Ladybird got so far probably isn't enough to pay half of a year's salary of Mozilla's management, this is absurd. We don't need strategy, we don't need vision, or any of that kind of bullshit. We just need a team of good developers sitting down and write a browser.

IAmBroom 1y ago
"The symphony doesn't need a conductor; they just need to play good music." Leonard Bernstein was a fraud who added no value... "The sailors on board a ship don't need a captain; they just need to sail." Admiral Nelson could have been replaced by democratic voting and focus groups. Reality: Anarchy only works in very small settings.
- nialv7 1y ago
  "a group of developers" =/= no leadership. Do you think the current Mozilla CEO helps with Firefox development in any way?
const_cast 1y ago
> Ladybird is building a browser with a couple million dollars, why can't Mozilla do the same? 1. Ladybird isn't currently competing with Mozilla or anyone, so this is hypothetical. 2. It's a different problem space, because Mozilla is maintaining a decades old browser. 3. Mozilla is developing a very good browser considering how much money they have. They're competitive with Chrome on features and performance, while Google is dedicating much more money towards Chrome.

WhyNotHugo 1y ago

> nobody will pay for a browser, so they need to offer other services A lot of us would be willing to donate monthly, but not to a browser which includes proprietary components, first-party ads and first part-spyware. Also, such a huge proportion of their income goes to fund their C-suite, it’s ridiculous.

maccard 1y ago
I’ve been writing c++ and working in web adjacent space for 15 years. I’ve regularly thought about setting up a kickstarter for 6 months of my salary that if I reached it, I would start a patreon and work full time on Firefox, in public. The developer of the ladybird browser has a pattern page where he makes £760/month [0]. That wouldn’t even pay rent for a 1 bed flat where I live. If 200 people donated £10/mo, it still wouldn’t be minimum wage for me in the UK. So realistically, how much would you donate and how often?
- einsteinx2 1y ago
  I assume you mean Patreon when you wrote pattern? You’re ignoring their main source of donations from users which is Donorbox (I donate $50/mo there for example which is not counted in your number) and significant money from larger sponsors which pays multiple dev salaries on Ladybird, including the main developer I would imagine since he works on it full time. Meanwhile Mozilla makes it literally impossible for me to donate to Firefox development as they only accept donations to their foundation which they don’t use to fund Firefox, and have Firefox under their for profit corporation which I can’t donate to.
  - maccard 1y ago
    Sorry, I did mean patreon. > I donate $50/mo there for example which is not counted in your number Great, we just need 149 more people to commit to that for a year for it to be viable. > You’re ignoring their main source of donations from users which is Donorbox Which I don't have numbers for. > and significant money from larger sponsors which pays multiple dev salaries on Ladybird I'm not ignoring them. I'm specifically responding to the comment of "A lot of us would be willing to donate monthly". Based on their sponsors page, there's (at least) $400k of sponsors there. That's what paying for 7 full time developers. > Meanwhile Mozilla makes it literally impossible for me to donate to Firefox development as they only accept donations to their foundation which they don’t use to fund Firefox, and have Firefox under their for profit corporation which I can’t donate to. I never said otherwise. You're the person who who decided to bring Mozilla into a thread of privately funding donations to work specifically on Firefox and _not_ mozilla.

0xTJ 1y ago

I wish it was normalized and easier to contribute to open-source projects that you use. I have recurring donations for Thunderbird and KiCad, and I make occasional one-time donations to the likes of KDE. I don't see a clear way to donate specifically to the development of Firefox, and I also think that it would feel like it's just funding a machine to drive more Google traffic. I also have a monthly donation to Internet Archive, which I highly recommend everyone do. It's a very important service; if you use it occasionally I'd recommend at least a one-time donation, and if you use it regularly, a recurring one is even better! Ladybird should be interesting once it's ready; I'm happy to see a fully-new browser entering the space. That gene pool has gotten far too shallow.

cassianoleal 1y ago
I'd also love to see an actual browser based on Servo.
- pabs3 1y ago
  The Verso browser is in progress: https://github.com/versotile-org/verso https://github.com/versotile-org/verso

rollcat 1y ago

My take: - The Mozilla Foundation should be publicly funded, with Firefox being considered a reference implementation for all web standards; Google should be considered a "gatekeeper", and fined for introducing de facto "standards" into mainline Chrome without going thru the W3C. Perhaps the W3C should be regulated as well. - Efforts like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive should be considered public libraries, and publicly funded. - Privately-owned platforms with vast libraries of knowledge - like Youtube - should be required to allow easy and on-demand export to the Internet Archive (subject to the copyright owner's chosen license). The question is, who is the "public" in "publicly funded". The EU and the US could cover the majority, but considering that the entire world's population is reliant on those products/services, perhaps that's a matter worth raising with the UN. Am I exaggerating here? Heck no, livelihoods of billions of people depend on these things. It takes one of the "top 5" corps to pull the rug and cause worldwide chaos.

milesrout 1y ago
[dead]
IAmBroom 1y ago
Whole lotta "shoulds" there. Who is the worldwide authority that has the power to declare Firefox a web standard? Google being "fined for introducing de facto "standards" into mainline Chrome without going thru the W3C" is... wow, a leap of legal imagination. That is not how anything works. None of this is realistic. We need attainable goals, using concrete steps. Getting Google declared a monopoly: one step. Keeping that ruling intact through the following years: another step (Hello, Microsoft in the 1990's). Establish web standards, beyond the current skeletal concepts: a BIG step.
- Y_Y 1y ago
  > None of this is realistic. We need attainable goals, using concrete steps. Well you know, that's just like, your opinion, man.[0] Surely it makes sense to have overarching goals, that you can then divide up into little concrete stepping stones. Whether or not your big goal is possible or worthwhile is something you can keep examining along the way. Incremental change is the only kind that you can make happen, but without big-picture direction you'll just skitter around local maxima. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-xI1384Ry4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-xI1384Ry4

JohnFen 1y ago

> but nobody will pay for a browser I'm not so sure this is true. There are a few successful for-pay browsers. What's crazy, though, is that even though I'd be happy to give Mozilla money for Firefox, they don't provide a way to do that.

beej71 1y ago
Seconded. I've often wondered what the development cost is and how many ways we'd have to split that at $10/mo.
pseudalopex 1y ago
What for pay browsers are profitable? And what engines do they use? Mozilla Corporation develop Firefox. You can give them money by subscribing to Mozilla VPN, Mozilla Monitor, Firefox Relay, or MDN Plus. Few for profit companies like Mozilla Corporation accept donations. The compliance costs would exceed the revenue in most cases.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  > You can give them money by subscribing to Mozilla VPN, Mozilla Monitor, Firefox Relay, or MDN Plus. Isn't that just funding those services? Why should I have to subscribe to services I don't want or need instead of paying for the product I actually use? That's nuts.
  - pseudalopex 1y ago
    What for pay browsers are profitable? And what engines do they use? > Isn't that just funding those services? No. The purpose of selling services was to reduce Firefox's Google dependence. > Why should I have to subscribe to services I don't want or need instead of paying for the product I actually use? The costs of supporting your precise preferences would exceed the expected revenue probably if the existing options are unacceptable to you. Would you pay for a Firefox edition with features you didn't need? Other browsers have parts of Mozilla's services for free. Safari, Brave, and Opera can hide IP addresses. Safari, Chrome, and Edge can monitor passwords. Safari can hide email addresses. Mozilla's services are Firefox Plus. Or you could make the services a gift to someone who wants them. Everyone would benefit. Most people will not pay for something they can get without payment. Few people willing to pay for something they could get without payment will refuse if something they don't need but can ignore effortlessly is added to the exchange. People opposed to paying for something they don't need but can ignore effortlessly have further demands often. Firefox must be Mozilla's sole product. Donations must be Mozilla's sole support. DRM support must be removed. Mozilla must allocate donations to specific features.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

"but nobody will pay for a browser, so they need to offer other services" Why will no one pay for a browser Why are web browsers available for free I'm submitting this comment using software I downloaded for free, like a web browser But it is not a web browser like Mozilla's The software I'm using is not supported by advertising No developers were paid to write it What makes Mozilla's software different Is it really better than software that is not supported by advertising Better for www users, better for software developers, better for advertisers What if it is better for one group but worse for another I'm in the www user group