4 ms·

Meh. Mozilla has to do this because they have become fat and bloated thanks to Google money. They should go back to their roots and shrink back down to the scra

by whyenot 12y ago

Meh. Mozilla has to do this because they have become fat and bloated thanks to Google money. They should go back to their roots and shrink back down to the scrappy little organization that depended on its users for donations and promotion. That Mozilla would never have turned to adware.

eponeponepon 12y ago
Unfortunately, that Mozilla would, in all likelihood, have long since sunk without trace. Not that I like this development, but I think it basically is what it is, in the absence of a genuine alternative. (edit after 25 mins: actually, someone mentioned Iceweasel and Icecat up the page a way, neither of which I thought of - I guess there are genuine alternatives after all.)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  I've given up and switched to Pale Moon. For me, Firefox reached its peak just before it switched from the classic download window and has been going downhill ever since. It's now rapidly going in the direction of too many formerly promising open-source projects - the core developers feeding back on each other until they go the way of the fashion industry - "This is what you need. Everything that came before is useless and must be discarded", repeating every so often.
chimeracoder 12y ago
If more users donated to Mozilla, Mozilla wouldn't need to find other sources of money (primarily Google). Honest question: have you donated to Mozilla? And do you use Firefox? (If the answer to both of those is not 'yes', it's hard to claim that they should abandon their primary source of funding and rely solely on user support.)
- ngokevin 12y ago
  I don't think user donations could replace $300 million a year.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    Firefox has 450 million users[0] - if every user gave just $1, that'd already outstrip the amount they get from Google. (Yes, getting every user to donate is logistically impractical, but it's useful to think of the per-user cost when talking about consumer software.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox
    - cpeterso 12y ago
      I think something like a "Firefox subscription", an automatic monthly donations like those offered by PBS and NPR, could be interesting. NPR calls this "sustained giving". [1] Many people don't mind donating if they are not nagged repeatedly. [1] http://www.slideshare.net/nprresearch/sustained-giving-results http://www.slideshare.net/nprresearch/sustained-giving-resul...
- prawn 12y ago
  Instead of touting "Free Download" on a large green button, why not just call it Download and then have a donate-what-you-want option there? Virtually no one's going to donate after the fact.
zz1 12y ago
That Mozilla could not make Firefox compete against Apple's Safari, Opera's and Google's Blink, and Microsoft's IE. All that while developing a mobile OS, creating a new browser engine, mantaining Thunderbird, creating a marketplace, improving web standards, rolling out Mozilla Persona, teaching how to code the web to everyone…

by whyenot 12y ago

eponeponepon 12y ago

Unfortunately, that Mozilla would, in all likelihood, have long since sunk without trace. Not that I like this development, but I think it basically is what it is, in the absence of a genuine alternative. (edit after 25 mins: actually, someone mentioned Iceweasel and Icecat up the page a way, neither of which I thought of - I guess there are genuine alternatives after all.)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
I've given up and switched to Pale Moon. For me, Firefox reached its peak just before it switched from the classic download window and has been going downhill ever since. It's now rapidly going in the direction of too many formerly promising open-source projects - the core developers feeding back on each other until they go the way of the fashion industry - "This is what you need. Everything that came before is useless and must be discarded", repeating every so often.

chimeracoder 12y ago

If more users donated to Mozilla, Mozilla wouldn't need to find other sources of money (primarily Google). Honest question: have you donated to Mozilla? And do you use Firefox? (If the answer to both of those is not 'yes', it's hard to claim that they should abandon their primary source of funding and rely solely on user support.)

ngokevin 12y ago
I don't think user donations could replace $300 million a year.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  Firefox has 450 million users[0] - if every user gave just $1, that'd already outstrip the amount they get from Google. (Yes, getting every user to donate is logistically impractical, but it's useful to think of the per-user cost when talking about consumer software.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    I think something like a "Firefox subscription", an automatic monthly donations like those offered by PBS and NPR, could be interesting. NPR calls this "sustained giving". [1] Many people don't mind donating if they are not nagged repeatedly. [1] http://www.slideshare.net/nprresearch/sustained-giving-results http://www.slideshare.net/nprresearch/sustained-giving-resul...
prawn 12y ago
Instead of touting "Free Download" on a large green button, why not just call it Download and then have a donate-what-you-want option there? Virtually no one's going to donate after the fact.

zz1 12y ago

That Mozilla could not make Firefox compete against Apple's Safari, Opera's and Google's Blink, and Microsoft's IE. All that while developing a mobile OS, creating a new browser engine, mantaining Thunderbird, creating a marketplace, improving web standards, rolling out Mozilla Persona, teaching how to code the web to everyone…