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Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

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Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#51

Post by moonlit »

coldtea wrote: post #36
sametmax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. See, that's one of the weirdest problem in FOSS: the fans hold them to a way too high standard, making it twice as hard to thrive. Once because it's hard to make money as an open source, benevolent…

> I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. No, right now I'm not paying a dime to companies that don't provide me with the products I want. Parent is talking about being a customer, not a charity.

Parent is confusing product owner or a developer with being a customer. Most of stuff he requested is already there.

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#52

Post by sjwright »

otabdeveloper3 wrote: post #26
nexuist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it still FOSS if it's paid?

Yes. "Free as in freedom".

To be as charitable as possible to the grandparent, it may depend on whether there are any closed-source elements to the cloud services. We don't know for certain because it has yet to be announced. (Of course there's no realistic chance of that happening given Mozilla's foundational principles and solid track record thereof.)

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#53

Post by pbhjpbhj »

heinrichhartman wrote: post #35
weinzierl wrote: post #25

I'd be happy to pay for Firefox, but I have a few points that are important to me. They are probably not very realistic but here they are anyway: 1. I would like my money to go into Firefox development and nowhere else. I certainly don't want my money spent on their content business, even if it is used as a leverage to generate more money for Firefox development. I'm torn about Rust development because I certainly wo…

It's very unlikely that this will happen. Payed subscriptions to news-websites/magazines are also not advertising free. When you have demonstrated you are willing to pay money for a service, you are likely to also spent money on other goods. This only makes you more attractive as an advertising target. Most likely we will see premium features like: - premium color themes - more cloud storage for settings and extensio…

To me what you're saying is Mozilla is no longer about FLOSS, they're now just a company whose only purpose is to make money selling their users downstream for as much as they can get?

That may be true but it's extremely sad.

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#54

Post by zeendo »

coldtea wrote: post #36
sametmax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. See, that's one of the weirdest problem in FOSS: the fans hold them to a way too high standard, making it twice as hard to thrive. Once because it's hard to make money as an open source, benevolent…

> I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. No, right now I'm not paying a dime to companies that don't provide me with the products I want. Parent is talking about being a customer, not a charity.

The parent is not only talking about the products they receive but how that money is spent. Those assurances are pretty impractical and I doubt any company can reasonably be held to that kind of standard.

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#55

Post by fernandotakai »

yorwba wrote: post #49
osrec wrote: post #43

If they want us to pay, they MUST provide dev tools that are as good as Chrome's, if not better. My team builds a lot of PWAs, and Firefox simply did not provide good enough diagnostic tools, so we couldn't use it in earnest (even though we really wanted to).

What specific functionality of the Chrome dev tools did you miss in Firefox?

yeah, i keep hearing that here on HN (and only here, for some reason) but i myself use firefox and chrome dev tools almost daily and i never once thought "yeah this is missing".

well, for one, chrome is actually missing one big thing for me: a dark theme.

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#56

Post by inetknght »

moonlit wrote: post #50
sametmax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day. See, that's one of the weirdest problem in FOSS: the fans hold them to a way too high standard, making it twice as hard to thrive. Once because it's hard to make money as an open source, benevolent…

I am not a fan of using “this” in a discussion but seriously, a million times this. You’ve clearly identified a real issue. FOSS users like parent believe they have a birth right to the software they’re using, including making decisions for the direction product is taking.

> including making decisions for the direction product is taking

If I am the product, I expect to be able to participate in choosing the direction. Businesses ignore that, of course, and look what that's dealt them in reputation.

If I pay for something, I expect to be able to participate in choosing the direction. Businesses don't typically ignore paying customers.

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#57

Post by GuB-42 »

nexuist wrote: post #23
jasonhansel wrote: post #18

As long as it's all FOSS, this sounds like an excellent idea. I'd gladly pay for Mozilla to stop being beholden to Google.

Is it still FOSS if it's paid?

Yes and no.

Yes because there is nothing preventing you from selling free (libre) software. Commercial use of free software is actually encouraged and part of its success.

No because while you can make people pay for free software, you can't prevent redistribution. In practice, it means you can't force people to actually pay.

That's why selling free software usually means selling a service. Usually some form of support or online account.

Note that proprietary software based on free software is not free software. For example Chrome not free even though Chromium is. And if Mozilla releases paid version of Firefox with even a tiny bit of proprietary code, it stops being FOSS.

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#58

Post by whytaka »

weinzierl wrote: post #25

I'd be happy to pay for Firefox, but I have a few points that are important to me. They are probably not very realistic but here they are anyway: 1. I would like my money to go into Firefox development and nowhere else. I certainly don't want my money spent on their content business, even if it is used as a leverage to generate more money for Firefox development. I'm torn about Rust development because I certainly wo…

Agreed on all counts.

In addition, I hope this does not give license to Mozilla to make the free version of Firefox in to a télémétrie nightmare.

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#59

Post by eitland »

I'm a huge Firefox fan, but as many others here point out: for this to work in the long run they have to respect us and stop pulling all kinds of iRobot nonsense etc.

Mozilla needs to understand it is not OK to mess with my Internet banking client.

The browser is now critical Internet infrastructure and it is not OK when someone scares me by force installing extensions.

Also while Normandie would have been OK with me of I knew about it ot annoyed me when I found out about it because of a mistake.

Mozilla could have had a 9/10 score but thanks to issues like this I rate them 7/10.

(Chrome however is far worse.)

Re: Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

#60

Post by osrec »

yorwba wrote: post #49
osrec wrote: post #43

If they want us to pay, they MUST provide dev tools that are as good as Chrome's, if not better. My team builds a lot of PWAs, and Firefox simply did not provide good enough diagnostic tools, so we couldn't use it in earnest (even though we really wanted to).

What specific functionality of the Chrome dev tools did you miss in Firefox?

Ability to stop/start/reinstall service workers, view app manifests, validate app manifests, add apps to the desktop etc, store local results as global variables in the console. Connect mobile devices and run a local server on the mobile device.

There are more, but I can't think of them currently.

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