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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

#81

Post by bzbarsky »

osrec wrote: post #60
yorwba wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UI is not very pretty, but about:serviceworkers lets you reinstall or unregister serviceworkers.

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

#82

Post by SquareWheel »

fernandotakai wrote: post #55
yorwba wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chrome dev tools have a dark theme. It's under settings.

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

#83

Post by el_cujo »

Not sure about a Mozilla-run VPN. I'd trust them to have a competent-enough service, but I would definitely not expect them to try resisting any western government getting hold of their logs (though I guess the claim of any VPN to actually accomplish this is dubious at best).

Maybe a good option if you live somewhere like China or certain Middle Eastern countries where you need a VPN just to get news not controlled by the government, but all of the VPN users who just want to hide their IP when torrenting will probably look elsewhere.

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

#84

Post by sjwright »

vcavallo wrote: post #68
sjwright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your list of "strings attached" to Firefox are fairly weak because most represent a trivial few clicks in settings. Insisting that a piece of software must ship preconfigured exactly to your liking seems a bit selfish to me. Really though, how onerous is it to configure a fresh Firefox profile to suit your preferences? (And how often do you reset your Firefox profile anyway?) Complaints about Pocket are largely emoti…

i think it’s a principle thing. for 90% of people, they’ll use it with default settings. seems like OP doesn’t want to support the usage of those default services in general (say, google search default?), so supporting a product that implicitly advances their usage is unattractive.

It's a principle thing? No, it's a train wreck. It's a sure-fire recipe for cutting the installed base of Firefox in half overnight.

Using your example and estimate, the 90% of people who use default settings will install Firefox and then immediately conclude it's broken because it can't search the internet. So they'll just switch back to Chrome and never try Firefox again.

Remember, these are the "default settings" people. They're not going to change the default settings. And with the OP's prescription for "no predefined search engines," there won't be a "Google" setting anyway even if they did try.

Train wreck.

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

#85

Post by lucideer »

pjmlp wrote: post #3
hajxg wrote: post #2

If it's a paid version of Firefox this means it will respect our privacy by having no telemetry, no remote code execution via Normandy, etc, or will it be the same thing in that regard?

Better than Chrome will ever be.

That's a low bar. Pretty sure we can aim higher than that.

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

#86

Post by Konnstann »

dazzawazza wrote: post #70
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…

This is just people: I make games. Players want 100 hours of unique experience, DRM free, DLC free and oh free. Plus they want all their features and bugs fixed or they threaten you. The reasons for this are complicated but just like FOSS, videogames have convinced players we can provide them with the moon on a stick when in reality it's a photo of the moon and they need to provide the stick.

Are you saying the pervasive DRM which degrades performance, day 1 DLC practices, and sectioning up content that used to come with the $60 game I bought are not problems with the game dev industry? Yeah there are some people who want exactly what you said, but the majority just want a complete experience.

I'm perfectly fine with a 20 hour game with no DRM(or at least no denuvo) and DLC after a few weeks of the game being out. I'll pay full price for it too. What I don't pay for is a game that costs $60, has 10 hours of content that are riddled with bugs, a "beta" two weeks before release, day 1,2,3 patches because it is broken, runs at 3/4 of the fps it should because of Denuvo, and has day 1 DLC and a $30 season pass (which doesn't cover all the DLC from that season, just some), and content walled off by pre-order.

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

#87

Post by Xylakant »

GuB-42 wrote: post #57
nexuist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suppo…

You can make them pay for the binary, while keeping access to the source open (Redhat/CentOS).

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

#88

Post by sjwright »

pseudalopex wrote: post #79
sjwright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your list of "strings attached" to Firefox are fairly weak because most represent a trivial few clicks in settings. Insisting that a piece of software must ship preconfigured exactly to your liking seems a bit selfish to me. Really though, how onerous is it to configure a fresh Firefox profile to suit your preferences? (And how often do you reset your Firefox profile anyway?) Complaints about Pocket are largely emoti…

Firefox Sync is client-side encrypted, open source, and theoretically self-hostable. Pocket is none of those.

These are all good reasons to not use Pocket. I do agree that it should be easier to disable. I guess I just don't see it as a big deal because I disabled it years ago and it hasn't ever come back.

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

#89

Post by orblivion »

sametmax wrote: post #31
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…

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…

On top of the usual way in which people (such as myself) can become self-entitled if we're not careful, there's also the concern that FOSS has a need to point toward "true north", while the realities of the market tend to blow us to the west. Until someone comes up with that magical business plan (and I'm still hoping for this), these things will always be in tension.

The best solution I can think of for the moment is to always express our demand FOSS without compromise, but no matter what show appreciation for them for getting as close as they can, so long as they seem to be trying at least (unlike, say, Android at this point).

If we don't demand true north, the ship will drift further and further west and we forget our mission. If we don't show appreciation, they'll fail to see the point and give up the journey entirely.

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

#90

Post by Spivak »

sametmax wrote: post #31
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…

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 feel like most of these demands aren't too onerous because they're pretty much all in the form of "hey this thing you're doing that takes time and effort to do -- don't."

Like it would be one thing to demand lots of features that require effort to develop but the parent is literally asking to pay more for less.

It is very normal for donations to foundations to have stipulations about what they're allowed to be spent on which is why developement (not in the software sense) pushes so hard for donors to allow spending in the general fund. I have no problem letting Mozilla spend my money as they see fit but I absolutely understand people who are only interested in Firefox.

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