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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

#91

Post by lapinot »

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.

Imho the answer is already contained in your statement: paying for some kind of "professional service" transforms any interaction with the users into a provider/customer interaction. It will boil down to "this is good, please make it better" (which is implicitly stating that you may stop using if it's not done). The power of FOSS or heavily modded games is that the separation provider/customer is broken into a spectrum where some people are in between, are empowered to do some of the things they'd like being done.

Going back to firefox, i think it's a mistake. They are already far down the road of this provider/customer separation and going forward they will face such decisions over and over. This is a zugzwang and the sooner they break it the better. With a bit of wishful thinking i would have hoped they would flip the table and go full on with hardcore gnuish philosophy, making a big move and a new political depth into their browser. Perhaps regaining some sympathy from people that have long considered them as compromised, perhaps destabilizing big web players which will again have to face some public rumble to which they can't easily say anything else than "yeah we screwed up but hey it's not so bad and we are getting nicer" (an answer which is starting to get quite laughable).

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

#92

Post by morpheuskafka »

el_cujo wrote: post #83

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 b…

I think the latter would be fine as well. The objective their is to block DMCA notices sent by bots not suboeonas that require a human to be involved. Those rarely if ever occur.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

hajxg wrote: post #6
pjmlp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than Chrome will ever be.

That's open to discussion. Even if Chrome sends your data to Google (and it probably sends more data than Firefox), at least you know the data is being received by Google and not by unrelated third parties, like when Mozilla sent full URL history of some users to an advertisement company: https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i...

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by asark »

user17843 wrote: post #44

When it comes to dependence on ad-tech money, the writing is on the wall: > Cost per click on Google properties — which roughly measures the amount Alphabet charges advertisers for each ad served on its web sites — dropped 29 percent from last year and 9 percent from last quarter, which might be alarming investors concerned that Google’s pricing power for ads is eroding. [1] Additionally, Firefox is losing users, aro…

My greatest hope at this point is that some small group survives whatever happens and becomes the new Firefox, like Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox did with the original Mozilla. Maybe the Servo team?

Mozilla has seemed way too big to me for the actual useful development they accomplish (which is quite a bit! But the company's giant...) for years, and this move stinks of "death spiral" :-/

[EDIT] and Firefox has been the new Mozilla browser since, what, 2.0? Bloated and slow. The original was so easy to sell to friends and family in no small part because it was snappy and light, even on early 2000s/late 90s (still-running desktops from a few years earlier) hardware.

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

#95

Post by noelsusman »

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…

You really want Firefox to release a paid web browser that can't search the Internet out of the box?

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

#97

Post by ufo »

Spivak wrote: post #90
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 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 spen…

No search engines installed by default seems strange. It is much easier to switch or remove search engines than to add them.

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

#98

Post by lightbritefight »

maxsilver wrote: post #46
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 generally agree with this (FOSS fans can be wildly too demanding, especially for the tiny amount of cash donated) But is the comment above really too high a standard? If a paid version of Firefox doesn't (1) at least strip the adware out, and (2) actually fund Firefox development, then what would even be the point? If you want to blanket donate to everything Mozilla, you can already do that today. https://donate.mo…

Its pretty out there to expect to dictate a companies budget because you opted to buy a product from them.

Will you only buy a big Mac if McDonalds commits the money to ball pit maintaine only?

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

#100

Post by Wowfunhappy »

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 would gladly pay for your #2 ("Firefox with no strings attached"), and not even as a charitable donation. I just want something like that for personal use.
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