81–90 of 222 posts
I strongly dislike the idea. It reduces deep knowledge to people who can pay for it. The web should be open for anyone. (yeah, Its already not like this, I know)
With all the uncountable billions of dollars in the banks of Apple, Microsoft, Google etc, none of them can manage to come up with documentation to compete with MDN which has to go freemium to be viable. Presumably that’s because they can’t link your identity to it or something, making it nit worthwhile doing. Apple: “we’re a hardware company, it’s not our job to document the web” Microsoft: “Internet Explorer failed…
It was a concious decision in 2017 to close Google's and Microsoft's web documentation portals so that MDN can be a unified source of truth: https://www.zdnet.com/article/developers-rejoice-microsoft-g...
At first glance, this feels a little distasteful. I've always thought of the MDN docs like Wikipedia; a non-profit public resource. Attempting to monetize it feels... wrong somehow. So long as the docs themselves remain under CC-BY-SA though guess it's not really a problem. The premium features they currently offer seem reasonable, and if things ever get too out of hand the community could always just move to another…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a concious decision in 2017 to close Google's and Microsoft's web documentation portals so that MDN can be a unified source of truth: https://www.zdnet.com/article/developers-rejoice-microsoft-g...
I wonder if MDN would be better served by branching out of Mozilla's grasp and becoming its own independent MDN Web Fondation or something. Mozilla seems to have a poor track record of maintaining anything as we saw when they fired most of the people working on MDN and other engineers despite being able to sell licenses to special editions of Firefox or other things like email, the whole non-profit Mozilla vs for pro…
In 2021, there is not a chance in hell that any significant number of people are going to pay money for their web browser. At best (and this is very optimistic) it might make a few million dollars from dedicated HN-types, which is nowhere close to what Google gives them.
I actually would pay money for a Mozilla-branded email service, but running an email service isn't a walk in the park, and I expect all of the typical people would be complaining about Mozilla spending time and money on something that isn't Firefox, regardless of whether it's profitable (see also: all the complaining about Pocket).
Honestly, I wish that Mozilla had acquired Scroll (rather than Twitter) and started pushing it harder. That would be very in-line with their goals as an organization, and might eventually become a significant revenue source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A paywall shuts out financially disadvantaged groups and limits the circulation of knowledge. Donations don’t, however annoying the banners are. Whether overly abundant donations are misallocated is a completely orthogonal issue. Note that I’m not saying we are entitled to anything; but slapping the MDN brand on a premium subscription service does tarnish the original brand a little.
On the other hand a paywall may mean that people writing content are the one that gets the money, which creates an healthier ecosystem that doesn't depend on donation of money or time (as opposed to wikipedia). Wikipedia misallocating funds does tarnish the original brand a lot, especially when most people that contribute content are doing it for free.
Which has nothing to do the donation model.
Wikimedia can pay full time content writers if they want to.
Mozilla can also use the subscription income to pay CEO comp if they want to.
Allocation of funds has close to nothing to do with the acquisition of funds, unless the acquisition comes with a specific mandate, which neither Wikipedia donations nor the subscription service here has.
At first glance, this feels a little distasteful. I've always thought of the MDN docs like Wikipedia; a non-profit public resource. Attempting to monetize it feels... wrong somehow. So long as the docs themselves remain under CC-BY-SA though guess it's not really a problem. The premium features they currently offer seem reasonable, and if things ever get too out of hand the community could always just move to another…
I don't really understand how offering better content against money is worse than asking for money regularly like Wikipedia does (especially when they seem to just consume more and more money).
I strongly dislike the idea. It reduces deep knowledge to people who can pay for it. The web should be open for anyone. (yeah, Its already not like this, I know)
As far as I understand, the MDN documenting the standard (HTML5, CSS, etc.) will stay freely accessible as it is. I prefer this than having trackers & ads on the site... which would be completely contrary to their values anyway.
For now. Once you let the monetization genie out of the bottle, Death by a Thousand MBA's is almost certain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really understand how offering better content against money is worse than asking for money regularly like Wikipedia does (especially when they seem to just consume more and more money).
Having a paid option disincentives improvement of the non-paid option.
I strongly dislike the idea. It reduces deep knowledge to people who can pay for it. The web should be open for anyone. (yeah, Its already not like this, I know)