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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

#41

Post by sjwright »

pixelrevision wrote: post #38
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…

Just donate instead and let them know you want all your money to go straight into Firefox if possible: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/

Insert standard response here that donations to Mozilla Foundation do not go towards software development.

While Firefox does produce revenue — chiefly through search partnerships — this earned income is largely reinvested back into the Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation’s education and advocacy efforts, which span several continents and reach millions of people, are supported by philanthropic donations.

— https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/faq#item_8

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

#42

Post by a_imho »

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?

Sounds like a good option to have around, but gives off a protection racket vibe to remove all the crapware included.

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

#43

Post by osrec »

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).

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

#44

Post by user17843 »

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, around 50,000 - 100,000 per day. [2]

They now want to add all kinds of additional stuff in order to make money. For a browser this is a death sentence. A browser can not be more than a browser, and ad tiles are the only practical way of making money next to search engine deals. While a pro-version of Firefox is certainly an interesting idea which can be sold to a tech-savvy minority, it neither can diversify their revenue in a meaningful way, nor is clear yet whether Mozilla is going to offer a paid Firefox version, or simply tries to upsell a software bundle branded with their name.

Mozilla paid around 30 million to aquire Pocket (one of their supposed foundations for making money), but there isn't any data to show whether they are profitable with it. Given the low number of ads in Pocket, they probably aren't profitable. In 2017, according to their financial report, they only made 2,5 million with Pocket ads.

Opera is the only other major browser that has to survive without having a tech giant behind them. They do everything they can to make money with Opera. And it has boiled down to ads in the start page and licensing. There’s nothing more you can do.

Opera is surviving on three kind of deals: [3]

– search (ca 60%)

– ads in start page

– licensing deals on mobile phones

Licensing is off limits to mozilla because they have lost the mobile market.

So all that is left is ads on the start page. Its that simple. There’s also a lesson to learn for Mozilla from the time Opera abandoned Presto: [4]

> “Because of our switch to the Blink engine, our retention rate on desktop users is much better now. This is because most websites work in Opera since we’re using the same engine as Google. We think we’ve become more relevant after we moved over to the Blink platform, and more companies now start to work with us,” Boilesen said.

> “We’ve got twice as many developers on the desktop browser now than we had with Presto, because all [our] resources went into maintaining Presto. The only error we made with Presto was that we kept it too long. Our change to Blink was because we wanted to get on the offensive with regards to innovation, we used too many resources to keep Presto competitive."

There are only two ways. You either stay innovative and keep up with the times, or you downsize and develop for a small niche group. Mozilla is doing neither.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/alphabet-earnings-q4-2018.ht...

[2] https://data.firefox.com

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/02/browser-maker-opera-has-fi...

[4] https://www.zdnet.com/article/show-me-the-money-how-opera-st...

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

#45

Post by zrobotics »

libeclipse wrote: post #24

A centralized VPN solution for all users is a terrible idea, and what is "secure cloud storage" going to offer that Dropbox doesn't? I understand that developing a browser is expensive work and Mozilla need money to do it. I support them in this effort. But honestly no ones gonna buy this

I personally plan to, even though I run my own VPN & already pay for Dropbox. I definitely won't use the VPN, if the cloud storage looks decent I'll likely use it (since I already use encrypted volumes that I store in Dropbox, I only need to trust they won't delete/lose them).

I already donate to mozilla, I guess people have forgotten the web was during the days IE was dominant. I'm frankly shocked that so many web developers seem to be fine only supporting Chrome, at least those were the sentiments I was hearing when Edge went to chromium.

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

#46

Post by maxsilver »

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 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.mozilla.org/en-US/

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

#47

Post by m-p-3 »

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'd add builtin Tor support too, as the form of another mode (below Private Window mode)

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

#48

Post by sjwright »

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…

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 emotional. It's a service run by Mozilla just like Firefox Sync and others. I agree it would be neater for Pocket to be implemented as a plug-in, but you could say that about a dozen or more Firefox features besides Pocket, so why single that one out? And really, why do you give a shit how Pocket is implemented if you don't use it anyway? Just switch it off.

Firefox Studies is a mechanism that is in principle no different to automatic updates. Studies is functionally less invasive than automatic updates and exists only because Studies allows for progressive roll-outs, rapid roll-outs and rapid roll-backs. Don't like it? Just switch it off.

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

#49

Post by yorwba »

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?

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

#50

Post by moonlit »

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 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.

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