5 ms·

There will be tons of people who will rightly rake Mozilla over the coals for this so I don't need to do it. That being said I honestly feel for Mozilla in som

There will be tons of people who will rightly rake Mozilla over the coals for this so I don't need to do it. That being said I honestly feel for Mozilla in some way. Making a browser as your primary product is just not profitable without monetizing your userbase in some form or fashion and it takes a shit ton of work to keep it modern and secure. They will get dragged through the mud no matter what they try. People still rag on them for accepting money from Google to be the default search engine.

errantmind 5y ago
It would be plenty profitable without their organizational bloat, especially if they refocused on what their actual users want instead of other initiatives. How? donations. Look how much money Wikipedia generates in donations every year without selling out their users. Even a small fraction of this amount should be plenty to pay competitive salaries to the Firefox dev team, but the Firefox development team is a small fraction of their org.
- account42 5y ago
  Exactly, Firefox development should not be run like a for-profit corporation. Besides individual donations, they should try to get funding from pro-privacy governments.
Pooge 5y ago
> Making a browser as your primary product is just not profitable without monetizing your userbase in some form or fashion and it takes a shit ton of work to keep it modern and secure. Then why can I not purchase Mozilla merch? They shutdown or abandoned some of their most interesting services (MDN and Send, for example), but kept developing unneeded products : (1) VPN, which is just a layer over Mullvad that makes it worse and (2) Lockwise which is much better replaced with almost any alternative password manager (like KeePassXC and the browser add-on if you really need it). Of course, they weren't wrong for at least trying, but then why not make it part of a pool of products that only premium users can access? For example, make it so that only Premium users can upload to Send. But no, all we get is just a sh*t VPN. Mozilla doesn't want your money, and they're going to die for it.
- lolinder 5y ago
  The VPN is garbage, but they did end up killing Lockwise. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-of-support-firefox-lockwise https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-of-support-firefox-...
  - gruez 5y ago
    >killing Lockwise. but the functionality is already built into the browser of the respective platforms?
- BoysenberryPi 5y ago
  How is the VPN bad? If I recall, it's just Mullvad with Firefox branding.
  - wford7 5y ago
    When I tried it, it flat out didn't work. Zero issues with Mullvad itself.
    - BoysenberryPi 5y ago
      I used it for a few months and I did have a few intermittent issues but it worked for the most part
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    I find it disappointing. For whatever reason, Mozilla VPN is not available in my country. And they don't support anonymous cash payments, like Mullvad does. It's more expensive than Mullvad, except at the 12 month plan. So what's the point? It's strictly inferior to Mullvad.
account42 5y ago
> That being said I honestly feel for Mozilla in some way. Making a browser as your primary product is just not profitable without monetizing your userbase in some form or fashion and it takes a shit ton of work to keep it modern and secure. Why does it need to be profitable? Firefox is owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, the corp is only there to help develop it. If the corp can't work without making the browser work then the foundation should reconsider if the corp is a good idea. Unfortunately, the leadership of the foundation and the corp are not separate enough so they cannot effectively push for the interests of the foundation.
notyourday 5y ago
Rubbish. Mozilla would have zero issues getting 10 million users who would pay $100/year for it. Of course it would mean that it will have to become a product company rather than another bored housewives club masquerading as a software company with some software engineers working for it.
- shishy 5y ago
  > Mozilla would have zero issues getting 10 million users who would pay $100/year for it Call me a pessimist but I doubt this. Most people don't mind ads, and when you couple that with the vast number of free browser alternatives, I doubt so many people would pay (and even if they got some, I'd expect churn to be high too).
  - notyourday 5y ago
    Quite literally every single company with aspirations would immediately subscribe to it because absolutely no one wants their company information being leaked out to Google or Facebook or anyone else if they do not absolutely have to. Right now there is no such option.
    - dralley 5y ago
      OpenSSL begs to differ.
      - notyourday 5y ago
        OpenSSL is not a product.
- kmlx 5y ago
  > Mozilla would have zero issues getting 10 million users who would pay $100/year for it. why would anyone pay for a browser when all the rest of them are free?
  - lawn 5y ago
Kenji 5y ago
amatecha 5y ago
I mean, there are tons of massively successful free (beer and liberty) software that have been around for decades. Why does Mozilla need Meta's or Google's money? Why have other free software products (thinking of OSes like FreeBSD and OpenBSD here) had active, high-quality development for decades without resorting to harvesting user data for profit? Isn't Mozilla a non-profit corporation? Hell, their website's title is "Internet for people, not profit", so what's happening here? And like someone else raised, why isn't there Mozilla and Firefox official swag?!
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  Mozilla can follow FreeBSD and OpenBSD's example and achieve a marketshare just as negligible as theirs. And just like FreeBSD and OpenBSD, Mozilla can wave goodbye to official support by any major consumer service or software. Mozilla doesn't have normal swag but they sell Mozilla VPN. You can also donate directly to the foundation. The lack of gear is a little weird though because they used to have a gear store but they shut it down. I suspect not enough gear was being sold to be worth the trouble of selling official gear.
- dralley 5y ago
  Those projects are funded by engineers from Netflix and Netapp who do make plenty of money off that software. Nobody does the same with Firefox. Really the only prominent external contributor (that I know of at least) is Martin Stransky of Red Hat who does a lot of the Linux maintainence.

errantmind 5y ago

It would be plenty profitable without their organizational bloat, especially if they refocused on what their actual users want instead of other initiatives. How? donations. Look how much money Wikipedia generates in donations every year without selling out their users. Even a small fraction of this amount should be plenty to pay competitive salaries to the Firefox dev team, but the Firefox development team is a small fraction of their org.

account42 5y ago
Exactly, Firefox development should not be run like a for-profit corporation. Besides individual donations, they should try to get funding from pro-privacy governments.

Pooge 5y ago

> Making a browser as your primary product is just not profitable without monetizing your userbase in some form or fashion and it takes a shit ton of work to keep it modern and secure. Then why can I not purchase Mozilla merch? They shutdown or abandoned some of their most interesting services (MDN and Send, for example), but kept developing unneeded products : (1) VPN, which is just a layer over Mullvad that makes it worse and (2) Lockwise which is much better replaced with almost any alternative password manager (like KeePassXC and the browser add-on if you really need it). Of course, they weren't wrong for at least trying, but then why not make it part of a pool of products that only premium users can access? For example, make it so that only Premium users can upload to Send. But no, all we get is just a sh*t VPN. Mozilla doesn't want your money, and they're going to die for it.

lolinder 5y ago
The VPN is garbage, but they did end up killing Lockwise. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-of-support-firefox-lockwise https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-of-support-firefox-...
- gruez 5y ago
  >killing Lockwise. but the functionality is already built into the browser of the respective platforms?
BoysenberryPi 5y ago
How is the VPN bad? If I recall, it's just Mullvad with Firefox branding.
- wford7 5y ago
  When I tried it, it flat out didn't work. Zero issues with Mullvad itself.
  - BoysenberryPi 5y ago
    I used it for a few months and I did have a few intermittent issues but it worked for the most part
- foxfluff 5y ago
  I find it disappointing. For whatever reason, Mozilla VPN is not available in my country. And they don't support anonymous cash payments, like Mullvad does. It's more expensive than Mullvad, except at the 12 month plan. So what's the point? It's strictly inferior to Mullvad.

account42 5y ago

> That being said I honestly feel for Mozilla in some way. Making a browser as your primary product is just not profitable without monetizing your userbase in some form or fashion and it takes a shit ton of work to keep it modern and secure. Why does it need to be profitable? Firefox is owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, the corp is only there to help develop it. If the corp can't work without making the browser work then the foundation should reconsider if the corp is a good idea. Unfortunately, the leadership of the foundation and the corp are not separate enough so they cannot effectively push for the interests of the foundation.

notyourday 5y ago

Rubbish. Mozilla would have zero issues getting 10 million users who would pay $100/year for it. Of course it would mean that it will have to become a product company rather than another bored housewives club masquerading as a software company with some software engineers working for it.

shishy 5y ago
> Mozilla would have zero issues getting 10 million users who would pay $100/year for it Call me a pessimist but I doubt this. Most people don't mind ads, and when you couple that with the vast number of free browser alternatives, I doubt so many people would pay (and even if they got some, I'd expect churn to be high too).
- notyourday 5y ago
  Quite literally every single company with aspirations would immediately subscribe to it because absolutely no one wants their company information being leaked out to Google or Facebook or anyone else if they do not absolutely have to. Right now there is no such option.
  - dralley 5y ago
    OpenSSL begs to differ.
    - notyourday 5y ago
      OpenSSL is not a product.
kmlx 5y ago
> Mozilla would have zero issues getting 10 million users who would pay $100/year for it. why would anyone pay for a browser when all the rest of them are free?
- lawn 5y ago

Kenji 5y ago

amatecha 5y ago

I mean, there are tons of massively successful free (beer and liberty) software that have been around for decades. Why does Mozilla need Meta's or Google's money? Why have other free software products (thinking of OSes like FreeBSD and OpenBSD here) had active, high-quality development for decades without resorting to harvesting user data for profit? Isn't Mozilla a non-profit corporation? Hell, their website's title is "Internet for people, not profit", so what's happening here? And like someone else raised, why isn't there Mozilla and Firefox official swag?!

themacguffinman 5y ago
Mozilla can follow FreeBSD and OpenBSD's example and achieve a marketshare just as negligible as theirs. And just like FreeBSD and OpenBSD, Mozilla can wave goodbye to official support by any major consumer service or software. Mozilla doesn't have normal swag but they sell Mozilla VPN. You can also donate directly to the foundation. The lack of gear is a little weird though because they used to have a gear store but they shut it down. I suspect not enough gear was being sold to be worth the trouble of selling official gear.
dralley 5y ago
Those projects are funded by engineers from Netflix and Netapp who do make plenty of money off that software. Nobody does the same with Firefox. Really the only prominent external contributor (that I know of at least) is Martin Stransky of Red Hat who does a lot of the Linux maintainence.