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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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People won't pay for that. Or, at least, not enough people.
We literally saw this play out with media. Everyone hated cable tv. Suddenly we had netflix (2.0) where we can "pay for what I want". Except... then everyone got in on that because apparently we want things beyond Netflix Original Pictures and whatever they could get cheap out of Korea.
And now? "Ugh, there are juts so many services. I need like twelve. I wish there was one big bundle of everything".
Not exactly the same but a premium browser (that, again, isn't going to make anywhere near enough money to fund development) would be dropped even faster than the guy whose patreon is still "pay one dollar per episode"
What about Wikipeida? Internet Archive? All of the products/services that live on kickstarter/patreon/gofundme/etc?
People are more than willing to pay for the things that they love, but Mozilla knows that people wouldn't be willing to pay enough to continue floating the Executive salaries. That's why they don't transition.
The orgs that are heavily dependent on federal funding as well as major corporate investors? That run the websites that the vast majority of people just think is free?
Again, we've seen how this plays out with Patreon et al. Everyone says it is totally viable because the ridiculously popular people make bank. And as more and more celebrities flock to it, there is less and less money for the "small creators" and so forth.
Also, Firefox and Thunderbird are backed by the Mozilla Foundation which is already doing exactly that.
I feel like I'm mis-understanding your argument. Are you saying that Mozilla can't do things that other groups are already successfully doing, because "The popular people make too much money" doing it, and "They are already getting that via the Mozilla Foundation"?
That doesn't make sense to me.
The point is that they are already doing what those orgs are doing. They are dealing with a userbase that doesn't want to give them money by getting large amounts from special interest groups and corporations.
Which is why the Wikimedia (?) Foundation pushed REAL hard for AI until basically the entire editorbase told them to fuck off.
But hey? There is obviously infinite money so yeah, I am sure if Mozilla drops all those corporate interests and just switches to an optional patreon they would have even MORE money than they already do and would have no need to placate said special interests.
The userbase does want to give them money though. I constantly hear people say that they want to donate to Firefox, but Mozilla doesn't let them do that.
Also, I never said that Patreon would give them more money. It would be less money, but it would be more effective, as they could finally ditch the worthless exectutives that keep draining Mozilla's resources.