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by seanw444 1214 days ago
Well the whole point was that there wasn't supposed to be any money in building it. That's why Mozilla is a nonprofit (in theory at least). Originally the idea was that enough companies and individuals would donate to support its development as a common interest, because obviously people want a good private browser, right? Now the status quo has shifted to a big corporation making money off of peoples' browsing habits via closed-source components, and then paying the nonprofit to have a consistently worse browser to prevent a full monopoly.

Mozilla now is best described as a vassal.
1 comments
Laaas 1214 days ago
Much in this world would be better if we donated to what ought be a public service. If browser vendors didn't have to chase profits, perhaps they wouldn't be so user-hostile, and the same principle applies to most software I'd say.

That we don't have a world where this is possible is in my opinion both a cultural and political failure. What if every person on HN gave 1% of their income to various open source projects they use? What if we made this a cultural norm, and you'd be shamed if you didn't?

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seanw444 1214 days ago
That's my opinion. We need more of a culture of giving back. I dislike proprietary software, but I have no problem paying for software.

For example: there are several apps on F-Droid that give you full functionality (even if there is a paywall for those features on the Play Store version), and all they do is say "hey, this took my time to develop, and I'd appreciate if you could throw some bucks my way." I enjoy contributing more than what they'd charge with a paywall in those cases.

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