[dtech]

The thing is, you cannot pay for Firefox even if you wanted to*, so the assertion that people wouldn't pay is unproven (but has good circumstancial evidence). I'd still prefer they make a paid version without this crap.

* Donations to Mozilla go to a non profit which is separated from Firefox development and has questionable effectiveness in general

[poikroequ]

The reason many companies don't offer a paid option to remove tracking is it can be seen as an admission by the company that they know tracking is wrong to some extent. So these companies would rather just force it on everyone and pretend like there's nothing wrong with it.

[kredd]

After all these "I would pay for Firefox if I could" comments, it would be fun for Mozilla to start a Gofundme like page, where if it hits $300M (or whatever amount they're getting from Google per year) they'll make it an option, otherwise they'll go back to trying to find another revenue source.

It's very hard to believe that an average user would ever pay for a browser, when alternatives like Chrome and Safari exist. It's the same as paid email services, in my opinion. Like sure, there will be some segment of users who'll do it, and they'll probably get $10-20M/year if it offers some features free email services don't. But hitting that $100M through donations on a yearly basis would be hard when there are free equivalent alternatives.

[wizee]

Mozilla is like Wikipedia, where the vast majority of the funds they receive go to causes unrelated to development or maintenance of their core product (web browser or encyclopedia).

[lolinder]

For example, acquiring ad companies.

[dralley]

Mozilla Foundation did not acquire an ad company, and none of their dollars can be legally used to acquire and ad company. Once again, HNers fail to understand the difference between Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation, and conflate all their criticisms.

[lolinder]

I'm well aware of the convoluted corporate structure and that convoluted structure is one of my primary criticisms of Mozilla.

[lolinder]

You're attacking two strawmen:

1. The average user doesn't have to pay for the browser in a donation model, you just need enough users to feel passionately enough about it to fund it sufficiently to develop it.

2. No one is arguing that Mozilla should replace their revenue from Google overnight with donations. We're just asking that Mozilla give us the option to pay for Firefox already.

Another user (trying to demonstrate to me that donations would never be enough [0]) figured that if we assume a similar rate of donations as Thunderbird gets then Firefox would bring in $70m/year just in donations.

That is a heck of a lot of money. That funds 140 developers even at inflated Bay Area salaries, 280 developers if you're willing to branch out of the Bay and offer closer to $200k/year on average as a base salary (still an insanely high average rate in most of the country and the world). Even if you took a full 50% for general/administrative and overhead, that sum would still pay for 70 bay-area or 140 rest-of-the-world developers.

If Mozilla really does need more developers than that for Firefox specifically, then fine, they can keep accepting money from Google—no one is saying they should only be funded by donations. But that they don't even make it an option is frankly bizarre.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40901664

[Ferret7446]

You can, since Firefox is open source. Just hire a dev.

[pabs3]

For example, these folks:

https://www.igalia.com/