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Comment by The_Colonel | Hacker News Reader

> Browser development is not that expensive. Developing of Web-Engines is the dark part that sucks all the money.

Of course, but then there's enough Chromium skins, no?

Without independent browser engine you have no clout in defining and ratifying standard (as MS recently found out) which means giving Google full control.

> Mozilla for some unknown reasons hasn't made any serious attempts in the last 15+ years to get any alternative income, instead it was satisfied with being feeding on google and yahoo, while wasting money on some obvious dead projects.

They had some feeble attempts which largely failed.

Mozilla's main expertise is still browser technology based and it is probably difficult to monetize it.

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> Of course, but then there's enough Chromium skins, no?

Most of them are more than skins. A browser is the interface and whole workflow, not just the way the website is displayed.

> as MS recently found out

What do you mean?

> They had some feeble attempts which largely failed.

They had no SERIOUS attempt. Well until now at least. They did some half-assed with pocket and now VPN-reselling, but never touched real business.

> Most of them are more than skins. A browser is the interface and whole workflow, not just the way the website is displayed.

The user interface is just minor part of the browser.

Mozilla's mission is to "free the web". Something like that can't be done with slightly sleeker UI on top of monopolistic rendering engine. You need to have an influence on all levels.

> as MS recently found out

I've read it this week in some interview with the FF developers that ever since MS gave up on homegrown Edge engine and adopted Chromium/Blink their voice on the standards committee is weak and lacks clout.

No wonder. It's google who keeps strict control over chromium/blink. MS can discuss, propose, even send PRs, but it's google who will decide what gets in and what doesn't.

> They had no SERIOUS attempt. Well until now at least. They did some half-assed with pocket and now VPN-reselling, but never touched real business.

Well yeah. But it just sounds a bit simplistic to say "just earn that $500 million profits somewhere so you can sponsor your side project Firefox".

> Mozilla's mission is to "free the web". Something like that can't be done with slightly sleeker UI on top of monopolistic rendering engine. You need to have an influence on all levels.

That depends on behaviour.

> I've read it this week in some interview with the FF developers that ever since MS gave up on homegrown Edge engine and adopted Chromium/Blink their voice on the standards committee is weak and lacks clout.

As if they had much to say before... But that's the point, your influence depends on what you do and who is backing you. Chrome-Edge is just too small and Microsoft is not doing much to build their influence at the moment.

> Well yeah. But it just sounds a bit simplistic to say "just earn that $500 million profits somewhere so you can sponsor your side project Firefox".

If you have a budget of some hundred million dollars and a very big and enthuastic community, then it's very easy to make money. Even having enough money at all can make you money, though this might be ruled out for Mozilla because of their legal status.

> If you have a budget of some hundred million dollars and a very big and enthuastic community, then it's very easy to make money.

Please send some of those "3 easy steps to start earning $500 million a year" to the Mozilla, they could use them.

> If you have a budget of some hundred million dollars and a very big and enthuastic community, then it's very easy to make money. Even having enough money at all can make you money, though this might be ruled out for Mozilla because of their legal status.

Do you have ideas that can help Mozilla make money? Preferably without abandoning Firefox on the way?

I'm not OP, (and people at Mozilla have probably already considered this), but why doesn't Mozilla try a far more aggressive Wikipedia-like donation campaign?

Admittedly:

1. Wikipedia has more "users" than Firefox.

2. Despite this, the donations Wikimedia receives are only about a fifth of Mozilla's budget.

However, people use their browser far more than they use any single website and hence might be more willing to donate more to Mozilla. (For example, I love Wikipedia, but I've gotten even more value from Firefox.)

Overall, this would be unlikely to cover all of Mozilla's expenses, but I'd also be surprised if donations (after such a campaign) would be less than 10% of current revenue; in any case it'd be a valuable source of diversification.

It's possible that the legal relation between the Foundation and the Corporation doesn't make this possible.

3. If wikipedia disappeared, there's no immediate, obvious, free alternative.

Encyclopedia Britannica[0] isn't free ("libre"), but it is now free (gratis). Arguably, being libre isn't quite as indispensable in the case of cultural/educational works as it is for software.

[0] https://www.britannica.com/

It's only gratis because Wikipedia exists. If Wikipedia were to disappear you'd see a paywall on EB within minutes.

Doesn't the same also partially hold for Firefox and Chrome, though?

They wouldn't start charging for Chrome, as that's not their business model, but they might move part of their development out of (open source) Chromium and into (closed source) Chrome or further curtail extensions (e.g. adblockers) etc.

No. Firefox vs Chrome is a completely different comparison than Wikipedia vs Encyclopedia Britannica.

The first two are browsers; software, the second two are stores of knowledge.

Browsers have been free for the longest time now, they are a commodity; the 'for pay' browser market died a long time ago. Possibly that was a mistake but that's where we are now and the parties that supply browers (Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, Google to name the bulk) all try to win marketshare because they benefit from having more users. Putting up a barrier will automatically play into the hands of the opponents.

Wikipedia is a free and much larger alternative to EB, which historically was very expensive. If Wikipedia goes away there is no longer any incentive for EB to have a free tier, which is the one thing they can do to erode support for Wikipedia a little bit.

I'm not disagreeing that (in these scenarios) EB would probably become paid-for, while Chrome never would. I'm just arguing that Chrome would become even more privacy- and user-unfriendly, which is the approximate equivalent of EB putting up paywalls. (Is paying with your attention and privacy better or worse than paying directly with money?)

Apple would continue offering a relatively privacy-friendly alternative — but would require you to switch OS to use it; Microsoft might fork Chromium, but I fear that they'd only pay lip-service to privacy.

Obviously these analyses are complicated by the fact that in both cases the forces that helped create Wikipedia/Firefox wouldn't disappear. If Wikimedia died, then people would put up their Wikipedia dumps online in their own MediaWiki instances. If Mozilla died, then people would either try to keep Firefox alive or try to maintain a set of privacy patches on Chromium. How successful they'd be is another matter...

Google has done that with Android, moving more APIs and features from the open-source AOSP core to the closed-source Google Play Services library. Google can then control which Android partners get permission to ship Google Play Services for a full-featured Android experience.

As more browsers move to a Chromium base, Google might have a similar push to move more of Google's value-add out of the open-source Chromium core to the closed-source Chrome product.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Main_Page

IIRC it started as a fork of Wikipedia from a few years ago, so no idea of its currently quality, but it exists.

Thankfully, they saw this coming, so wikipedia's licensing allows you to re-host the entire site. Useful if they ever turn crooked.

Stack overflow has the same sort of setup, for the same reason. (though, that site is far more likely to die/get perverted)

Yoric:

Plenty have been voiced over the last decade. The problem is that none of the observations are ever received in earnest. Particularly starting in the Kovacs years and onwards, MoCo folks have adopted a default stance that if you're not within the figurative walls of @mozilla.com, then there's something you just don't understand as well as the anointed ones do. Meanwhile, none of the moves that the better-knowers have made have ever panned out. And in any discussion that does occur, there are all sorts of rhetorical tricks and intellectually dishonest maneuvers that are brought out to shut the conversation down. The Corporation's insistence on its own competence at this point is a lot like the "I have people skills!" scene from Office Space, only it's not a comedy and just depressing.

There's the separate matter, which is that Mozilla's problem isn't even a lack of money. Mozilla has money (and will continue to have money for at least some time). Mozilla's problem is its profligate spending and that it has chosen for itself a set of decisionmakers with Netscape-levels of ineptitude who can't be avoided.

If course correction is even possible at this point—and it's probably not—then the question is, who are the Hewitts and Blake Rosses and Ben Goodgers in 2020? Has Mozilla leadership even fostered an environment where those types can thrive? (Spoiler alert: the answer is no.)

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