It’s not for a lack of trying on their part for sure, but it feels like just using their browser isn’t all there is to it any more
For someone that found Linux in the 90's and watched the birth of Mozilla from the ashes of Netscape, that's a very strange thing to read.
This site is not Slashdot, I know. It always had another kind of relation to business and money. But still...
I have no idea why Mozilla should need a business model. Much less I understand why should we think of one and agree on it.
How much money does it take to maintain a web browser? If it's a lot, maybe, just maybe, we should agree on a reduced feature set and refuse to use something more complex. Some people here talk about text mode browsers. I'm not so radical. Just keep it simple enough to be maintanable by a dozen of volunteers.
Isn’t the main problem that users are not willing to pay for the browser they use?
Google Chrome is probably maintained by much more than 12 people, so if we restrict Firefox to that, everyone is just going to move to Chrome anyways.
Because developers aren't free and "let's get money from Google searches" is great until Google decides not to fund a competitor any more.
Surely that's Firefox?
Giving up on that because it's 'too hard', without first proving they have an alternative? That would be insanely foolish. They may as well close up shop now if that's their plan.
It'd be really awesome if they could develop a search engine or phone (I know they tried) that had an open standards / web-compatible development kit.
I want an anti-Google / anti-Apple. Something we own and can extend. Something that doesn't sell our data.
I'd also like to see Mozilla doing lobbying. Partnering with the EFF. We've strayed so far from the bright and open Internet of the 90's and 00's. It's depressing to think about how locked up and proprietary it's all become.
I'll buy Mozilla / Firefox merch. I'll pay a subscription.
edit: Talk to Shuttleworth. Fold Ubuntu in. I'll buy a Mozilla phone and a Mozilla laptop.
Well... maybe not with that CEO salary.
Provide a development stack (they're experts at Web and Rust). Make themselves the go-to shop for developers in that realm.
Sell them on an OS and editor with support. Partner with Ubuntu. Hell, I would even reach out to Nadella and see if they'd be willing to work with Mozilla on hedging against Google. Mac is becoming locked down and kind of unpleasant to develop on/for. Mozilla could win this.
Block all the advertising and tracking. Build a Spotify-like news aggregation service you can access from your Mozilla subscription.
Build an email service like Hey and a file backup service like Dropbox. It's too bad Zoom bought Keybase, but perhaps Chris Coyne wants a new gig?
We should team up to beat FAAMG. Most of the FAAMG actors are actually quite damaging to open source despite benefiting from it greatly.
They neeed a good out of the park product in those markets to make any real headway. Too idealistic.
My only thought on this is that they should pivot to be like algolia , focus on Firefox being a reference implementation browser and seek their expertise to the other vendors, maybe. It’s one of the few verticals I can think of that would work strategically Without them having to pivot into things they have no experience with
Those are also services that groups are used to paying for already, which means if they could eat the start-up costs, even at a reduced scale, they could make a profit at even a slight premium for things that they already do very well, and go from there.
If they offered something like the services offered by mailbox.org, or Librem One? I'd switch my GMail account tomorrow, including the storage fees I'm paying on it, and would do it at triple the cost for not abusing my data. Hell, they already have the domain experience with their proximity to Thunderbird devs.