The thing with right to control, though, is that someone, somehow has to develop a browser and make ends meet.
(Cue complaints about it not being the right way to fund Firefox, because it’s not a pure donation. Before you go down that road, tell me: what evidence do you have that pure donations would get enough transactions to be worth the overhead? Have they ever worked at scale for any other software?)
I pay for lots of software I use, and do so happily if it delivers value — it would be extremely easy for me to justify paying for what's probably one of the apps I use the most. Why can't we pay for good browsers, that put the focus squarely on being the best tool to access the www? Why can't that money be used to hire back some of the talent Mozilla has been letting go? I say it elsewhere in this thread — Mozilla should let us pay for the bloody thing.
Make it open source, but have the official download for builds (and source code?[0]) be payed. Bonus points if the download bundle includes source code and a simplified build process.
[0] obviously it'll be mirrored in 2 seconds, but still.
I’m not sure what in my brain says “Telemetry? Absolutely not”, but that’s how it is for me (and why I don’t use the Developer Edition).
However, I respect the “Telemetry? Absolutely not” stance and can only hope and pray that Firefox PMs use telemetry as only ONE among a whole host of other signals to support decision-making.
Might as well just ask for donations.
The rest, outside of core, seem to write code as you mention. Product additions which most always give zero real value, no income, and even detract from the brand.
No, you can't maintain an entire modern browser (25 million lines of code) with 6 people.
You probably can't even maintain a complete multi-architecture, JIT-enabled Javascript engine with 6 people. Or GPU-accelerated rendering that works across thousands of hardware / software combinations. Much less that plus all the other things a browser has to do.
See the sections "How will my donation be used?" and "Don’t Mozilla products, like Firefox, earn income?" here: https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/faq/#item_8
No, but seriously, Mozilla — I'll pay you real dollars for this.
they fired a ton of engineering talent working on exciting tech (servo) to chase some bundled vpn rebrand. what a misguided move, like most everything they've done in non-engineering space. sad.
before, i would have donated hundreds or more if there was a way to pay directly for firefox and thunderbird. but not anymore.
at least the CEO's salary keeps going up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24563698
Unfortunately, there's no such option for Firefox.
I also find it very strange that so many people here disable telemetry. Really weakens complaints about removed features, if you're disabling the primary way that shows you're using it.
What's happening under the surface is that the project has reached the maximum complexity it ever can, after which it collapses being unable to maintain even low-maintanance features, let alone add new ones. Complexity unlike funding is fundamental, and just throwing money at it will not halt the process. Seeing rude obstructionist PR types showing up on bugzilla was the first outward facing symptom there was a cultural problem driven by an underlying material problem. An insider could probably tell you an even earlier warning sign.
As the project collapses it will grow tumors (eg Pocket). Totally random pieces of junk code which don't coherently belong to the base project. In the terminal stage it loses its ability to even remove features, or bolt on tumors. Tweaking the logo, churning the UI, and redesigning the website are the only actions the zombie project is physically able to take. So that's what it does.
How do you propose notifications for new YouTube videos or tweets to work then?
Do yt, twitter really have to live in the browser?