It would e.g. take 33M users who agree to pay $5/mo for a Mozilla "support subscription" to collect $400M a year.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but when I do the math (33M x 5 x 12) I get $1.98B.
Maybe you meant $1/month?
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but when I do the math (33M x 5 x 12) I get $1.98B.
Maybe you meant $1/month?
The problem is that micropayments are not interesting for most news outlets: the friction of current solutions is high, the resulting revenue stream, unsteady. Monthly / yearly subscriptions bring a better revenue stream, and cost way less.
If micropayments were indeed zero-friction, and effectively zero-cost, maybe they'd be (reluctantly) integrated.
It makes sure that people who continue to use continue to pay. Upfront charges are often either too low with long term users free-riding or too high, in case the project is abandoned. Subscription makes it much more likely to price products correctly.
I could not disagree more. Subscriptions for software are a deeply unfair approach. Great for the companies, of course, but not for users.
A more fair approach is to charge for upgrades and support instead. At least that way, users only pay if/when they choose to obtain additional value.
If users want to stay on an old version, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Sure, there may be additional security considerations or missing functionality, but there's nothing wrong with a user making that choice.
It results in users having a broken experience or sites being very conservative in what features they use.
But the solution to this is to offer both forms, as several companies do.
Maybe we could go back to where people paid once and could pay separately for support?
This is a commitment to support the development, because the development should be oingoing. Not Netflix-style, but Patreon-style.
(Also see how JetBrains handles "subscriptions" to their closed-source software. Once you've paid, the version is forever yours. Updates are bought with some additional sums if desired.)
This simply does not exist for any software that is internet connected.
It's not feasible at all to call a browser "done" and leave it alone, so if you want one that's independent from adtech, a subscription is kind of your only option.