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Comment by drusepth | Hacker News Reader

I would wager most people that offer to buy software "one off" typically underestimate their lifetime worth earned through other means like ads and data sales.

Would you pay a one-time $10 for a lifetime Firefox license? $100? $1,000? $10,000?

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Last time I checked, Mozilla's ARPU was less than $5 pa. I think many of us would pay a multiple of that per annum _iff_ it went towards Firefox and not whatever project/cause of the week that Mozilla has undertaken.

You're overestimating people's willingness to pay for software when free and arguably better alternatives are available. Preferring Firefox to free Chromium alternatives requires a level of nuance and tech literacy that most people will never have, and even with that tech literacy, people may still prefer Chromium.

You're basically talking about asking for donations from people that prefer to ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.

You are forgetting that Firefox has been around until now with no profit except Google's bribe.

They could've at least tried to sell a paid version - what's the worst that could happen? Any sale would be on top of what they're currently earning per download, i.e. pure "profit" that could be reinvested in the product.

It never was an "either/or" proposition.

They did try some extra services, such as VPN or Pocket. I think at this point a Pocket subscription is how one can fund Firefox.

But indeed, even if they ensure that donations go towards Firefox development, instead of other crap, that would be a step forward.

Pocket and the other Mozilla services fund Mozilla, not Firefox directly. My company uses Firefox professionally and we'd buy per-seat enterprise licences if they existed, iff they funded Firefox development.

We have no interest in funding Mozilla, whose manifesto barely mentions Firefox and who has now decided that AI is their focus.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/manifesto/details/

> They could've at least tried to sell a paid version - what's the worst that could happen? Any sale would be on top of what they're currently earning per download, i.e. pure "profit" that could be reinvested in the product.

Assumedly, a paid version would exclude some features that Mozilla is otherwise monetizing through (like selling your data). This doesn't seem like sales "on top of" what they're already earning, but rather an alternative that replaces (at least some of) existing monetization routes.

Kagi, a search engine with countless free alternatives, starts at $5/month.

The people who care are willing to pay.

Is Kagi making money? I know they exist, but are they paying their own bills or living off of investors. (I couldn't find a direct statement, but their timeline implies they could be)

Today, who knows. However they were profitable in May 2024: https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi#:~:text=We%20are...

Have you not heard about how successful Thunderbird's funding campaign had been? The reasons as I see them are simple: they ask for money directly, and use it for developing a good email client, not for fighting the boogeyman of the week (and/or chasing the latest fad).

> Preferring Firefox to free Chromium alternatives requires a level of nuance and tech literacy that most people will never have

I think it's already the case that only tech literate people prefer Firefox over Chrome or Edge (I bet a significant part of users don't even know about Chromium or what's the difference from Chrome). So putting a price on Firefox wouldn't change this in a meaningful way. The real question is how much tech literate people would be ready to pay, most of the users will stay on Chrome/Edge for the foreseeable future.

ARPU isn't a great metric here since it's revenue averaged across all users. In my experience, the vast majority of free software users sit below ARPU and are hoisted up by whales -- who are also the main reason one-off pricing like this doesn't typically exist: Mozilla would be fine if most users just paid ARPU (in fact, they'd probably make a slight profit if they could get a higher-than-industry-average free->paid conversion rate...), but they'd quickly lose their cash cows when their whales suddenly only paid ARPU instead of the 10x, 100x, 1000x, etc they already "pay".

Without thinking much about it, $60 / yr seems reasonable to me.

I never click on any ads, so while I'm sure I contribute to Firefox's revenue as another pair of eyeballs, I don't deliver any end value to their ad-biz end customers.

> I never click on any ads [snip] I don't deliver any end value to their ad-biz end customers

This is a complete misunderstanding of the value of ads. Clicks are of course the most valuable signal, but any ad seen is valuable. If clicks were all that mattered TV would never had ads, nor would newspapers.

Many ads are about awareness not buy now. Ford/Toyota... doesn't expect you to buy a car the day/week you see an ad, they just want you to think of them when you buy a car. They also want to slowly drive discomfort with whatever car you already drive so that eventually you do buy a new one despite having on that works. (or if you don't have a car they want to be sure you are reminded how much freedom to go places you are giving up - without concern for the costs of having a car)

This logic applies more to Google than Mozilla. Their mission is (or ought to be) to cover development and hosting costs associated with Firefox, not to milk users for all they are worth on the ad market.

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