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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

I wish that firefox would start charging. Something like a $100 for a 1000 seat license or something similar.

Why?

Because when I go to one of my bosses and say "I think we try and transition away from IE. Here, this is Firefox, it is free and it is wonderful", their reaction is "Free?!" and visions of shitty freeware from the 90s fill their heads.

In order to keep us geeks happy, they could offer a source distribution that needs to be compiled or has some trivial dependency that needs to be installed.

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The problem is that, as soon as they start charging, they open themselves up to liability. That's actually exactly what your bosses want: someone to take the liability.

Does Microsoft take liability for any of their software?

The Windows XP EULA states "Except for any refund elected by Microsoft, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, if the Software does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty, and, to the maximum extent allowed by applicable law, even if any remedy fails of its essential purpose."

It goes on to state that the only remedy offered is your money back. Mozilla also offers your money back, all $0 of it.

And yet all Software needs to be upgraded before Microsoft stops "supporting" it. In 10 years of using their software in the industry I have never had any actual support from Microsoft.

I bet you've applied a service pack or a hotfix tho'.

just because the contract says that doesn't necessarily make it legally enforceable. plenty of contracts disclaim all implied warranties, yet there are plenty of situations in which that disclaimer is not enforceable (and liability is).

Well, they want a business relationship. If I give you money for something, there is a social, legal and economic expectation that you have an obligation to give me whatever it is you took the money for.

Or, to flip it around, beggars can't be choosers, and since they're executives...

It wouldn't be a "seat license", it would be a redistribution fee or something. They really should have a version for businesses.

Actually, since it's legal, you could start your own company that sells Firefox to businesses. I think the only requirement is that you can't call it Firefox but have to call it something else (trademarks or something).

One could contract with Mozilla to become an "official support distributor" or something like that and obtain the rights to use the trademark, assuming Mozilla is agreed to such a deal, and I don't see why they wouldn't be, it only stands to improve adoption if the company offering support is legit.

Also, I'm not sure if you're right or not. From what I remember, you can only call the product Firefox if the code matches verbatim; Debian &c. apply custom patches not included in Firefox proper and are therefore obliged to rebrand. If you used the Mozilla builds, are you sure this would apply? Curious here.

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