
The cult of the free must die - bpierre
https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2020/08/the_cult_of_the.html
======
corty
The author suggests getting donations to (partially) finance Firefox. That
would never work without changing the culture of Mozilla Corporation in a huge
way: Currently, they take every chance to annoy their users, break their
workflows, add new unnecessary but costly mistakes. They frivolously spend on
side-projects nobody needs. People would be very quick to cease donating if
they are being annoyed in such a way. The only reason people currently put up
with Mozilla's behaviour is because they didn't pay for the product.

Having people pay, even voluntarily, and having even a small reliance on those
payments would just kill Mozilla more quickly without a visible leadership
change first.

~~~
Semaphor
> They frivolously spend on side-projects nobody needs.

I’m curious, what unneeded side-projects do they have?

~~~
dandellion
The new crappy address bar that nobody asked for, pocket, hubs, three
different mobile browsers, some useless award and probably more that I don't
remember.

Also annoying is how they constantly kill useful features like RSS or bookmark
descriptions.

I use Firefox because I still like it better than Chrome and I like to support
free software, but it's obvious to me that Mozilla doesn't really care about
their users and they're too busy chasing shiny things. I expect they'll keep
losing market share until they become irrelevant and disappear.

~~~
thomasahle
Isn't pocket a sponsor of Mozilla? I always thought that was why it was there.

~~~
marcusverus
Pocket was a third party service when it became a default Firefox feature in
2015. Mozilla acquired it in 2017.[0] I could not find any data on what they
paid.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_\(service\))

------
senko
> Small company gives away software for free.

A company employing ~1000 people, with $500m+ revenue, is not a small company.
It's not even mid-sized. This is a large multinational, only seeming small
when compared with FAANG.

~~~
chii
revenue isn't a good measure of business size. a $500m revenue might translate
to very low "profit". Most size measurements will use owned asset value (or
market cap, which is a very rough guesstimate of the net present value of all
future profit of the company) as a measure, as it is more directly comparable
between different businesses.

Mozilla, is at best, a small-cap software company. Calling them mid-sized is
probably not wrong either, but would be closer to being wrong than right imho.

~~~
marvin
There is a definition in certain stock market indexes of a "small cap company"
that actually means "big company". Mozilla is one of those.

~~~
Rastonbury
You don't businesses worth single digit millions listing, its small cap in the
realm of public markets

------
senko
It boggles my mind that Mozilla didn't build an endownment with all the money
they've received in the past 10-15 years (mid-billions!). They could've been a
bit slimmer and slowly build an alternative revenue stream that would make
them much more resilient to shocks like these and, long-term, independent of
Google or other competitors' cooperation.

Looks like they spent like the money will be flowing forever.

~~~
chii
Interesting you bring this up - why don't normal businesses also setup
endowments like this?

How come i've only seen universities do this?

~~~
mschuster91
Because having "leftover cash" that is not immediately redistributed to
shareholders is seen as a Bad Thing (tm).

Because in the end, when shit hits the fan like with the 'rona, the government
will be conveniently pressurable to bail you out. Personally, I rather have
government bailouts than mass bankruptcies - but bailouts should come with
"strings attached" like, let's say, a requirement to always keep one year of
expenses at a reserve to avoid the need for future bailouts.

~~~
chii
> "leftover cash" that is not immediately redistributed to shareholders is
> seen as a Bad Thing (tm)

sort of a short sighted view if that's really the case - since the cash being
in the company's books, or in an endowment, is still value owned by the owner.
The small penalty of it being illiquid shouldnt be a problem.

~~~
thomasahle
I guess, from a shareholder perspective, why would I want my investment to
invest in other things/companies? Then they might as well pay out the money,
so I could invest it myself.

~~~
Spooky23
One reason is that it makes the enterprise more resilient, and that is
valuable in many industries.

Look at how quickly oil and gas companies implode when there is a price shock.

~~~
thomasahle
True, and I personally think it's a good idea.

The stockholders though would probably say that they can just supply the
capital themselves, if the business is in trouble.

------
TheUndead96
I personally would like to distinguish between donations to the Firefox
product and Mozilla as a company. I donated every month for a year, but
eventually didn't feel that my contributions were making it to the actual devs
making a difference. Or even balancing the books. I cannot explain why, but
something feels off about Mozilla. I'm not being conspiratorial, but is
Mozilla really one of the "good guys"?

~~~
TheUndead96
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OarBwHc2JzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OarBwHc2JzY)

I feel like Mozilla does not understand the "old-internet" which it
prostitutes to sell itself to users. Lawyers, Amazon extensions, this is how
we are fighting Fake News!

------
rvz
Having all of your products that are absolutely free for everyone just
promotes a culture of "gimmie dat opun sauce warez 4 free" cult and relying on
donations for supporting 1,000 employees, doesn't make any sense for
sustainability for them.

So what's the next step for Mozilla's mission for protecting your privacy? Re-
new that contract with your #1 anti-privacy competitor [0] and continue
selling free things.

[0]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla-
extends-critical-firefox-search-deal-with-google/#7dc07d8b6ea2)

~~~
martin_a
Maybe ask yourself first, if you need 1000 employees and a CEO with a salary
of 2.5 million/year to build a browser. That's the way to think about this.

Oh, and I would happily pay/donate to Mozilla for Firefox and Thunderbird, but
not for all the other "adventures" they went after. VPN service... As if there
were not enough of those already...

~~~
pbowyer
Mission creep has been a fundamental Mozilla flaw for too long.

And are they a corporate, a charity, or a corporate non-profit? Charities very
often pay substantially lower salaries, the tradeoff being you feel you
contribute to a greater good. That's how I thought of them, but the wage bill
doesn't match up.

~~~
boomboomsubban
They are a non-profit. Their main income had never been donations.

Plus, their main competitors are Google, Microsoft, and Apple. They do pay
their executives a substantially lower salary.

~~~
luckylion
> They do pay their executives a substantially lower salary.

How much does the team lead for Safari or Edge make? They're competing with a
team in Google, Microsoft, and Apple, not with the company as a whole.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Neither is a fair comparison, those team leaders don't need to manage all the
other aspects of a company like Mozilla does.

------
the-dude
> Small company gives away software for free.

They have had years of ~$500M of revenue. I don't consider this small.

~~~
takluyver
Small relative to their main competitors.

~~~
the-dude
Is MS spending half a billion on their browser du jour? Apple?

~~~
zrm
But Mozilla isn't either. That's the trouble. They make plenty of money from
Firefox but then don't spend it on Firefox, so Firefox market share declines,
so they make less money from Firefox. Maybe they should try turning that wheel
the opposite way.

~~~
takluyver
From where I sit, it looks like there has been a lot of technical effort going
into Firefox in the last few years - like 'Electrolyis' and 'Quantum'.
'Quantum' in particular has been translating the more experimental work (Rust
& Servo) into improvements in Firefox.

So it seems more like they've been losing marketshare _despite_ investing in
Firefox. Google has much more money to spend on development, and can
potentially also make popular sites like Youtube or GMail work best in Chrome.

I use Firefox and I hope it will get more popular again. But I'm baffled how
many people seem to think that if only Mozilla tried properly, the users would
come flocking back. All the evidence suggests that most users go to Chrome no
matter what they do.

------
ricardobeat
No amount of requesting donations will ever support an organization the size
of Mozilla. It's annual budget is _half a billion dollars_.

I also consider reverting to "nagware" a huge step back. Either you sell a
product, monetize part of it, or offer it for free - giving it away "for free"
while sneaking in a shower of requests for money is the worst possible
outcome.

~~~
gspr
Imagine the amazing stuff they'd do if that half billion was focused squarely
at improving and maintaining the Firefox browser.

~~~
gridlockd
What's there really to improve? I don't think the experience with Firefox is
fundamentally different, nor could it be made fundamentally better. It's a
browser. People don't care about browsers, they care about websites. Even if
Firefox were to implement some fancy feature, websites aren't going to adopt
it until Chrome has it too.

Sure, you could argue that Firefox doesn't track you like Chrome does. That's
basically their whole marketing message. People who care about this already
use Firefox, the rest just doesn't care.

~~~
dependenttypes
> you could argue that Firefox doesn't track you like Chrome does

Yeah, it tracks you more:
[https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480)

~~~
gspr
Not at all. All of that can be disabled. The code is all yours.

~~~
dependenttypes
> All of that can be disabled

If you mean in about:config 1: they change it and add hidden options all the
time (you have to browse the code to find them) and 2: this is about the first
run, all of that data will be sent before you have the chance to open
about:config.

> The code is all yours.

So is the Chromium code.

Regardless, considering Mozilla's trademark policy it can't technically be
disabled in firefox.

> Seeing as your original comment said Chrome ...

Firefox contains proprietary components too (such as EME) that you can't
modify. The code is all yours in Chrome as much as it is for firefox.

I personally do not buy that argument, it is like saying that firefox has an
integrated emacs in it because "the code is all yours".

~~~
gspr
> So is the Chromium code.

Seeing as your original comment said Chrome, that's what I'm contrasting it
with.

------
luckylion
Is there such a cult? I keep reading arguments like "nobody would pay for
Google search, therefore they must track everyone and push ads", but I'd
happily pay for search if it aligned their interests with mine ("high quality
search results").

I'd also happily pay for a browser, but I'm not a big fan of "donate because
it's the right thing to do", I prefer "pay because the product is worth it".

As far as I understand, donations to the Mozilla Foundation won't go into
development anyway because of the way they're structured.

Don't ask for donations in the browser. Offer a product that people want and
sell it to them. My personal approach: focus initially on developers. They're
somewhat easy to understand (you have developers on the team), they have more
money than the average user, their requirements and desires are clear and a
little effort goes a long way, they already pay for tools that do some jobs
that could be done in the browser (e.g. Fiddler).

------
kstenerud
> Small company gives away software for free. Large companies give away the
> same software for free, and to them the cost is essentially peanuts, and
> they own the platforms the sofware runs on. Therefore small company will
> lose, decreasing diversity in the browser market. Simple as that.

Alternatively: Small company sells software, large company gives away the same
kind of software for free. Small company loses, again.

You're not going to fix market forces artificially. We pay what we pay because
that's what someone's willing to offer it for. Also, not all value is in
dollars.

~~~
throwaway936482
Or more accurately - developers create software for free and license it as
Open Source because of social pressure within the development community. Large
corporations say thank you very much and use it to make vast quantities of
money without contributing back financially to the people who actually do the
work. Anyone who points out that this is grossly counter productive if you
want to build a sustainable ecosystem that doesn't depend on the unpaid labour
of volunteers gets shouted down by free software cheerleaders who
condescendingly stress that they mean "free as in speech rather than free as
in beer," despite all Open Source licenses literally demanding that Open
Source software can be distributed for free (as in beer).

~~~
account42
> and license it as Open Source because of social pressure within the
> development community

I hope you are not implying that that is the main or even only reason to
release free software.

> Anyone who [...]

IME people get shouted down for suggesting to "fix" free software by removing
freedoms.

~~~
throwaway936482
I'd actually say it's one of the primary motivations, but then I think that's
the reason most people do most things. On the second point freedom doesn't
exist in a vacuum and exercising ones freedoms almost always involves
impinging on the freedoms of others. Therefore there is a constant negotiation
going on that involves the balancing of freedoms of different individuals, not
to mention the balancing of freedoms with other ethical goods that people
value (like equality, happiness etc.) There is very little recognition in the
fsf / open source world that adopting a maximalist approach to a specific set
of freedoms - those that fit into the free software / open source ideology -
necessarily impinges on other freedoms that many people also value - like the
freedom to own and profit from one's labour without further enriching google
et. al (Yes there are differences between the fsf and open source camps but
they're largely of the peoples front of Judea / judean people's front
variety.)

------
npmisdown
That's essentially my problem with the open source.

I was an open source apologist some time ago, but since I quit full-time job
and started to freelance/working on my own personal projects I began to
realize, that I as an independent developer can't actually profit from it. In
fact, it takes a lot of my time to contribute to something and I get nothing
in return.

From my perspective:

* Behind every popular open source project there is a company (typically big), which pays core team salary to maintain open source project. Community is typically do work for free. The bigger the project, the better for the company public image.

* Open source projects end up to be designed by committee, which inevitably turns projects to bloatware, which are hard to maintain and hard to use.

* Increase in technology turn-over. Projects become hyped and die faster that

* Competition is becoming more difficult. Why to try to make another deployment manager if there's Kubernetes?

* En-masse community memebers get nothing from contrubuting to projects while doing a lot of work for free. One may argue that in return they get polished product, but in reality that's far from true.

~~~
raxxorrax
I don't think "open source" needs to apologize for anything. Making profit
from it wasn't ever the goal for most projects. That you cannot derive profit
from it may have to do with your business model.

You could offer support for the product you are offering or maybe you can just
write proprietary software. To think that there is a problem with open source
as a concept sound like a pretty alien conclusion to be honest.

Most open source projects don't have corporate backing obviously. The large
ones that are heavily in use? Sure, because their developers use it too.

> Open source projects end up to be designed by committee [..]

I can agree on that point, but again, that is a minority of project that have
become very successful.

> En-masse community memebers get nothing from contrubuting to project

That is the point of any free contribution. I know that can get exhausting and
that there are ungrateful users that can ruin it for you, but I still don't
see how open source is the problem and not your disposition to it.

I think the article overall is not convincing. Maybe our expectations are too
high, but whose aren't in todays software world. Without open source it just
isn't possible to let developers teach themselves as efficient as they can do
now. That these costs are externalized by companies and that they might not
give back enough is the nature of voluntary work. But it certainly not
undercutting some imagined market.

~~~
throwaway936482
The problem with open source is not that the source is available, that you can
modify it to your own needs, or that you can contribute back, it is that
anyone can redistribute your software for free, and that you can't
discriminate between e.g. small businesses or personal use and Google in your
license terms. This cuts off the possibility of actually supporting yourself
financially as an open source developer in many cases and is an ideological
commitment that mostly benefits large corporations at the expense of
individual developers.

~~~
thekingofh
Then someone can dual license the code. Something like AGPL for general
development and commercial licenses via request. This way the source is open
at all times and companies that want to use it and modify it for commercial
purposes can get a commercial license for that. In this case the biggest issue
is copyright assignment. In order to dual license you require everyone who's
contributed to agree. In large projects that's difficult. In a company,
copyright can be handed over to the company, but anyone outside the company
who contributes has to either sign over copyright or agree to letting their
contributions be dual licensed.

The best option looks like a tight copyleft license combined with a contract
for copyright assignment and revenue sharing for contributors and dual
licensed for commercial use. The most difficult part of this would be gauging
developer worth based on contributions, but that's something that happens in
every company anyways.

------
m000
Mozilla needs a more focused leadership to survive, not a perpetual gofundme
campaign. The current leadership focused on free lock-in features (Firefox
Lockwise, Pocket integration etc). But that's how you play when you have deep
pockets. Mozilla Corp. never had them.

If instead Mozilla Corp. had focused on cross-browser freemium/paid features,
they could have been self-sustained by now. E.g. I would definitely pay for a
Firefox Account that included:

\- Password manager with cross-browser cloud sync. They already have Lockwise.
Only need to make it cross-browser.

\- Firefox send. Great convenience feature. Trivial to integrate to other
browsers. Currently "unavailable while we work on product improvements." WTF?

\- Cross-browser bookmarks sync with improvements in core functionality. E.g.
make tagging easy, support tag-based dynamic folders to the bookmarks bar. I
wish they had brought the person behind Buku bookmarks manager aboard instead
of buying Pocket.

~~~
konaraddi
> Firefox send. Great convenience feature. Trivial to integrate to other
> browsers. Currently "unavailable while we work on product improvements."
> WTF?

"In light of recent reports of Firefox Send being used to distribute malware
we have decided to temporarily take the service offline to implement new
features..." [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-happened-
firefox-s...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-happened-firefox-send)

What do you mean by "integrate to other browsers"? Firefox Send is a website.

------
zozbot234
> So allow me to make a modest proposal: build in a donations function in
> Firefox itself — for instance by adding a simple “Please support us” message
> to the update page you get to see whenever you update the browser, and by
> adding a Donations item to the main menu.

Agreed. We need a way to directly fund Firefox development, and Mozilla is not
currently providing this.

~~~
eitland
They need to be clear however that the money goes to the browser.

------
belorn
It is difficult to have a discussing about funding Firefox without knowing
what kind of company or organization that Mozilla want to be. Do they want to
be an advocacy non-profit like EFF and ACLU, getting their main revenue from
donations (and then maybe pay their CEO similar to those organizations)? Do
they want to be more like IBM, using the free open source products to promote
and support the paid services and proprietary products (in which the CEO get
paid according to market rates)? Or are they more like the Linux foundation,
focusing around maintaining and developing a core open source project, funded
and paid by corporate sponsors and donations.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I tend to do all my work for free, and in open-source[0]. One big reason, is
that I don't feel like I really want to watch other people destroy my work,
like they did for thirty years.

Another reason, is that I am not particularly thrilled about having someone
else calling the shots on my work. I do what I do for _love_ , not money or
status. Once money comes into the picture, the fun drains out like a popped
balloon.

I write my stuff as enterprise-class software. It may be the "tinkering" of an
old codger, but it is nothing to sneeze at.

And I set the agenda. If you don't want to use my stuff; fine. No loss to me.
It's great stuff, but tastes differ.

If, on the other hand, you _pay_ me to do work for you, then you get to call
the shots. That's just the way of the world. It doesn't matter whether or not
it's "fun." You are paying me for a service, and it is my fiduciary
responsibility to deliver. I spent my entire career delivering software on
schedule, and to spec. Like I said, I found it annoying that it wasn't treated
so well, after delivery, but it was their property, and I had no say.

I just found out that a company that makes two great, free, open-source
utilities I use all the time, has been sold; throwing their future into doubt.
That sucks, but it is also not something that I really have a right to whine
about.

I am not particularly thrilled with corporations making commercial products on
the back of free, open-source projects; even really high-quality ones (I won't
list any, because there are religious wars over them).

If it's free, then you get what you pay for.

[0] [https://riftvalleysoftware.com/open-source-
projects](https://riftvalleysoftware.com/open-source-projects)

------
LordHeini
Who is going to pay for Firefox if they fired the people pushing the tech
forward (i.e. the servo team)?

If anybody is going to pay for a browser it must be better than its
competition.

I would pay for better privacy, adblocking, higher speed, better dev tools and
what not. But Firefox is not so much better than Chromium in any of these
points to warrant payment.

~~~
vinw
They let the Servo team go?! Does that mean Gecko isn't going to see any
significant new development?

~~~
kolaente
Its not very clear at this point[0].

[0]
[https://github.com/servo/servo/discussions/27575](https://github.com/servo/servo/discussions/27575)

------
chiefalchemist
Things I would pay Mozilla for:

\- Privacy and security-centic browser-based email (to replace Gmail). \-
Basic browser-based apps to replace Google docs, sheets, etc. \- A legit no
logs VPN \- A privacy-centric replacement for Google analytics \- A privacy
focused comms tool - a la Zoom, Whatsapp or Messenger.

In short, an alternative to Apple without the commitment to their hardware.I
understand that many of these exist on their own. I'm asking (read: begging)
for a unified offering (again a la Apple), one vendor to pay, and so on.

The problem with Firefox and free is that they're trying to compete again an
entity (i.e., Google) that has the same type of product as a loss leader.
That's a suicide mission on Mozilla's part. Without a blue ocean (e.g., Apple)
they will struggle - just like every other company that doesn't seek higher
less competitive ground.

------
earthboundkid
Just putting this out there: The government should have grants for critical
OSS infrastructure, like it does for medicine, scientific research, and even
(though highly gutted now) art. It’s only because the web got started after
the Regan years that this isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone. Why is FireFox
getting its money from Google and not Uncle Sam?

If MDN closes, productivity for millions of web developers across the county
will plummet. Why is this being left to charity?

~~~
wott
> If MDN closes, productivity for millions of web developers across the county
> will plummet.

If that should happen, I would consider it a gift from heaven ;-)

------
72deluxe
I wonder if it is not so much "the cult of the free" as "the art of
directionless misspending". Look at all the projects Mozilla got involved in
that were not really related to the browser.

Also, from the list of jobs laid off there are some jobs that seem superfluous
to the main core concept of browser development:

Diversity and Inclusion Lead, Office and Culture Project Manager, Director of
Strategic Alliances and Platform Strategy - Mixed Reality, Global Event Maker,
Senior University Recruiter, Senior Product Designer + Growth, Staff Business
Strategist, Lead UX Designer for Brand, Senior Brand Designer, Head of Design,
Senior Executive Assistant, Brand Designer.

I am not even sure what some of those jobs involve! Some even sound like
invented jobs to me.

I mean, is a "brand designer" someone who actually draws graphics or is it
just someone who thinks what the "brand" should involve? ie. The Web, a
browser.

Education welcomed.

~~~
pjc50
> Diversity and Inclusion Lead, Office and Culture Project Manager

Staff recruitment and retention roles.

> Director of Strategic Alliances and Platform Strategy - Mixed Reality

Easily mockable since it has "strategic" in it twice, but ultimately this role
should either get money into FF or get FF into more platforms. Focus on mixed
reality / AR seems questionable in retrospect.

> Global Event Maker

Did Mozilla have many events? I don't really remember hearing of any.

> Senior University Recruiter

Fairly obvious: recruit graduates from universities.

> Senior Product Designer + Growth

This actually sounds pretty core; _someone_ has to define the product, and I
don't think you really want that left to the forums.

> Lead UX Designer for Brand, Senior Brand Designer, Head of Design, Brand
> Designer

That may be one or two many designers, resulting in unnecessary UI churn.

> Senior Executive Assistant

Everywhere has one of these. PA to the boss. They tend to be surprisingly
critical since they know what's going on even if they don't have formal
responsibility.

~~~
trabant00
> > Diversity and Inclusion Lead, Office and Culture Project Manager

> Staff recruitment and retention roles.

More like the exact opposite: annoy your staff with superficial stuff.

~~~
ffdjjjffjj
You don’t think those are important?

~~~
throwaways885
Most people don't care about D&I. Neither for or against, just an annoyance.

~~~
apacheCamel
Can you give more of a reason why "most" people don't care about it? Why would
inclusion be an annoyance?

~~~
mmm_grayons
Because "diversity offenses" typically happens against minorities, which
definitionally aren't most people. It's also a questionable use of funds in
that the places that would hire one are probably less likely to need it. But
treating everyone well and handling issues through HR as normal is no longer
sufficient; a diversity and inclusion staff has become the requisite "Workers
of the world, unite!" sign:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Hav...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Havel's_greengrocer)

Add to this that most people don't like being preached at not to be racist
etc. when most already aren't.

~~~
apacheCamel
Okay so I am a bit more confused now. You are comparing being told about
diversity and inclusion in the workplace to communism?

> handling issues through HR as normal is no longer sufficient

I am almost certain most of these "diversity and inclusion staff" you speak of
are part of HR, so yes, it is still normal.

I get it, you don't want to preached to about something you aren't, but isn't
that life in general? Being told stuff daily that either doesn't apply to you,
you already know, or would never do?

~~~
dx87
> I get it, you don't want to preached to about something you aren't, but
> isn't that life in general? Being told stuff daily that either doesn't apply
> to you, you already know, or would never do?

To me, that's not life, that's being micro-managed or treated like a child.
I'd never want to work somewhere that treats employees like that.

~~~
apacheCamel
Do you throw your hands in the air every time your lead reminds you of a due
date you already knew? Do you skip "meetings that could have been emails"? I
have yet to find a place that doesn't tell me something I already know or hold
on my hand on some minor things. I just go about it, being upset over it isn't
worth my time.

~~~
mmm_grayons
No, but were it a regular problem, I'd absolutely bring up that it's likely an
annoyance and a productivity hit for most people and a good manager would try
to help fix the issue.

------
Eric_WVGG
The problem I have with non-free software isn't that it's free, but that the
community and support are much, much worse than OSS alternatives.

Back in the site-backed-by-CMS days, I was always on the lookout for something
better than Wordpress. Every time I thought I landed on a good alternative,
I'd start to hunt down some esoteric needs that just didn't exist, and
discussions with the staff who ran said solutions were usually fruitless.
Meanwhile, the answer to literally any problem with Wordpress was just sitting
there on Stack Overflow.

Today I've moved on to JAMstack, and while everything is massively superior
from both a consumer and developer perspective, the headless CMS offerings —
which seem like a natural fit for the OSS world — are mostly proprietary and
very, very expensive. It feels just like trying Wordpress alternatives, where
the support is uncommunicative and the community is nonexistent.

My clients can afford to pay for a good headless CMS, but I'm seriously
considering using Wordpress API for "headless" because the paid options are a
pain in the ass.

------
tlocke
Perhaps the problem is the reverse: The more things that aren't free, the more
money people need. By expanding the amount of free things, that reduces the
amount of money required to produce new free things. Put another way, if
'software is eating the world', then if it's free software the cost of goods
and services should drop dramatically.

~~~
gridlockd
> Put another way, if 'software is eating the world', then if it's free
> software the cost of goods and services should drop dramatically.

Software cost generally isn't a "dramatic" part of cost, wherever you look.
Because of zero marginal cost, the price of widely-used software approaches
zero naturally. Only highly specialized software commands high prices, those
reflect the cost of developing or replacing it, as well as the value that it
is providing.

~~~
tlocke
Is that true? I can buy a blank laptop for £215
([https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/gemini-
IV/](https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/gemini-IV/)) and then install
Debian for free. The same laptop with Microsoft Windows / Office costs £352.
So I'd say that in this case at least, software is a dramatic part of the
cost.

~~~
gridlockd
You were talking about the "cost of goods and services", by which I assumed
you meant COGS as a factor of running a business.

Let's say you put a minimum wage worker to some task on that laptop. Over the
amortization period (3 years) of that laptop, that extra cost of the Windows
license amounts to maybe 0.1% of the cost of that worker, assuming they use
nothing _but_ that laptop to perform the work.

Now, let's say that the worker needs to learn how to use Linux and it costs
you, say, 20 hours in opportunity cost to get them up to speed. Linux is now
_more expensive_ than Windows.

~~~
tlocke
Okay, let's go with your figure of 0.1% of the cost of the worker. My point is
that if society were to switch to Open Source software that 0.1% is compounded
because all the other goods and services that a business has to buy become
cheaper. This then means that they can lower their prices while still making
the same profit. Which in turn lowers the cost of inputs to other businesses
in a virtuous cycle.

So using your analysis of the single worker, which I agree with, it actually
makes a very big difference when applied to _all_ workers.

To address your point about the training costs of moving from proprietary to
Open Source, again this disappears if the move happens at scale. It disappears
because every worker would have learnt Linux at their previous job (or at
school / college etc.) and so in fact the cheapest thing becomes to use Linux.

What your argument demonstrates is the network effects of proprietary
software, whereby if you're the first to use Open Source software it's a
disadvantage, but if everyone used it, it would be an overall advantage to
society.

The question then becomes, how do we get from here (often proprietary) to
there (mostly Open Source)?

~~~
gridlockd
> So using your analysis of the single worker, which I agree with, it actually
> makes a very big difference when applied to all workers.

It doesn't, because it's still just 0.1%. That may be billions upon billions
of dollars in aggregate, but per unit sold, it's still just 0.1%.

So, if your question is "how much cheaper could goods become by switching all
production to free software?", then answer would be 0.1%, if we assume that
0.1% is the average share of software licenses in COGS.

In practice, software licenses averaged over all industries might be 1% or
higher. Again, that might be _trillions_ of dollars, but it's still just 1%
per unit sold. Also, that money isn't evaporating, it's mostly going into the
pockets of people who build that software.

Sure, there's a profit margin in software development, maybe 10% on average.
So, if you eliminated that profit, you'd save 10% of 1%. You'd still have to
pay for that development, even if it is free software. If you eliminate the
profit motive, what governs development? Some form of bureaucracy. We already
know bureaucracies are inefficient. So you would probably end up paying more
to develop "free" software.

From an efficiency perspective, free software is strictly unnecessary, because
the marginal cost of software is zero, the cost of developing it is a
constant, and therefore its price naturally converges to zero as its
development is amortized.

Let's say OpenSSL was proprietary and cost $1000. That would add $1000 to the
cost of developing anything that uses it, until a cheaper competitor comes
around. How expensive is it to implement SSL? Not that expensive. How many
people use SSL? A lot! Do the math, make the business case, and you would
probably find that you can turn a profit selling a competing implementation at
only 10$. Why is this not happening? Well, because somebody already made
OpenSSL free and it's "good enough".

It is a misunderstanding of market forces to assume the compounding effect of
free software licenses would be greater than the compounding effect of _cheap_
software licenses that the market produces all by itself.

------
stupidcar
People can and do pay for "free" web services like Firefox. They pay with
their personal data. This is exchanged into regular currency via the
advertising industry. Services that cannot or will not exploit this income
stream will inevitably run into financial trouble.

Economically, spending personal data makes sense for a lot of people. Unlike
money, you generate personal data continuously and effortlessly. You can spend
it multiple times, many people spend it with little obvious downside, and the
process is completely frictionless. Consider the effort involved with setting
up, maintaining and eventually cancelling a subscription to a money-financed
service, vs. a data-financed one, which you simply start and stop using at
your leisure.

Some people do not like this situation. They object to the entire notion of
personal data being used as a currency. They attempt to prevent it via
advocacy and legislation. Advocacy does not seem to work, at least on its own.
Many people, if you explain the situation to them in terms of privacy, will
express a theoretical desire not to trade away their personal data. However,
their behaviour is not consistent with this. Faced with a choice between using
data-financed and money-financed services, the majority chooses the former.

Legislation attempts to resolve this dilemma, either by outlawing the use of
personal data as a currency at all, or more often by making the spending of
personal data more a onerous and explicit process, in the hope that a closer
equivalence in terms of convenience combined with repeated reminders of
people's stated preference to maintain their privacy will alter their
behaviour.

Personally, I'm skeptical this type of legislation will succeed. Clicking a
few checkboxes and cookie banners is still far more convenient than giving my
credit card details to every single website or app I want to use. And most
humans act in opposition to their stated ideals and desires in myriad ways,
every single day.

------
alfonsodev
I recommend Michael Widenius's video[1] about "Doing business with Open
Source" it goes trough different models, and explains the reasoning behind
MySQL license model, although I'm aware how different is a browser from a
database it might help to think about this problem from different angles.

In the case of Firefox, if I'm not mistaken they do only consumer focus
products, maybe they could release something that companies are willing to pay
for.

They could captilize on the good reputation while it lasts, and maybe
employees that resonate with Mozilla history will promote their products to
their bosses for free.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krcKkiKBKms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krcKkiKBKms)

~~~
pea
This makes a lot of sense. I would rather they either built amazing orthoganal
SaaS products and charged me for them, or had some >$100k ACV enterprise
plays.

On the former, it's of course a massive shift off of their current focus and
they'd get a lot of kickback from the community, but you could imagine a world
where they had a model like 37 Signals/Basecamp/Hey etc. On the latter, I
don't know anything about the browser market in proper enterprise and if there
are many opportunities for products there - you would presume there could be
some value capture though.

------
martin_drapeau
I hate to break it to you developers and tech people out there, but Firefox
isn't used by consumers. It has become a niche web browser for you guys. I've
been a developer for 20 years and briefly used it in 2009-2010. Then Chrome
took over and I switched to what my customers use. I have zero reasons to use
Firefox. I do feel bad about since it is dear to the community of developers I
am part of. In the end though, and logically, I don't have any incentive to
use Firefox.

Mozilla in my mind is a lab company with one product to monetize it: Firefox.
At the end of the day though if you're product can't bring in enough money,
you need to cut. Seems to be what's happening.

~~~
Grumbledour
I think it is actually the other way around. We technically minded people are
mostly the tastemakers on this kind of topics.

I know a lot of "normal" people using Firefox with privacy add-ons, mostly
because someone knowledgeable told them to. I have often seen these people
very receptive when I tell them why I deem Firefox a better Choice then
Chrome.

I do however see no way to convince my coworkers to switch. And look at hacker
news threads on this topic. It's always some variation of "I don't like google
collecting everything I do but Mozilla did this one thing once so I can never
ever use Firefox!"

So if we, the people who are supposed to be in the know don't recommend it,
why would anyone who is not in the know want to use it?

~~~
pessimizer
> Mozilla did this one thing once

Nobody is saying this.

~~~
Izkata
I think some on here did after the Mr. Robot fiasco.

------
selectnull
I would gladly pay for MDN access. Mozilla has done a wonderful work with
that, it's a goto place for any kind of web related documentation (and I'm
probably not the only one).

------
xyzal
I am SO waiting for Mozilla to give my ANY endpoint to throw my money at, and
I bet I am not alone. Why cannot I have an Firefox mug? Or get that VPN
running in Europe finally?

~~~
wildpeaks
Pocket is useful and has some paid features: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/pocket/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pocket/)

------
Draiken
I agree with the author that this expectation everyone has that things are
actually free hurts everyone.

Some people say they'd pay for Firefox. Some say they'd support it, but
nothing outside of the main browser. But are there really enough people to
fund something as big as Mozilla?

Sure there might be some excesses (like I keep reading about the CEO's salary
every other comment), but it seems few realize that the commercial ventures
were created for a reason: to bring money in.

If Mozilla only ever worked on the browser, would they have survived up until
now? I reckon no.

I do think they should create some sort of recurring donation system in a
Patreon style (even without rewards, maybe with nice lists for the biggest
donors) and test the waters. Are there really a lot of people willing to put
money where their mouth is? I hope so, but my gut feeling also says no.

~~~
luckylion
> But are there really enough people to fund something as big as Mozilla?

I believe so. My favorite example is JetBrains. They're making about half of
what Mozilla is Making (if you include the other commercial competitors, it's
much probably closer, and they're competing with Microsoft giving a free IDE
away), people are happy to pay. JetBrains' products are significantly better
than the free alternatives though.

------
noelwelsh
There are some interesting behavioural economics experiments on "the power of
free". Here is a decent overview:
[https://thedecisionlab.com/insights/business/impact-free-
con...](https://thedecisionlab.com/insights/business/impact-free-consumer-
decision-making/)

In essence, people overvalue free goods. This means it is very hard for a paid
product to compete against free goods, even when the paid product is itself
cheap and better quality. This explains a lot about the state of the Internet,
where a large number of eyeballs go to free products maintained by a large
companies with other revenue streams or to low quality junk. It also makes me,
unfortunately, doubtful that any efforts to directly monetize Firefox will be
successful.

------
marmaduke
Why don’t others consider Firefox as worth funding?

The EU is spending 1e9€ over a decade to build a neuroinformatics platform.

It seems like having a major browser not beholden to corporate interests on
another continent could be at least as beneficial as speculative science
projects

(1000 employees at 50k€/yr puts Firefox in a similar price range)

~~~
Theodores
Exactly.

Governments need to communicate with whomever they govern and in their
language. It should be a strategic imperative to have a browser that isn't
reporting back to Silicon Valley with every click and that can be the defacto
in a given locale.

Browsers are expected to be for free. The work done on developing the things
has been done. At least up to where they are now. There is no god given right
for browser developers to be on a money train. We have standards and
governments that give a damn about things like education should be making sure
that they have a standards compliant browser for their citizens to use. None
of this up to the free market malarkey as it doesn't work with a free product.

------
bananaowl
I value time the further into my professional life I get. So for me, paying
for good quality documentation, wether it comes in form of a website or a
book, is a better bargain than me trying to read up on 10 blog posts and going
down the rabbit hole of the source code.

------
cat199
> This brings us to the core point I’d like to make: the culture of
> volunteering in web development, and especially within the Mozilla segments
> of our community. To my mind it’s not only outdated and should be replaced,
> it should never have been allowed to take root in the first place

Never 'been allowed'? By whom?

This 'cult of the free' is also historically how software development was done
long before the web ever existed - the 'cult of not free' arising from the PC
era is the one encroaching on open software, and it's attendant software
profit incentive is largely what created the need to document for-profit
browser incompatibilities which the author is complaining needs commercial
support..

------
pietrovismara
It's not the cult of the free. It's the cult of the profit that must go.

------
m3at
Regarding donations that the author mention, it is always tricky to balance
between getting a stable revenue stream (monthly patronage) and simplicity for
the user (one time payment so I don't have one more expense to keep track of).

As a user/consumer I found that setting a monthly sponsorship budget helps. I
spend a part of it monthly when available (ex through Patreon), then sum up
what is left by the end of the year and do one time donations (for projects
that work that way, ex Wikipedia or Thunderbird).

I'm curious how others sponsor software or projects you care about?

------
sknat
I think this comes down to the old socialism vs capitalism debate. Industries
gain a lot at relying on 'free products' that are most of the time financed by
states (think roads, infrastructure, etc...), but you can find counter
examples where privately owned & sold products work better.

Concerning software, I agree the situation is a bit different as states are
hardly strong players there. But I would disagree on the fact that the 'clut
of free' is a sin. The whole industry gained a lot in terms of openness,
sharing of best-practices and just innovation. Try finding how to build a
washing-machine from scratch or just getting the PCB layout of your radio,
it's a really painful process.

But I would agree that I'm worried too on the future of software, but I would
rather push for more financing of open source (& free) projects - by states or
NGOs - rather than pushing the whole industry to go sales first.

~~~
zozbot234
Why "states or NGO's" rather than nimble, grassroots campaigns via
crowdfunding? The latter seems to be working quite well for a bunch of
projects, while "institutional", politicized funding is a lot harder to come
by and brings its own unwanted distortions.

~~~
sknat
You're right I think crowdfunding campaigns can be a really useful tool for
such financing. Altought, I think recently, crowdfunding have a bit diverted
from their original purpose to become marketing tools for some companies.

I think the ideal solution is hard to find, but I doubt we will come to
something stable without a bit of regulation.

------
mrtksn
Micropayments are proven to work but everyone seems to hates micropayments.
Software is good when regularly updated but everyone hates on subscriptions,
claiming to be OK with one time payment but that business model got almost
wiped out because people actually don’t like to pay one the (sustainable) one
time fee too.

Pay with your data and liberties business model seems to be the darling of the
masses.

Cult of free is actually just that and Mozilla is also part of it as it is
making its revenue from Google.

~~~
brent_noorda
Micropayments are used somewhere? Anywhere? And they work? Examples, please.

~~~
mrtksn
Pretty much all mobile games. For example, candy crush.

They made $1.5B of it reportedly. [https://www.eteknix.com/candy-crush-series-
made-1-5b-2018-vi...](https://www.eteknix.com/candy-crush-series-
made-1-5b-2018-via-microtransactions/)

I am not big fan of the series so I would not know what is the current
situation(maybe now they also do annoying ads? I wouldn't know), but
essentially if you want to play all day long you need to chip in, otherwise
you wait for life refills. There are also pay-to-win options(consumable power
ups) but you don't have to use it. It is a delight for the people who are into
the genre, my mother plays the game since years and she is loving it.

What I liked was that, the deal is sipmle: We will give you a game that you
like but if you want to play it a lot or be given an easy time you will have
to pay. This is in contrast of all the ad-based software out there where the
deal is "We made something that you want however we would like you to consider
doing something else by clicking on our ads, we insist".

I myself play a lot of PUBG Mobile and it's also an excellent experience. It's
free to play, ads's don't interrupt and I can play as much as I would like but
If I like to customise my characters appearance, then I need to pay.

------
ChrisSD
> Mozilla should take a small step in that direction by requesting donations
> from inside Firefox — on an entirely voluntary basis.

That's a sure fire way to annoy users. Mozilla have tried various ways
diversify their funding. Vocal users have reacted strongly against anything
they perceive as "ads" in their browser, no matter how benign. And yes "please
support us" will be seen as an ad/nag. Just as it was when they promoted
Mozilla donations for a time.

------
xnx
I use Firefox because it does things that Chrome won't like extensions on
mobile and better (and riskier) extension capabilities overall. So many of
their projects stink of indulgence and adventurism rather than anything that
differentiates them from other browsers.

------
cesaref
So just explain to me why something like linux can be free, but a web browser
can't.

~~~
ChrisSD
Corporations spend a lot of money funding Linux. Not only providing resources
but even assigning full time developers to work on the kernel.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Right, because the enhancements directly benefit the company donating the
kernel code. A similar thing happens with compilers: Sony donate code to
Clang/LLVM.

Couldn't that apply to web browsers too, though? If a company stands to
benefit by some browser feature becoming widely available, perhaps it would
make sense for them to do the work on the major browsers and donate the code.
From their point of view, this might be better than waiting for the browser
vendors (who may view it as a low priority) to do it.

I don't know of this ever happening, but I can't see a reason it never could.

~~~
ChrisSD
The trouble is Firefox is, objectively, not a major browser. I think it's
below 5% share at the moment. If companies were to contribute to a browser
it'd be Chromium. But there's rarely a reason to do so as Google itself has
more than enough resources to throw at Chrome whenever needed.

------
TheRealDunkirk
Mozilla needs to "rent" the browser, just like every other application or app
on the market today. $5/mo, or $50/yr. They could continue to give away a
version that, say, doesn't allow plugins or something.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Out of the question. Firefox is not Opera. It's Free* and Open Source
software, and that's central to its appeal. You can't treat it as a paid-for
proprietary software product.

* Hopefully this doesn't need to be said, but _Free_ in this context refers to software freedom, not to price.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
That's utter bollocks. This has been central to the debate since it started in
the 90's. You absolutely can charge for Free Software, and many people have
done so. I collectively paid a lot of money for boxed releases of Red Hat and
SuSE back in the day, to support development. The risk, of course, is that
someone else will take the codebase, and produce a free-as-in-beer version
(ala White Box Linux). I say: let them. I'm willing to pay for a supported,
professional version, and I have a history of doing so.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
I don't know of a single Free Software project that gets significant income
from selling the software. Introducing the _option_ of paying for Firefox
would change nothing, as people would continue to download Firefox without
paying, and Firefox would continue to auto-update itself without charge.

People are already able to donate to Mozilla (although _not_ directly to
Firefox), if that's what they want to do.

> I collectively paid a lot of money for boxed releases of Red Hat and SuSE
> back in the day, to support development.

Right, exactly. It's essentially an optional donation, and sadly, few people
choose to make optional donations.

> I'm willing to pay for a supported, professional version

Charging for premium support is a different idea.

I'm not opposed to paid Free Software support, in principle I think it's a
great idea, but I doubt it would generate much revenue.

------
aazaa
> So allow me to make a modest proposal: build in a donations function in
> Firefox itself — for instance by adding a simple “Please support us” message
> to the update page you get to see whenever you update the browser, and by
> adding a Donations item to the main menu.

The core problem is the product itself. People haven't paid for web browsers
in 25 years.

Rather than trying to fit the square peg of "ending free" into the round hole
of browser software, a more sustaining change would be for Mozilla to develop
a product that people _will_ pay for. One they have not been conditioned over
the course of decades to get for free.

In other words, Mozilla needs a product (or service) built not for the masses
but a small group of people who:

1\. have a problem that needs to be solved; and

2\. have money to spend

Whether or not Mozilla has the leadership or even culture to pull this off is
another question.

------
mhd
I remember when free access to the web and its technologies was something
good. From having a free browser, free web server (as in Apache/Linux, not the
hardware/connection) to being able to read the very HTML code that's used to
send you that stuff.

Now it's paywalls, gated communities and Valley technologists crying about
moochers from the steering wheels of their Teslas.

------
checksbalances
Mozilla already asks for donations. And they get plenty of donations.

They have a spending problem. Spending money not on firefox or thunderbird,
but spending way to much for public policy and other things.

------
bambax
> _by requesting donations from inside Firefox..._

Donations are a bad idea. Companies can't make donations (usually). But they
can buy software licenses.

They should sell something. Not sure what, though.

------
passthejoe
When executives are making $500k/year, and there are millions in Google money
floating around, it's hard to make the case for donations.

------
Invictus0
Off topic but I really like how the top banner on this page draws your eye to
the start of the text. Never seen that before!

------
smitty1e
"Die" is a bit heavy, but the point has merit: stuff costs.

What would be great from Mozilla is a subscription model.

------
joemazerino
Wait until OP learns that even asking for donations won't net them positive
returns.

------
CodexArcanum
The problem of the cult of the free is a microcosm of the larger global
struggle against capitalism. Who will (or rather, can) build an open and
secure browser?

Obviously, a corporation (like Google, MS, Apple, etc) can't be trusted
because they have too many conflicting interests. The MS monopoly lawsuit was
about browsers; how people connect to the internet is a big huge deal and
there's a lot of money and power to be gained if you become top-dog in that
space.

Just ask Google, whose dominance of the browser space with Chrome has
massively shaped the way to web works today, making it much friendlier to
invasive DRM, micropayment schemes, invasive advertising, and many other
consumer exploiting features.

So you need an independent source for a browser, but browsers are big and very
complicated and need strong security and on and on. It's neither easy nor
cheap, but why would the average person want to pay for an independent browser
when MS, Apple, and Google will all give you a great browser "for free?"

There is no real answer to this under our current economic model. Donations
and fund-raising are patches on a broken system, usually requiring additional
support from advertisers, corporate donations, influencing foundations, and so
on. If the money isn't coming from consumers buying or donating, then it's
coming from someone with money and a vested interest that their money is
buying influence for.

The Internet was built on public money from university grants and military
funding. But the internet was stolen from the public decades ago and sold to
big capital. Until we fix that, Mozilla is just another in a long line of past
and future downsizings as the corporate world continues to pillage and
privatize the Internet.

------
bullen
And then the footer says:

"If you like this page, why not donate a little bit of money to help me pay my
bills and create more free content?"

To live like you teach would make the article a "pay-wall, didn't read" for
me, seems we're in a catch 22?

------
auggierose
Isn't it a big blow to Rust that the servo team was fired?!?

~~~
est31
5 years ago it would have been worse because the community was smaller back
then. But it's grown since and more companies have adopted Rust, contributing
back by maintaining own open source projects.

------
podgaj
Maybe get rid of capitalism instead?

------
leroman
It's not "free" if you gain recognition

~~~
bartread
Years ago I worked for a company called Redgate. We bought a widely used free
tool called .NET Reflector from its original author. The idea was that the
recognition we received from owning and continuing to provide .NET Reflector
for free would translate into additional sales of our other tools.

It didn't work.

For other related examples see the numerous social media stars/influencers who
have moderate to large followings, but don't necessarily make that much money.
The majority don't make enough to give up their day jobs.

Recognition often isn't worth that much. The real test of how much people
value something is whether they'll pay for it.

~~~
ben_w
A good example of how little recognition is worth, thought I’m slightly
surprised I never heard about that purchase given I did hear about your flying
sharks.

It’s a shame the sponsored spaceflight never worked out; but I guess even
though Virgin Galactic still isn’t flying customers, that scheme brought more
recognition than Reflector.

~~~
bartread
Indeed: it's frustrating that we were legally obligated to offer a cash
alternative. It would have been cool to send someone into space regardless of
any other benefits, real or imagined.

Anyway, I wasn't involved at all, so you have to understand that this is my
personal viewpoint and not the view of the company but, again, the idea was
that the recognition from that contest would translate into additional sales
of our tools.

It didn't work.

------
phendrenad2
Mozilla should abandon Firefox, fork Chromium, create the gold standard
privacy-focused Chromium variant, and they should ask for donations. But they
won't, and I think we'll have forgotten Firefox existed in about 10 years.

~~~
raxxorrax
Gecko is completely fine, it is superior to V8 in many cases. There are
already many products like this.

