Firefox is reportedly rolling out an enterprise option in 2026 so we'll see how that goes.

> I believe you stated the problem in a way that its unsolvable.

I think you misunderstood me. I asked a question because the answer is far from obvious. If the solution to this problem was obvious, we wouldn't be having the same discussion on HN every 6 months when a new press release from Mozilla comes out.

I am very much interested by what people think the solution should be. Now, you mentioned Enterprise customers which is interesting because usually what I have read on this sort of threads was that Mozilla had made many mistakes (I agree), Mozilla should change their ways by removing this feature or adding this feature but almost everyone conveniently forgets that at the end of the day someone has to pay for all this stuff.

> Charge your customers money, so you can work for them.

Which is what I mentioned in my comment. Start charging people. The problem is how do you convince the general public to use Firefox instead of Chrome or Edge, especially is you need to pay for the software?

If privacy was a selling point, then Meta would have closed shop many years ago.

> I'm not nearly as certain as you are that Netscape failed because it was charging money. Netscape just stopped updating for multiple years at the height of the browser wars.

It doesnt matter because we will never know. The reality is that people expect to browse the internet for free. Asking them for cash has never been done at this scale.

If Mozilla was to start charging money tomorrow, you would find that many people would object to that and most people would simply move to Chrome because why not?

> Then, lean hard into the enterprise world. Figure out what enterprise customers want. The answer to that is always for things to never, ever change and the ability to tightly control their users. That isn't fun code to write, but its profitable and doesn't run counter to Mozilla's mission. That keeps Mozilla stable and financially independent.

I understand the comparison with Red hat but I am doubtful that this model will work. Red Hat helps companies ship stuff, it makes people more productive, it increases the bottom line. What would a paid version of Firefox do that makes people more productive or makes companies money that they couldn't get from Chrome? I am genuinely asking because again, it's mot very clear to me.

> Mozilla will maintain lots of influence to push forward their mission, because hopefully their enterprise customer base is big, but also they are the ones actually doing the work to make the downstream fork possible.

That is big assumption that has not been proven at this time. I think that making any sort of plans based on hypothetical paid version is highly speculative.

Edge still has a ton of stuff specific to Windows in it, mostly for business/enterprise use. It is probably the most no-code configurable browser out there if you go through Group Policy, with an effective guarantee that all of those settings will work (including the settings that disable all Telemetry data collection - yes those exist).

The 100% no-code part of the config process is something I have not seen largely in competing browsers - even Chrome.

Thank you for your comment.

I am glad I am not the only one who is asking the tough questions regarding this problem.

In reality it boils down to replacing 1 income stream provided by Google with one or more new income streams.

That means that Mozilla needs something to sell and quickly.

Or use their VC funds as you said, but we know VC funds need to deploy a lot of capital and then hope that one of their companies makes it big to recoup their investments and eventually make a profit.

I am not sure if betting the entire future of Mozilla on this VC venture would be a wise move to be honest. It's just too unpredictable.

> Hank Green has used the term hedonic skepticism for the psychology of seeking to criticize for its entertainment value, which I think is a large part of what this is.

I'm fascinated by this concept. Us it expanded anywhere?

How man large software projects do that? Blender and...?

Mozilla would have to become like Wikipedia, with a large fundraising focus. Its not like Wikipedia evades criticism for that approach.

> i wonder how linux does it?

they don't? There's no company, or rather - a lot of them, Linux kernel moves forward like 80% by corporate contributors. For some of them it's critical part of their infrastructure, some of them need to get their device drivers mainlined, for some of them it's gpl magic at work. Linux desktop experience, however, leaves a lot to be desired.

Companies aren't interested to contribute to a browser when they can just reskin chromium or build on blink directly and community cannot match the pace.

I think you are comparing apples to oranges here. Linux is made of many distros, each one with their own strong points and features. Many different maintainers matain them. There is no single point of funding for them.

Mozilla on the other hand makes basically one semi well-known product (and other even less known stuff) and gives it away for free.

If tomorrow Google pulls the plug, who will pay for the salaries of the engineers who maintain Firefox? The general public does not care if Firefox lives or dies. In my circle of friends and family, I am the only one who uses Firefox. Most people are on Chrome or Brave. That's it.

Someone in the comments above mentioned that Mozilla could release a paid version for Enterprise customers, imitating Red Hat in a way, but I am highly skeptical that Enterprise customers in times such as these will be willing to pay for something that they can get for free from Google or Microsoft.

I guess we will have to wait and see.