Nobody wants this.

People want firefox.

That's like saying, "Nobody wants Adwords; people want Chrome." True but besides the point. Salaries have to be paid somehow.

Some options I can think of for paying salaries:

- Go the Wikipedia route, stay entirely free, and beg for donations on a regular basis

- Start charging for Firefox; or for Firefox Premium

- Use Firefox as a loss-leader to build a brand, and use that brand to sell other products (which is essentially what GP is suggesting).

How would you pay for developers' salaries while satisfying "people [who] want firefox"?

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palata 5 days ago | parent [-]

> That's like saying, "Nobody wants Adwords; people want Chrome."

Bad comparison, but I understand your point.

> Salaries have to be paid somehow.

I would be interested in knowing how much of what Mozilla does brings money. Isn't it almost exclusively the Google contract with Firefox?

As a non-profit, Mozilla does not seem to be succeeding with Firefox. Mozilla does a lot of other things (I think?) but I can't name one off the top of my head. Is Google paying for all of that, or are the non-Firefox projects succeeding? Like would they survive if Firefox was branched off of Mozilla?

And then would enough people ever contribute to Firefox if it stopped getting life support from Google? Not clear either.

It's a difficult situation: I use Firefox but I regularly have to visit a website on Chrom(ium) because it only works there. It doesn't sound right that Google owns the web and Firefox runs behind, but if Chrome was split from Google, would it be profitable?

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gwd 4 days ago | parent [-]

> Bad comparison, but I understand your point.

I'm not sure why you think so; it seems pretty close to me. Chrome and Firefox are exact competitors; both require a large amount of development investment. Neither one are being charged for, which means their development needs to be supported some other way.

The people using Chrome don't want Adwords, but it's Adwords that is paying for Chrome's development. People using Firefox don't want email or Mozilla certificates or what-not, but something needs to fund Firefox's development.

> ...if Chrome was split from Google, would it be profitable?

They'd have to figure out a different business model, wouldn't they?

	▲	palata 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> They'd have to figure out a different business model, wouldn't they? Doesn't mean that there exists a business model that would be profitable, does it?