The toolmakers work to earn a living.
(Before you spend too long looking: there isn't one. Mozilla doesn't want me to pay for Firefox, they want to get their funding other ways.)
Toolmakers also work out of desire to practice their craft. Many projects are written, not to “earn a living.”
Much FOSS is actually written by people who are being paid to do it,
How do you fund the producers of Firefox and the infrastructure needed to get it built and released. Currently the only way is that the sellers of the adverts you read give money to fund Firefox.
Now if you paid for Firefox then they don't need to get money from advertisers.
Similarly to get ad free webpages you need to pay the authors.
According to Wikipedia[1], most of Mozilla is funded by Google, for setting them as the default search engine, rather than by more conventional advertisers.
On a more personal note, I'd prefer if that money went towards improving their FOSS offering instead of giving the now-former CEO a $7M bonus[2], acquiring advertising businesses [3][4], and littering Firefox with these anti-features.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
[3]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...
Given the firehose of money from Google, how much contributor money from people like me would be needed before Mozilla changes their mind? From my viewpoint, they've built their foundation to expect that firehose, and they don't think user funding is enough - they really want that juicy advertising money instead.
Of the $220M spent in software development in 2023, how much specifically went to Firefox development, vs. the other projects they have?
How much did they pay for Anonym, and how much to integrate Anonym into their systems?
If 5% of my funding goes to 'the producers of Firefox and the infrastructure needed to get it built and released' and 95% goes to crap that make things worse for me, then I'm better off funding something like the Tor browser or variants like the Mullvad browser, where my funding is more directed toward improving my personal privacy.
I'll let them figure out what things to disable so I don't have to watch the release notes with a keen eye every time I update.
Wikipedia doesn't fund itself by spying on you and selling the data. They ask for money.
Not, originally. Wasn’t Brandon Eich like 17 or something when he rewrote Firefox?
And lots of people put out ad-free web content for free. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, just check out all the blogs and whatnot from HN profiles. Very few people with ads or even making money off their pages.
Ads are one way to get content. Not the only way.
Nobody is forcing them to do anything, they literally will not take my money.
