Firefox needs to be forked and owned by the people. I'd pay $1 a month for a browser run by the people. Management and extension options could be rolled out for government, business, education, etc. There are so many models where the browser thrives, the org that shepherds the browser thrives, and the people thrive.
Firefox is like the shitty best option that camps out in its niche, it sucks but it is really hard to push out of the way.
> I'd pay $1 a month for a browser run by the people.
The bad news is that 12,000 other people would need to similarly pay per month to have a dev team of just 10. I know Ladybird is lean and mean but finding that big of an audience (or, of course, bigger) who would pay for a browser, per month, is likely a non-starter
It would be a much more interesting proposal to start a bug bounty for the damn near infinite Bugzilla queue, although as I understand it some of the hassle of a bug bounty program is evaluating submissions. And don't say "but we'll use an LLM" or I'll throw up in my mouth
I generally frown on calculating market size like this, but 10% of the top 1B is 100m, if 1% of those paid a dollar a month, that is a million a month. Good for 100 fang eng.
I hear you, and ironically I'm actually already in the target demographic of willing to pay for software I use and enjoy. Then again, I find that I am often an outlier in the "lengths folks will go to for good experiences" camp
Anyway, at this moment in my life I don't have the emotional energy to launch this project, but if someone does then please tag me and let me know
This project seems especially ripe for success because it doesn't need product market fit, it doesn't need requirements gathering, it just needs execution and a non-retarded bug tracking product
> I'd pay $1 a month for a browser run by the people.
You and approximately 5 other people. Paid browsers in 2024 are not a path to mainstream success, especially if you are what Firefox is - a fully independent tech stack down to the browser engine and not a barebones reskin of Chrome. A reskin of Chrome would have very low development costs. Firefox does not.
That is simply not true. I donate a little under 1k a month, there are many like me. Mozilla is not an org that I would feel comfortable funding given the perverse incentives that they have aligned themselves with.
And who are 'the people'? It's an open source product, developed by a non-profit organisation. You want the government to release a browser? I can tell you how popular that will be...
>The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser,
>Unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla open source project, ... the Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity.
Firefox is like the shitty best option that camps out in its niche, it sucks but it is really hard to push out of the way.