this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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Sounds like the best thing that could happen to Firefox
Unfortunately, Mozilla is investing a ton of money into AI, too.
A desperate attempt of revenue diversification.
Considering how little they invest into their core product compared to all the other shit and how much money the top brass earns despite declining market share, I don't think they're hurting for money that much.
They are investing a lot in their core product. Problem is that you can't really monatize it. You want Firefox to be paywalled?
Ideally it would be financed by user donations. Probably not that realistic for a project like this, though.
You can't finance a massive project like that with donations. This isn't like Signal or some small project like that. Firefox is MASSIVE.
Yeah, web browsers cost hundreds of millions per year to maintain, they're mind-bogglingly complicated and costly.
I'd really hope the Linux Foundation would help contribute towards the budget, but LF is quite pro Chromium.
I don't think end users can even come close to funding Firefox development, unfortunately.
Some of their I initiatives are good, like the built-in local translation tool we now have.
Also their initiative to recognise images and generate alt-text for screen-reader users.
My sister is blind and screen readers are close to useless on the web, so it was great to hear Mozilla is working on that.
Mozilla works mainly on LOCAL AI not this corporate trash like closedAI
Look into Waterfox instead.
That really doesn't solve the problem, like every other Firefox fork they're completely dependent on Firefox. You can't just make a new webbrowser just like that, and while third party developers can certainly disable some anti-features, there are limits to that and they can definitely not do the basic work that the Firefox devs do (or could do, if Mozilla had different priorities).
Mozilla spinning off control of its development to an independent group the way they did with Thunderbird would be the best thing that could happen to Firefox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird :
Chrome self-destructing because of stupidity like AI would only ever manage to be a close second, at best.
Has Mozilla indicated any openness to taking that approach with Firefox?
Firefox, the software mainly driven by Mozilla, which is heavily investing in AI and ads ventures? That Firefox?
But, maybe "it will be different this time", I guess.
this!