Let me pay for Firefox

It's become a meme, but consider WinRAR. Odds are, it's installed on your machine and you haven't paid for it. It just works. It brings up a polite nag box but it doesn't sell your data. It doesn't invade your privacy. It just works and makes enough money to keep getting updated.

It sounds hokey but, perhaps, Firefox should be trialware. Don't cut off the people who can't pay. Make a browser that just works and see how many people will pay for it even if they can use it without paying.

I'd wonder if there's enough willing to pay within individual consumers or professionals that would support a browser development team, and my impression is that file compression and browsers are pretty much a software commodity where they can be easily swapped with other options. I doubt there would be a lot of uptake on licensing within companies, and any bundling a licensed copy with an OEM build PC would probably involve mozilla paying them instead of the other way around.

It seems like the browser only exists with a very important secondary motivation, for microsoft and IE it was tying the web and windows together with activex, and for chrome it was to give their ads/services a good presentation. The other alternative I wonder about is the Document Foundation with LibreOffice, where their offering is distinct from MS Office, and there's still space for other players to exist healthily.

Works for Sublime as well.

What is the size of the team that makes WinRAR or SublimeText? How frequently are these programs updated? I suspect web standards change more frequently than compression algorithms.

Does anyone choose to install WinRAR when 7zip or the default windows options exist these days? I haven’t downloaded it since the 00s

WinRAR is such a simple app compared to a browser. It probably only needs two or three full time developers to stay updated.

I was going to say "a better example is Reaper, a full-fledged DAW that has a similar business model..." then I realized even Reaper is probably a small piece of software when you consider what behemoth a modern browser is.

The WinRAR model is actually a brilliant (and weirdly wholesome) example. It trusts users to do the right thing, doesn't punish them for not paying, and somehow it still survives

I do

If Mozilla made a popup for payment that came up on every application start people would lose their fucking minds. I mean riot in the streets, assassinate Mozilla CEO levels of insanity.

The sheer entitlement of Firefox users knows no bounds. They made a tiny little pocket button, which you can turn off, btw, and people shat on it for months on end and said Mozilla is dead and switched to Chrome. Because we all know Chrome, fucking Google Chrome, respects their users.

After a certain point we have to call a spade a spade. I mean, Mozilla could write every user a check for 100 dollars and assholes would still complain. The greatest adversary to Mozilla isn't Google, it's their own users.

See, the problem is that Chrome markets to the average Goo Goo Ga Ga internet idiot. To them, Computer is magic box, and a browser is an operating system. They don't give a flying fuck that Google records their location 24/7, or that Google builds profiles on them, or that Google killed Manifest V2, or whatever. Google could shit in their mouths and call it ice cream and they'd believe it.

Meanwhile, Firefox users care about privacy and the internet at least a little bit. That means Firefox is held to a standard 1000x greater than Chrome ever could be. For every 1,000 mis-steps Chrome and Google can make, Mozilla is allowed one.

Just out of nostalgia or are there good reasons?