I've been thinking about this for some years. As others have noted, the problem is that the market is accustomed to browsers being "free", ever since #Microsoft illegally leveraged their OS #monopoly to destroy #Netscape by driving their income to (essentially) zero.

I started thinking about it in terms of how I support various creators for small amounts with monthly #subscriptions. Could you fund reasonable #maintenance and #development of #Firefox purely based on low-cost subs from users? Bigger donations from companies or billionaires would be welcome, but it would need to be sustainable on its own first.

Development wouldn't have to be as expensive as what #Mozilla does (which is mostly counter-productive anyway...).

There are still millions of people - more than a hundred million, apparently - who use Firefox, and many of those are more knowledgeable about and involved with open-source #software. They're more likely to appreciate that funding development is the key to keeping Firefox relevant, and keeping the "AI" / #LLM / #advertising / #surveillance out of the #browser.

Some people are starting to pay a few bucks a month just for a search engine subscription. Why not pay for your browser? For many people, it's the software they use more than everything else put together. For some people, it's the only software they ever use.

I'd pay $2 a month to support my browser, if it kept it safe from <handwave> all that </handwave>.

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