Good. Whenever you complain about Facebook or Google, you're complaining about an internet run by advertising money. Paid subscriptions are the only alternative and I'm ready.
Good. Whenever you complain about Facebook or Google, you're complaining about an internet run by advertising money. Paid subscriptions are the only alternative and I'm ready.
Mozilla is a non-profit, sort of. The problem is they get like 100 million $ or so from search deals with Google. And Open Source is generally not as profitable. Wikipedia relies on a shitton of...
Mozilla is a non-profit, sort of. The problem is they get like 100 million $ or so from search deals with Google. And Open Source is generally not as profitable. Wikipedia relies on a shitton of volunteers to moderate the site, almost nothing is done by the Wikiemedia Foundation (they basically only provide the servers and storage, which isn't that much really).
I heard Wikipedia sits on absurd amount of cash but still asks for donations because they want to put themselves into a position where they have a "fund" that spits out perpetual money through...
I heard Wikipedia sits on absurd amount of cash but still asks for donations because they want to put themselves into a position where they have a "fund" that spits out perpetual money through some smart investments or something, making them truly independent.
No need to rely on hearsay, we can see their accounting. Wikimedia Foundation FY17/18 annual report & a summary on the wikipedia page for the foundation. ...i'm not that versed at reading these...
No need to rely on hearsay, we can see their accounting.
No doubt. I've been patiently waiting for a few different online industries to figure out micro-subscriptions and on-demand micropayments... tbh I thought they would have by now.
No doubt. I've been patiently waiting for a few different online industries to figure out micro-subscriptions and on-demand micropayments... tbh I thought they would have by now.
Mozilla announced an upcoming collaboration with a micropayments service named Scroll a few months back. Maybe that will be part of Firefox Premium. I'll probably keep using Flattr as well, since...
Mozilla announced an upcoming collaboration with a micropayments service named Scroll a few months back. Maybe that will be part of Firefox Premium. I'll probably keep using Flattr as well, since they seem to focus on different types of content creators.
Inversely, I'd be more supportive of a website with more censorship. /r/AskScience, /r/AskHistorians and co are the only subs I really consider of any value. Subreddits without moderation become...
Inversely, I'd be more supportive of a website with more censorship. /r/AskScience, /r/AskHistorians and co are the only subs I really consider of any value. Subreddits without moderation become little more than repositories of spongebob memes in the long run.
And zero censorship social media sites are typically filled to the brim with the worst examples of what humanity has to offer, IMO. E.g. Voat is a fucking cesspool.
And zero censorship social media sites are typically filled to the brim with the worst examples of what humanity has to offer, IMO. E.g. Voat is a fucking cesspool.
On the subject of websites that surrender to the will of their advertisers, it would be interesting albeit unfeasible to see a paid subscription competitor to Reddit or YouTube. Because imagine...
On the subject of websites that surrender to the will of their advertisers, it would be interesting albeit unfeasible to see a paid subscription competitor to Reddit or YouTube.
Because imagine what YouTube would be like without adpocalypses, or Reddit without swathes of subreddits being quarantined because they're deemed 'advertiser unfriendly.'
YouTube has a paid subscriber tier, but the design of the whole platform is based around the logic of sticking ads in your face from top to bottom so it's still kind of annoying. I think it is...
paid subscription competitor to Reddit or YouTube.
YouTube has a paid subscriber tier, but the design of the whole platform is based around the logic of sticking ads in your face from top to bottom so it's still kind of annoying.
I think it is feasible, but you'd need a big push to get content creators on there. Early days YouTube got big because anyone could post to it back in the days when web hosting was more expensive and hard to set up. Short, viral videos was what it was all about. If they want to retain that they could probably just offer paid hosting services for professional YouTubers and a free tier for occasional ones.
Maybe they could monetize by either allowing the content creators to run their own sponsored ads that they manage themselves or by providing a patreon style "tip jar" service to the videos. (Or some combination of the two.)
Reddit without swathes of subreddits being quarantined because they're deemed 'advertiser unfriendly.'
So. . . becoming more ad friendly has arguably made Reddit a less miserably toxic place. Most of the stuff they've booted has been dens of racism and misogyny. I only wish they had taken action in the name of maintaining decent community standards instead of needing to wait until the money told them to jump.
While not subscription based, Metafilter has a one-time $5 registration fee, and Tildes could basically be treated that way (I make monthly donations via Patreon/shill). Linus Media Group (company...
to see a paid subscription competitor to Reddit ...
While not subscription based, Metafilter has a one-time $5 registration fee, and Tildes could basically be treated that way (I make monthly donations via Patreon/shill).
or YouTube
Linus Media Group (company behind Linus Tech Tips) is actually in the process of developing a subscription based competitor to YouTube called Floatplane.
Nice to hear that they are diversifying their income. An important detail is that this "premium" seems to include peripheral subscription services like VPN or storage, not core browser features,...
Nice to hear that they are diversifying their income. An important detail is that this "premium" seems to include peripheral subscription services like VPN or storage, not core browser features, so "premium" is a rather misleading term here, this is more like some sort of value-added services.
From this bit: I'm guessing they'll maybe offer some kind of integrated proxy/vpn service in-browser which will be limited for free users and unlimited for paid users?
From this bit:
"We also tested VPN," Beard said, referring to a test Mozilla ran together with ProtonVPN last fall, in the US.
"You can imagine we'll offer a solution that gives us all a certain amount of free VPN bandwidth and then offer a premium level over a monthly subscription," the Mozilla exec said.
I'm guessing they'll maybe offer some kind of integrated proxy/vpn service in-browser which will be limited for free users and unlimited for paid users?
(I’m a Mozilla employee.) I work on one of the teams that cooperates with the Tor project. While we do like to be able to back port Tor Browser features into mainline Firefox, some of the changes...
(I’m a Mozilla employee.)
I work on one of the teams that cooperates with the Tor project. While we do like to be able to back port Tor Browser features into mainline Firefox, some of the changes that they make are just too infeasible to do for a general-purpose browser.
Yes, I know Brave has Tor tabs, but from my experience working directly with the Tor team, I wouldn’t use anything other than the Tor Browser if I cared about my anonymity.
They're already looking to add Tor to the core browser. A VPN is more suited to a paid service like that as opposed to the (I think?) more or less mostly volunteer-run Tor network.
They're already looking to add Tor to the core browser. A VPN is more suited to a paid service like that as opposed to the (I think?) more or less mostly volunteer-run Tor network.
I don't think this is true. The speeds are limited of course because they have to pass through multiple extra nodes to get back to you, but I don't think there's a hard limit on what you get from...
I don't think this is true. The speeds are limited of course because they have to pass through multiple extra nodes to get back to you, but I don't think there's a hard limit on what you get from it. More realistically, the speeds are poor because the nodes are often run by volunteers with limited bandwidth
In most cases, you can stream 720p YouTube over Tor without much issue, there isn't a hard limit other than "what the exit nodes can pass through all the middle nodes to you".
In most cases, you can stream 720p YouTube over Tor without much issue, there isn't a hard limit other than "what the exit nodes can pass through all the middle nodes to you".
I don't think that is a problem these days, there is a lot of unused bandwidth on Tor network and more people using Tor = better for everyone. I am a kid and me along with lots of other normal...
But it still is best practice not to use up all the bandwidth
I don't think that is a problem these days, there is a lot of unused bandwidth on Tor network and more people using Tor = better for everyone. I am a kid and me along with lots of other normal people using Tor means the ones who actually need it can use it to hide among normal people.
Tor costs money to run too, even if it's mainly volunteers. Mozilla could offer a Tor+VPN approach, where Mozilla pays for the VPN and Tor exit nodes to compensate the extra traffic.
Tor costs money to run too, even if it's mainly volunteers. Mozilla could offer a Tor+VPN approach, where Mozilla pays for the VPN and Tor exit nodes to compensate the extra traffic.
Lots of enterprise and government clients will absolutely not be down with making their business processes reliant on Tor. Even reputation/optics concerns aside, there's lots of...
Lots of enterprise and government clients will absolutely not be down with making their business processes reliant on Tor. Even reputation/optics concerns aside, there's lots of operational/efficiency problems.
Shame it's coming this autumn. Next month, my country is implementing a porn block where anybody from the UK will be forced to verify their age using a credit card or form of ID on a porn site....
Shame it's coming this autumn.
Next month, my country is implementing a porn block where anybody from the UK will be forced to verify their age using a credit card or form of ID on a porn site. This law has been heavily criticised over privacy and data protection concerns, and it's been predicted that this could drive our youth towards more extreme content rather than protect them from the dangers of porn. Nevertheless, our government has pushed it out anyway because our (soon to be former) Prime Minister Theresa May has been pushing an online censorship agenda.
I'd sooner give my money to a company like NordVPN or Private Internet Access than surrender my personal details to Mindgeek to be added to their UK-wide wankers' register.
FORCING people to give up PII and financial information to some of the least trustworthy security/privacy actors on the internet? What could go wrong!? How long do you expect it will take before...
FORCING people to give up PII and financial information to some of the least trustworthy security/privacy actors on the internet? What could go wrong!?
How long do you expect it will take before some dodgy Russian porn site realizes they have a treasure trove of credit card numbers from various British MPs and cabinet officials?
Seems like it might end up being similar to the recently announced Librem One platform. I think Mozilla's in a good place to really leverage their commitment to privacy against Google's rising...
Seems like it might end up being similar to the recently announced Librem One platform. I think Mozilla's in a good place to really leverage their commitment to privacy against Google's rising hostility towards it, and I'd happily pay for a premium Firefox subscription.
I'm perfectly fine with this. I use Firefox every single day. It's the first thing I install on a new PC. I donate to Mozilla annually but I'll subscribe for premium Firefox too. Mozilla has a...
I'm perfectly fine with this. I use Firefox every single day. It's the first thing I install on a new PC. I donate to Mozilla annually but I'll subscribe for premium Firefox too. Mozilla has a mission I very much support.
@dblohm7 posted this article from Fast Company separately, which mostly covers the same information, but has a bit of a different angle on it and explains more of the environment around it:...
Sadly you just can't get hardware accelerated video in Firefox under Linux right now. Even if your system is capable, Firefox isn't built to take advantage of it right now.
Sadly you just can't get hardware accelerated video in Firefox under Linux right now. Even if your system is capable, Firefox isn't built to take advantage of it right now.
Oh I don't understand much about that stuff but I think mpv supports it and you can watch any video that can be downloaded with youtube-dl with mpv directly.
Oh I don't understand much about that stuff but I think mpv supports it and you can watch any video that can be downloaded with youtube-dl with mpv directly.
You can indeed. There are also extensions to allow you to open links in MPV to play them that way. Few things still get excluded though, mainly DRM-wrapped stuff like Netflix that Youtube-DL can't...
You can indeed. There are also extensions to allow you to open links in MPV to play them that way. Few things still get excluded though, mainly DRM-wrapped stuff like Netflix that Youtube-DL can't touch.
Looks like Mozilla's starting to gauge interest and test the waters for rollout. I got a Heartbeat message that said something along the lines of "Want to try something new?" It took me to a page...
Exemplary
Looks like Mozilla's starting to gauge interest and test the waters for rollout. I got a Heartbeat message that said something along the lines of "Want to try something new?"
It took me to a page giving a rundown for the Firefox Private Network (their VPN service), with an offer to sign-up for $4.99 a month. When I clicked the link, it said it was not yet ready for release but instead took me to a survey about my interest in the product.
The headline makes this sound scary when it isn't. It sounds like Mozilla is going to start selling services, which will be accessible with Firefox. I don't see plans for a premium version of the...
The headline makes this sound scary when it isn't. It sounds like Mozilla is going to start selling services, which will be accessible with Firefox. I don't see plans for a premium version of the Firefox browser here, I see plans to sell a VPN and cloud file storage.
I've waiting decades for the downfall of Mozilla, and this is the first step. It was intended to be free from the start. ALL OF IT. Here's proof that the free version will eventually be abandoned:...
I've waiting decades for the downfall of Mozilla, and this is the first step.
It was intended to be free from the start. ALL OF IT.
Here's proof that the free version will eventually be abandoned: "all current Firefox features would remain free".
While I always make sure to vigorously roll my eyes at the doomsayers that lurk around Mozilla news posts, forking really isn't an option for a project as hefty and hard-to-maintain as a web...
While I always make sure to vigorously roll my eyes at the doomsayers that lurk around Mozilla news posts, forking really isn't an option for a project as hefty and hard-to-maintain as a web browser. Anything more than just a set of patches to the original browser has too high of a cost for anything but a large entity with lots of people. IMO it's a small miracle that PaleMoon hasn't rotted away. It's far, far behind in performance and feature support, of course, but AFAIK there are no crippling security vulnerabilities that make it unusable (although the lack of new web standards can make it occasionally difficult to browse the modern web).
It's right there in the words. Key being current. People at the level of CEO don't just say things in an official statement without it being carefully worded. So taking his words for exactly what...
It's right there in the words. Key being current.
People at the level of CEO don't just say things in an official statement without it being carefully worded.
So taking his words for exactly what they mean, as if he intends them to mean exactly what they mean, this tells me that new features will come at a cost.
And as we have seen time and again, when a feature is re-coded to "make it better", its no longer considered the same feature.
Time will tell, and I will admit I'm wrong if it never happens. I estimate 5 years or so though.
My question is, who cares? What features are they going to add that I care about? As far as I'm concerned, AJAX was the last major thing that I cared about in terms of browser features. Aside from...
My question is, who cares? What features are they going to add that I care about? As far as I'm concerned, AJAX was the last major thing that I cared about in terms of browser features. Aside from security patches, Firefox is "done" as far as I'm concerned. If they want to add more junk (like Pocket, all the garbage that I had to turn of on the "new tab" page, etc) I'll be more than happy to see it gated off behind a paywall so that I don't have to look at it as long as they don't nag me about it every time I open up the browser.
I'm not sure how a non-profit can feasibly run a free VPN or cloud storage service. And honestly, I find this preferable over them continuing to take Google's money. It's not like they're planning...
I'm not sure how a non-profit can feasibly run a free VPN or cloud storage service. And honestly, I find this preferable over them continuing to take Google's money.
It's not like they're planning on selling browser features.
Lots of non-profits charge money for products or services. From Wikipedia.
Lots of non-profits charge money for products or services.
A nonprofit organization is dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a shared point of view. In economic terms, it is an organization that uses its surplus of the revenues to further achieve its ultimate objective, rather than distributing its income to the organization's shareholders, leaders, or members.
That's not what non-profit means nor is that how they work. A not-for-profit corporation (at least in Canada) is absolutely allowed to charge for services and products, and they are even allowed...
It ceases to be a non-profit when it starts charging money for any of it's products.
That's not what non-profit means nor is that how they work. A not-for-profit corporation (at least in Canada) is absolutely allowed to charge for services and products, and they are even allowed to build reasonable cash reserves, it just has an obligation to reinvest the majority of that profit back into projects that further its mission and aims, amongst other things (like financial transparency, etc).
Yea, poor wording on my part. No excuse. Let me quote some legal wording. "A non-profit organization is a group organized for purposes other than generating profit and in which no part of the...
Yea, poor wording on my part. No excuse. Let me quote some legal wording.
"A non-profit organization is a group organized for purposes other than generating profit and in which no part of the organization's income is distributed to its members, directors, or officers."
"A nonprofit organization is a business that has been granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) because it furthers a social cause and provides a public benefit. Donations made to a nonprofit organization are typically tax-deductible to individuals and businesses that make them, and the nonprofit itself pays no tax on the received donations or on any other money earned through fundraising activities. Nonprofit organizations are sometimes called NPOs or 501(c)(3) organizations based on the section of the tax code that permits them to operate."
Right now, Mozilla makes 95% of its money off royalties from it's using Google (previously Yahoo) as it's search engine. It's not their product, it's Google's. The rest is from investments, grants, donations, but no sales. This is right in their financial reports.
Creating a product specifically to make income to increase the value of a company, invalidates the non-profit status.
I don't think Mozilla would be doing this if it was prohibited or risked invalidating their non-profit status. And this article from SPZ Legal seems to suggest that it wouldn't. According to SPZ,...
I don't think Mozilla would be doing this if it was prohibited or risked invalidating their non-profit status. And this article from SPZ Legal seems to suggest that it wouldn't. According to SPZ, the only thing selling a product unrelated to the nonprofit’s exempt purposes may do is cause them to be charged an Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT) on those sales.
Generally, a nonprofit may generate income on a tax free basis if the income-generating activity is directly related to its exempt purpose.
However, income-generating activity may be subject to unrelated business income tax, or UBIT, at the corporate tax rate if the activity is unrelated to the nonprofit’s exempt purposes and it is regularly carried on. Specific exclusions exist for certain types of activities, spelled out in Internal Revenue Code Section 513(a).
And also worth mentioning is that Mozilla is already arranged in a nonprofit hybrid structure like mentioned in another related SPZ article as a way to circumvent any limitations on revenue generating activities. Mozilla Foundation is a registered non-profit but their subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation, is a for-profit taxable entity. So my guess would be they likely plan on selling the premium services through the Corporation rather than the Foundation anyways, which renders the previous concerns irrelevant.
I have to disagree with your conclusion. I work in the world of theatre, which is largely non-profit in the United States. Selling tickets does not invalidate the status of the theatre company,...
Creating a product specifically to make income to increase the value of a company, invalidates the non-profit status.
I have to disagree with your conclusion. I work in the world of theatre, which is largely non-profit in the United States. Selling tickets does not invalidate the status of the theatre company, because revenue generated gets reinvested in the various ways in which the company carries out its mission. Likewise, if Mozilla uses the revenue from their premium services to reinvest in their mission, I see no reason why their non-profit status should be invalid.
Good. Whenever you complain about Facebook or Google, you're complaining about an internet run by advertising money. Paid subscriptions are the only alternative and I'm ready.
There's also donations like what Wikipedia does but that generally doesn't fly with for-profit.
Mozilla is a non-profit, sort of. The problem is they get like 100 million $ or so from search deals with Google. And Open Source is generally not as profitable. Wikipedia relies on a shitton of volunteers to moderate the site, almost nothing is done by the Wikiemedia Foundation (they basically only provide the servers and storage, which isn't that much really).
I heard Wikipedia sits on absurd amount of cash but still asks for donations because they want to put themselves into a position where they have a "fund" that spits out perpetual money through some smart investments or something, making them truly independent.
No need to rely on hearsay, we can see their accounting.
Wikimedia Foundation FY17/18 annual report & a summary on the wikipedia page for the foundation.
...i'm not that versed at reading these though :p
No doubt. I've been patiently waiting for a few different online industries to figure out micro-subscriptions and on-demand micropayments... tbh I thought they would have by now.
Mozilla announced an upcoming collaboration with a micropayments service named Scroll a few months back. Maybe that will be part of Firefox Premium. I'll probably keep using Flattr as well, since they seem to focus on different types of content creators.
I'd happily pay a subscription for a website like 2010-era Reddit if it meant minimal or zero censorship, plus a boatload of features.
Inversely, I'd be more supportive of a website with more censorship. /r/AskScience, /r/AskHistorians and co are the only subs I really consider of any value. Subreddits without moderation become little more than repositories of spongebob memes in the long run.
And zero censorship social media sites are typically filled to the brim with the worst examples of what humanity has to offer, IMO. E.g. Voat is a fucking cesspool.
On the subject of websites that surrender to the will of their advertisers, it would be interesting albeit unfeasible to see a paid subscription competitor to Reddit or YouTube.
Because imagine what YouTube would be like without adpocalypses, or Reddit without swathes of subreddits being quarantined because they're deemed 'advertiser unfriendly.'
YouTube has a paid subscriber tier, but the design of the whole platform is based around the logic of sticking ads in your face from top to bottom so it's still kind of annoying.
I think it is feasible, but you'd need a big push to get content creators on there. Early days YouTube got big because anyone could post to it back in the days when web hosting was more expensive and hard to set up. Short, viral videos was what it was all about. If they want to retain that they could probably just offer paid hosting services for professional YouTubers and a free tier for occasional ones.
Maybe they could monetize by either allowing the content creators to run their own sponsored ads that they manage themselves or by providing a patreon style "tip jar" service to the videos. (Or some combination of the two.)
So. . . becoming more ad friendly has arguably made Reddit a less miserably toxic place. Most of the stuff they've booted has been dens of racism and misogyny. I only wish they had taken action in the name of maintaining decent community standards instead of needing to wait until the money told them to jump.
While not subscription based, Metafilter has a one-time $5 registration fee, and Tildes could basically be treated that way (I make monthly donations via Patreon/shill).
Linus Media Group (company behind Linus Tech Tips) is actually in the process of developing a subscription based competitor to YouTube called Floatplane.
Nice to hear that they are diversifying their income. An important detail is that this "premium" seems to include peripheral subscription services like VPN or storage, not core browser features, so "premium" is a rather misleading term here, this is more like some sort of value-added services.
From this bit:
I'm guessing they'll maybe offer some kind of integrated proxy/vpn service in-browser which will be limited for free users and unlimited for paid users?
Why not Tor? Why a paid VPN? Would they make a marketplace for VPN providers to hook into the browser?
(I’m a Mozilla employee.)
I work on one of the teams that cooperates with the Tor project. While we do like to be able to back port Tor Browser features into mainline Firefox, some of the changes that they make are just too infeasible to do for a general-purpose browser.
Yes, I know Brave has Tor tabs, but from my experience working directly with the Tor team, I wouldn’t use anything other than the Tor Browser if I cared about my anonymity.
Ah, fair enough! I really appreciate your answer! So would Firefox allow for a marketplace of VPNs, much like the addons system currently does?
I'm really not sure, sorry. That's something that the busdev types are working on, so lowly engineers like me won't know for a couple of months yet.
They're already looking to add Tor to the core browser. A VPN is more suited to a paid service like that as opposed to the (I think?) more or less mostly volunteer-run Tor network.
I don't think this is true. The speeds are limited of course because they have to pass through multiple extra nodes to get back to you, but I don't think there's a hard limit on what you get from it. More realistically, the speeds are poor because the nodes are often run by volunteers with limited bandwidth
In most cases, you can stream 720p YouTube over Tor without much issue, there isn't a hard limit other than "what the exit nodes can pass through all the middle nodes to you".
I don't think that is a problem these days, there is a lot of unused bandwidth on Tor network and more people using Tor = better for everyone. I am a kid and me along with lots of other normal people using Tor means the ones who actually need it can use it to hide among normal people.
This is false, Tor doesn't limit anything. It's the exit nodes bandwidth in most cases that is the bottleneck if your connection is fast.
Tor costs money to run too, even if it's mainly volunteers. Mozilla could offer a Tor+VPN approach, where Mozilla pays for the VPN and Tor exit nodes to compensate the extra traffic.
Lots of enterprise and government clients will absolutely not be down with making their business processes reliant on Tor. Even reputation/optics concerns aside, there's lots of operational/efficiency problems.
Shame it's coming this autumn.
Next month, my country is implementing a porn block where anybody from the UK will be forced to verify their age using a credit card or form of ID on a porn site. This law has been heavily criticised over privacy and data protection concerns, and it's been predicted that this could drive our youth towards more extreme content rather than protect them from the dangers of porn. Nevertheless, our government has pushed it out anyway because our (soon to be former) Prime Minister Theresa May has been pushing an online censorship agenda.
I'd sooner give my money to a company like NordVPN or Private Internet Access than surrender my personal details to Mindgeek to be added to their UK-wide wankers' register.
How did they think this is a good idea?
"What if a child would visit this website!? Absolutely terrible! Make it stop!"
FORCING people to give up PII and financial information to some of the least trustworthy security/privacy actors on the internet? What could go wrong!?
How long do you expect it will take before some dodgy Russian porn site realizes they have a treasure trove of credit card numbers from various British MPs and cabinet officials?
To be fair this is the same country that thought Brexit was a good idea.
This is so unbelievably stupid. It will fail miserably and public. And nobody of those involved will learn anything.
This will 100% be seriously poorly implemented, like everything else the UK tries to do. Try a visa gift card instead
I don't think there is a good way to implement this.
Seems like it might end up being similar to the recently announced Librem One platform. I think Mozilla's in a good place to really leverage their commitment to privacy against Google's rising hostility towards it, and I'd happily pay for a premium Firefox subscription.
I'm perfectly fine with this. I use Firefox every single day. It's the first thing I install on a new PC. I donate to Mozilla annually but I'll subscribe for premium Firefox too. Mozilla has a mission I very much support.
@dblohm7 posted this article from Fast Company separately, which mostly covers the same information, but has a bit of a different angle on it and explains more of the environment around it: Mozilla is launching paid, premium features in Firefox
Can I pay for hw accelerated video on Linux though?
I don't think they will add those features as premium, I guess it will be like value added services model. For linux/gnu systems look @https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_acceleration for hardware video acceleration
Sadly you just can't get hardware accelerated video in Firefox under Linux right now. Even if your system is capable, Firefox isn't built to take advantage of it right now.
Oh I don't understand much about that stuff but I think mpv supports it and you can watch any video that can be downloaded with youtube-dl with mpv directly.
You can indeed. There are also extensions to allow you to open links in MPV to play them that way. Few things still get excluded though, mainly DRM-wrapped stuff like Netflix that Youtube-DL can't touch.
What is this, 2006?
Looks like Mozilla's starting to gauge interest and test the waters for rollout. I got a Heartbeat message that said something along the lines of "Want to try something new?"
It took me to a page giving a rundown for the Firefox Private Network (their VPN service), with an offer to sign-up for $4.99 a month. When I clicked the link, it said it was not yet ready for release but instead took me to a survey about my interest in the product.
The headline makes this sound scary when it isn't. It sounds like Mozilla is going to start selling services, which will be accessible with Firefox. I don't see plans for a premium version of the Firefox browser here, I see plans to sell a VPN and cloud file storage.
I've waiting decades for the downfall of Mozilla, and this is the first step.
It was intended to be free from the start. ALL OF IT.
Here's proof that the free version will eventually be abandoned: "all current Firefox features would remain free".
While I always make sure to vigorously roll my eyes at the doomsayers that lurk around Mozilla news posts, forking really isn't an option for a project as hefty and hard-to-maintain as a web browser. Anything more than just a set of patches to the original browser has too high of a cost for anything but a large entity with lots of people. IMO it's a small miracle that PaleMoon hasn't rotted away. It's far, far behind in performance and feature support, of course, but AFAIK there are no crippling security vulnerabilities that make it unusable (although the lack of new web standards can make it occasionally difficult to browse the modern web).
It's right there in the words. Key being current.
People at the level of CEO don't just say things in an official statement without it being carefully worded.
So taking his words for exactly what they mean, as if he intends them to mean exactly what they mean, this tells me that new features will come at a cost.
And as we have seen time and again, when a feature is re-coded to "make it better", its no longer considered the same feature.
Time will tell, and I will admit I'm wrong if it never happens. I estimate 5 years or so though.
My question is, who cares? What features are they going to add that I care about? As far as I'm concerned, AJAX was the last major thing that I cared about in terms of browser features. Aside from security patches, Firefox is "done" as far as I'm concerned. If they want to add more junk (like Pocket, all the garbage that I had to turn of on the "new tab" page, etc) I'll be more than happy to see it gated off behind a paywall so that I don't have to look at it as long as they don't nag me about it every time I open up the browser.
I'm not sure how a non-profit can feasibly run a free VPN or cloud storage service. And honestly, I find this preferable over them continuing to take Google's money.
It's not like they're planning on selling browser features.
Hmm, maybe then they shouldn't.
It ceases to be a non-profit when it starts charging money for any of it's products.
Lots of non-profits charge money for products or services.
From Wikipedia.
That's not what non-profit means nor is that how they work. A not-for-profit corporation (at least in Canada) is absolutely allowed to charge for services and products, and they are even allowed to build reasonable cash reserves, it just has an obligation to reinvest the majority of that profit back into projects that further its mission and aims, amongst other things (like financial transparency, etc).
Yea, poor wording on my part. No excuse. Let me quote some legal wording.
"A non-profit organization is a group organized for purposes other than generating profit and in which no part of the organization's income is distributed to its members, directors, or officers."
"A nonprofit organization is a business that has been granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) because it furthers a social cause and provides a public benefit. Donations made to a nonprofit organization are typically tax-deductible to individuals and businesses that make them, and the nonprofit itself pays no tax on the received donations or on any other money earned through fundraising activities. Nonprofit organizations are sometimes called NPOs or 501(c)(3) organizations based on the section of the tax code that permits them to operate."
Right now, Mozilla makes 95% of its money off royalties from it's using Google (previously Yahoo) as it's search engine. It's not their product, it's Google's. The rest is from investments, grants, donations, but no sales. This is right in their financial reports.
Creating a product specifically to make income to increase the value of a company, invalidates the non-profit status.
I don't think Mozilla would be doing this if it was prohibited or risked invalidating their non-profit status. And this article from SPZ Legal seems to suggest that it wouldn't. According to SPZ, the only thing selling a product unrelated to the nonprofit’s exempt purposes may do is cause them to be charged an Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT) on those sales.
And also worth mentioning is that Mozilla is already arranged in a nonprofit hybrid structure like mentioned in another related SPZ article as a way to circumvent any limitations on revenue generating activities. Mozilla Foundation is a registered non-profit but their subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation, is a for-profit taxable entity. So my guess would be they likely plan on selling the premium services through the Corporation rather than the Foundation anyways, which renders the previous concerns irrelevant.
Ooh, interesting info. I hadn't seen anywhere that they were anything but a distinct non-profit.
Thanks for the knowledge!
I have to disagree with your conclusion. I work in the world of theatre, which is largely non-profit in the United States. Selling tickets does not invalidate the status of the theatre company, because revenue generated gets reinvested in the various ways in which the company carries out its mission. Likewise, if Mozilla uses the revenue from their premium services to reinvest in their mission, I see no reason why their non-profit status should be invalid.
Firefox Premium is different products. Firefox is not only a browser nowadays.
Im conflicted because on the one hand I want to pay for and support Firefox, but I also have little to no use for these features.