The percentage of users that donate to open source projects they use is very low, and I’m not sure that’d significantly change just because Mozilla start asking people to do it.
Firstly, that’s not a scaling problem, you’re talking about poor uptake.
Secondly, the reason so few users donate to open source projects is because these projects are so poorly marketed to potential supporters. That’s why a sophisticated organisation like Mozilla is so well placed to sell the stories behind some of these projects.
Thirdly, the percentage of users that click on ads and shopping is also very low. Particularly amongst more technical users.
Fourthly, this plan would actually drive users to Firefox. If Firefox is promoting donations for say, LibreOffice, then they would naturally have an interest in promoting Firefox.
With the advent of enshittification, free-as-in-beer tech is dead. I think people are realising that things need to be paid for. It’s very defeatist to just say “no one contributes to open source”. Why not try to find the format within which people might contribute?
Secondly, the reason so few users donate to open source projects is because these projects are so poorly marketed to potential supporters. That’s why a sophisticated organisation like Mozilla is so well placed to sell the stories behind some of these projects.
This is definitely a good point.
the percentage of users that click on ads and shopping is also very low.
You’d be surprised. I’ve worked in ad tech. Retargeting ads (where you see ads for items you’ve viewed in the past) and abandoned cart ads (which you see if you add items to your cart but never check out, sometimes with a discount coupon attached) have very good clickthrough rates. Targeting based on customer list performs pretty well too.
Secondly, the reason so few users donate to open source projects is because these projects are so poorly marketed to potential supporters.
That is a huge assumption to make without data to back that up. Do you have a list of open source projects with high numbers of user donations, with evidence that the numbers are due to marketing? Barring that, I think this is pure speculation.
Do I think that better reach could have an impact on donations? Sure.
Do I think that lack of marketing is the reason for FOSS donations lagging behind other donation causes? Not at all; I think they are actually losing out on impacts, in most cases.
FOSS project donations are usually done by people who use the tool, and are interested in seeing it get improved. It’s not a “good cause” donation, like feeding kids. If you are collecting money to help people, donors don’t expect to receive something in return for giving. But I think it’s incredibly unrealistic to think that people will see someone building a software tool, not have interest in using it themselves, but still donate money to support the project anyways.
Marketing a tool that isn’t garnering much interest already probably isn’t going to see the tool get much additional uptake, especially with how much free marketing already exists in the FOSS space. If you post your software on Reddit and Hackernews and ArsTechnica (all free to do) and aren’t seeing interest, you’re probably not going to be massively helped by a marketing org stepping in.
That’s not something that’d likely scale enough to bring any meaningful sum of money.
Even then it targets a tiny, tiny minority of their even current userbase, let alone if they want to approach more “average” users.
Why wouldn’t it scale?
The percentage of users that donate to open source projects they use is very low, and I’m not sure that’d significantly change just because Mozilla start asking people to do it.
Firstly, that’s not a scaling problem, you’re talking about poor uptake.
Secondly, the reason so few users donate to open source projects is because these projects are so poorly marketed to potential supporters. That’s why a sophisticated organisation like Mozilla is so well placed to sell the stories behind some of these projects.
Thirdly, the percentage of users that click on ads and shopping is also very low. Particularly amongst more technical users.
Fourthly, this plan would actually drive users to Firefox. If Firefox is promoting donations for say, LibreOffice, then they would naturally have an interest in promoting Firefox.
With the advent of enshittification, free-as-in-beer tech is dead. I think people are realising that things need to be paid for. It’s very defeatist to just say “no one contributes to open source”. Why not try to find the format within which people might contribute?
This is definitely a good point.
You’d be surprised. I’ve worked in ad tech. Retargeting ads (where you see ads for items you’ve viewed in the past) and abandoned cart ads (which you see if you add items to your cart but never check out, sometimes with a discount coupon attached) have very good clickthrough rates. Targeting based on customer list performs pretty well too.
In any case, I really doubt they could make even 1% of what they currently make with the Google deal. AFAIK they make around $400 million per year from that deal: https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-google-search-deal-for-firefox
That is a huge assumption to make without data to back that up. Do you have a list of open source projects with high numbers of user donations, with evidence that the numbers are due to marketing? Barring that, I think this is pure speculation.
Of course it is.
That said, do you think it’s unrealistic to suppose that marketing might improve revenue? I do not.
Do I think that better reach could have an impact on donations? Sure.
Do I think that lack of marketing is the reason for FOSS donations lagging behind other donation causes? Not at all; I think they are actually losing out on impacts, in most cases.
FOSS project donations are usually done by people who use the tool, and are interested in seeing it get improved. It’s not a “good cause” donation, like feeding kids. If you are collecting money to help people, donors don’t expect to receive something in return for giving. But I think it’s incredibly unrealistic to think that people will see someone building a software tool, not have interest in using it themselves, but still donate money to support the project anyways.
Marketing a tool that isn’t garnering much interest already probably isn’t going to see the tool get much additional uptake, especially with how much free marketing already exists in the FOSS space. If you post your software on Reddit and Hackernews and ArsTechnica (all free to do) and aren’t seeing interest, you’re probably not going to be massively helped by a marketing org stepping in.