how much would you pay for Firefox? [Archive]

philaweb

07-15-2005, 08:00 PM

If Firefox was not free, how much would you be willing to pay for it?
As long as more than 50% of all internet users still hang on to MSIE (http://slettes.dk/redirect_to/?url_name=http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx), which in reality is a freeware browser, you would have a hard time convincing many people of paying anything for another browser.

Have a look at mail clients. How many people do you think uses anything other than Outlook Express? And they use it because it's thrown at you when you buy a PC, since most PC's have Windows installed.

Mozilla Thunderbird (http://slettes.dk/redirect_to/?url_name=http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/) is way kewler than Outlook Express, but you rarily hear them mentioned, yet alone receive mail from someone using Thunderbird. What about Eudora (http://slettes.dk/redirect_to/?url_name=http://www.eudora.com/)? I just found out it still exists a couple of days ago... :)

amazing_andr3

07-15-2005, 08:18 PM

MstrBob

07-15-2005, 08:58 PM

Actually I liked Outlook very much. I changed to Thunderbird simply because I hate MS.

Obviously FF is having a hard time free as it is, I wouldn't expect many people to pay for a browser...

But let's say it's more of a theoretical question. Say you are in prison, and you have to pay to install any new software on the computer. How much would you pay NOT to browse with IE?

Nothing given a choice, I'd chose the free option, as most likely many would. The free factor was one of the major reasons for Internet Explorer taking over. If I had to pay to use any other browser, I'd simply deal with IE. Hell, if you know how to work the security settings, it can be a lot saferer.

philaweb

07-15-2005, 09:07 PM

How much would you pay NOT to browse with IE?
Well, that's the whole point - I wouldn't!
Simply because I am not that dissatisfied with MSIE when it is for free.

Well, if I had to pay for MSIE, I would probably consider whether I would like to have Linux installed and use the Konqueror (http://slettes.dk/redirect_to/?url_name=http://www.konqueror.org/) file management system and web browser. But, that's just a theoretical question - since I already have SuSE Personal 9.1 installed - and completely for free. ;)

felgall

07-15-2005, 11:08 PM

There are plenty of free browsers available so why would anyone pay for a browser unless it offered a lot more than the free ones. The narrow bar of ads at the top of Opera more than makes up for the smaller size and greater compliance with standards that it has compared to older browsers that are much larger and less compliant (eg. Firefox).

MstrBob

07-15-2005, 11:21 PM

buntine

07-15-2005, 11:45 PM

I would make my own. They are so simple to write these days.

MstrBob

07-16-2005, 12:30 AM

I would make my own. They are so simple to write these days.

That would depend on a great many things, no? Do you write from complete scratch, or utilize pre-exisiting sources like open source XML parsers? Is it graphical? How much CSS do you support? Client side scripting support?

If any thing, I'd think browsers are getting more complex. CSS is apparently proving tricky to implement.

buntine

07-16-2005, 01:03 AM

Nah. Easy.

PeOfEo

07-16-2005, 01:53 AM

So, basically, if Firefox was not free you'd steal it? :rolleyes:
yep. A browser cannot be sold... if developers are to make things work for it.

amazing_andr3

07-16-2005, 05:32 AM

Wait... what? Opera is more compliant? Have you even tried dealing with it with more advanced CSS 2 and XML?According to this (http://nanobox.chipx86.com/browser_support.php#summary), Opera has better support for CSS 2.1 than firefox. BTW, I've noticed that support for the outline property was added in FF 1.1.

amazing_andr3

07-16-2005, 05:38 AM

yep. A browser cannot be sold... if developers are to make things work for it.Then how come Opera is a good browser and it isn't bankrupt by now?

buntine

07-16-2005, 05:43 AM

Because it is only one product in one product line. The organization would not depend entirely on the sales of a Web Browser.

Regards.

amazing_andr3

07-16-2005, 05:57 AM

Because it is only one product in one product line. The organization would not depend entirely on the sales of a Web Browser.

Regards.Then Opera is just one big publicity stunt?

buntine

07-16-2005, 06:10 AM

No. Its a commercial product. If it did not sell, the Opera company would adjust their marketing, their pricing, or simply remove the product from the market -- provided it was deemed feasible.

I will give this example (and attempt to keep anti-MS people happy): Think of IE as dirty water, FF as spring water, and Opera as Coca Cola's bottled water product, Mount Franklin. We can all get water form the tap, yet the bottled water industry makes millions every year.

I understand you were not exactly disputing that fact, but I feel it remains in context.

Regards.

Ben Rogers

07-16-2005, 04:34 PM

So, basically, if Firefox was not free you'd steal it? :rolleyes:Well...yeah, pretty much...Imeanmedownloadcopyrightedmaterialwtfnevaromg. <.< >.>

Andr, omg it's better than an unnoticeable margin!!! I MUST SWITCH. :rolleyes: (Disclaimer: I am totally not trying to instigate a browser war.)

Then how come Opera is a good browserThat's debatable. (Disclaimer: I may or may not suck with subtlety.)

felgall

07-16-2005, 05:25 PM

Wait... what? Opera is more compliant? Have you even tried dealing with it with more advanced CSS 2 and XML?

Depends on which version of Opera you are talking about. The latest version is version 8 which is more compliant than Firefox. Opera 7 is about as compliant as Firefox (which is also basically a version 7 browser) and older versions of Opera were less compliant (but so are other version 6 and earlier browsers).

JPnyc

07-18-2005, 06:05 PM

$0.00. I do need to check all our forums' display in gecko, but if FF was suddenly to charge and not offer a free version at all, I would just check the pages in Netscape. They generally display the same.

amazing_andr3

07-18-2005, 06:19 PM

That's quite an interesting conclusion. So everyone praises firefox and likes using it, but none would be willing to pay, say $20 (the kind of money you make in an hour) to support its development...

rhsunderground

07-18-2005, 08:37 PM

That's quite an interesting conclusion. So everyone praises firefox and likes using it, but none would be willing to pay, say $20 (the kind of money you make in an hour) to support its development...
i wish. i make $5.86 in an hour (before taxes)

MstrBob

07-18-2005, 09:32 PM

I make $6.50 USD an hour. So I'd have to work about 3 hours and 5 minutes. :p Seriously, though, I'm not willing to pay for ANY browser on the market, so long as there are free alternatives.

buntine

07-18-2005, 09:35 PM

Once they pronounce it as Open Source, it can NEVER be sold. It basically belongs to the people.

I don't praise it. Its alright.

Ben Rogers

07-19-2005, 03:06 PM

Wow, Andr, way to change your question. How convenient for you that you're now talking about donations, not purchasing a product. Two very different things, my irritating friend. If I had a lot of money to spare (I don't have a job),(after donating some to Az, and some to Gaim, and some to Wikipedia...) I'd donate to make it easier for the developers to spend time working on it, or so Mozilla sites could afford hosting and remain ad-free (this depends entirely on my money situation at the moment)...but I wouldn't buy it.

amazing_andr3

07-19-2005, 03:24 PM

LOL. Since when is shifting the focus of a discussion irritating?

Let me see if I get this. So if you had some extra money and it was open source, you would donate. However, if it was a commercial product, you would never buy it. Right?

Ben Rogers

07-19-2005, 05:22 PM

That's about right. Also, I think if Firefox wasn't open source, another alternative would pop up eventually, because people would want a free alternative.

philaweb

07-19-2005, 06:21 PM

i make $5.86 in an hour (before taxes)
I make $6.50 USD an hour.

Okay. What do you guys do for a living?

I'm a postal worker and make about $15.50 an hour.

rhsunderground

07-19-2005, 06:51 PM

i work for the city's parks department. much harder work than what i am paid for.

MstrBob

07-19-2005, 11:28 PM

Okay. What do you guys do for a living?

I'm a postal worker and make about $15.50 an hour.

I'm a tour guide at a museum. It, uh..., allows me to erm, effectively use my, uh, web development, ah, abilities. (It pays bills). My only solace is that I get paid 50 cents over minimum wage to work at a museum with barely any visitors.

Ben Rogers

07-19-2005, 11:40 PM

What museum do you work for, anyhow?

LiLcRaZyFuZzY

07-20-2005, 12:01 AM

an emu museum for sure..

Ben Rogers

07-20-2005, 12:15 AM

That would explain the lack of visitors. And without a doubt enough emu enthusiasts exist to fund such a venture...very well, then. To the batcave! nunununununununah batcaaaaave!

russell

07-20-2005, 03:05 AM

1. MstrBob, If you're as good as I think you are, I'll pay ya 8.46 an hour, but you'll have to relocate to the SF Bay / Silicon Valley area (sorry no relocation assistance available)!

2. FireFox is not a significant upgrade over IE in my (usually less than) humble opinion.

3. FF is exposed as just as hackable as IE so don't even go there

4. AB, Open Source does NOT mean "Can never be sold." This is a common misconception. Case in point: Red Hat Linux -- check out the latest licensing fees on that for an enterprise. Open source means (and I quote GNU.org http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) "A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission."

buntine

07-20-2005, 03:41 AM

I was actually (mis)quoting Tim Berners-Lee there. The point I was making is that that software can never be sold on a logical basis, rather that on an official clause (because its already been distributed under its respective license).

Your point blatantly proves mine false, though.

Regards.

BlackHawk

07-20-2005, 04:48 AM

All of the points made here are all very definitely from programmers so I would like to add the view of a mere user (I don't know my ASP from my elbow).

I currently have IE, FF and Opera installed on my PC and have been running highly complex diagnostics on all three to determine which is the best(for me). I would like to share with you some of my findings.

In my opinion second runner-up is IE, Opera is first princess and the Miss World of browsers is Fireox. I chose FF mainly because its tabbed browsing is better than Opera's and it seems to behave a bit like IE, whereas a lot of sites didn't like Opera. FF also loads www.yahoo.co.uk 0.06s faster than IE did on my PC (I have a stopwatch and far too much spare time). If it loads every page I visit that much faster than IE it could add minutes on to my lifespan. My favourite feature from all three browsers would be Opera's Wand.

The ultimate reason for placing IE last is that my wife uses it and so browsing with either FF or Opera means that I don't have to remember to remove all the smutty sites from my History after each use.

So there you have it, the definitive guide to browsers. I would pay for any browser that wasn't IE because I have already paid for IE when I paid for XP. IE is not a free browser, we have all paid for it with our morality. :p

the tree

07-20-2005, 06:11 AM

If Firefox weren't free then naturally a lot less people would get it (at least legitimately), so there would be a lot less contributers so in short, it wouldn't be as good. Thus I wouldn't pay for it.

The ads in Opera really aren't an issue, I've even clicked on them once. They just don't bug me enough to get me paying.Opera is awsome fast but doesn't have as many features and add-ones as Firefox, so I stick with Firefox.

I'm just not patient enough to use IE.

bringerofnight

07-20-2005, 10:24 AM

i'd pay about $15.00 USD or probally make my own

bringerofnight

07-20-2005, 10:30 AM

IE sucks!!! and Opera has stupid and annoying ads and is easy to hack. FF kicks ass.

but i used opera once to change other peoples website like i can add more options to forms like radio buttons and drop down boxes and basically anything.

and i design graphics and favicons and HTML people pay me about $30.00 for a decent favicon and i design one webpage for $5.00 each page (i don't do login and logout options for websites)

MOD EDIT: post consolidation.

amazing_andr3

07-20-2005, 10:42 AM

and I hate it when people post multiple messages instead of one.

Note: I barely resisted the urge to post every word of that sentence in a new post :)

JPnyc

07-20-2005, 11:36 AM

Opera's ad bugs me because it doubles the height of that toolbar level that it's on. And like FF it's a memory hog, but what I like about it is it's features are native. If it were my main browser I wouldn't have to install it on a new machine, then go hunt down and install a dozen extensions. Just one program, DL, install, and you're off.

rhsunderground

07-20-2005, 12:07 PM

doubles the height? how so? in this screen shot the add is just perfectly in line with everything else.

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/8106/faqforum8hu.gif (http://www.imageshack.us)

JPnyc

07-20-2005, 12:30 PM

Well you use a skin with huge icons.

JPnyc

07-20-2005, 12:41 PM

This is how it appears for me:

rhsunderground

07-20-2005, 12:41 PM

on every other skin i have the size is the same. could it be that you're using opera 8? i'm using 7.23

edit:yes, you are using 8.

JPnyc

07-20-2005, 12:51 PM

No:
Version information
Version 7.54u2
Build 3929

rhsunderground

07-20-2005, 12:56 PM

oh. well you're not using 7.23. as i open opera 8 the ads run across the top of the page (attached screenshot) if you select relevant text ads, but are in the same spot as the others if you choose general advertising.

Ben Rogers

07-20-2005, 01:00 PM

FireFox is not a significant upgrade over IE in my (usually less than) humble opinion.It's not an upgrade at all, they're two independent programs. And FF is a major step up from IE--I won't start a Opera/FF argument, but an IE/FF argument is easy. FF is exposed as just as hackable as IE so don't even go there Really? I'm not seeing many unwanted toolbars...I'm not having any trouble uninstalling extensions. There's nothing unwanted on my GUI. No pop ups are randomly coming up independent of the page I'm on. Seems like FF is much less "hackable" for the ordinary user, then. my wife...smutty sitesMy comment is implied, I beleive.Opera's ad bugs me because it doubles the height of that toolbar level that it's on. And like FF it's a memory hog, but what I like about it is it's features are native. If it were my main browser I wouldn't have to install it on a new machine, then go hunt down and install a dozen extensions. Just one program, DL, install, and you're off.FF, a memory hog? It seems to use less memory than IE...as for the extensions, I don't much get this argument. You just said Opera was a memory hog...but then all these extra functions are added on without your consent, and you don't mind that...?

JPnyc

07-20-2005, 01:45 PM

Less memory than IE? You're the 1st I've heard that from. Everything Mozilla builds uses more memory than it's MS counterpart. Compare Thunderbird (which is my default mail client at work) with Outlook. TB is about 4 to 6x more resource hungry.

FF, 1 page open, usage 21,564k.
IE, same site open, 19,000k

As to the Opera features, no, that doesn't bother me. I like features. Neither Opera nor FF is my main browser, but if I had to choose between them, I would choose Opera. I have neither the time nor the interest to adopt a browser as a hobby. I can't be bothered tracking down and installing a dozen extensions to get the features other boutiqué browsers have out of the box. And I'd have to do that on each one of 4 machines. No thanks.

Not to mentioning updating them all with new major releases, which is occasionally necessary. I also didn't mention that since extensions are usually coded by entirely unrelated programmers, there's no way to know how they'll interact with each other.

amazing_andr3

07-20-2005, 04:37 PM

FF, 1 page open, usage 21,564k.
IE, same site open, 19,000k
Really, who has only one page open? I average 10. With 10 pages (in tabs), Firefox uses barely two times more resources, whereas 10 IE windows will, as expected, use 10 times more resources.

JPnyc

07-20-2005, 04:53 PM

Well if you're going to compare it that way, then compare it to tabbed browser shells based on top of IE. I've done so, the gap is larger. FF or Opera both use 50 to 100% more resource than Avant or Maxthon (2 fairly popular tabbed IE shells) with the same exact sites open.

MstrBob

07-20-2005, 07:10 PM

Hmm, my biggest issue with Firefox is the memory situtation. This is a known problem, but I haven't heard of any mention of fixing it. After an extended period of time, Firefox slowly eats up more memory. Minimizing and restoring seems to free a bunch, but this is still an issue. Given, however, how Mozilla is built, with Gecko rendering the GUI from XUL and Javascript, one would expect it to use more memory than IE, which would be directly using the GUI. There's no rendering neccessary with IE, but this does make Firefox infinitely easier to extend/customize. Which is one reason I love Firefox, the sheer amount of extensions and the ease with which you can create your own.

Ben Rogers

07-21-2005, 11:35 AM

As I have no idea what I'm talking about here, I'll just concede that FF uses more memory. It crashes a lot less, and can handle much more stress, but, sure, whatever, it uses more memory.

davidbrent

07-22-2005, 07:58 AM

I would pay for Firefox simply to test Web sites for clients when the specification outlines Firefox as a required browser.

wamboid

07-22-2005, 08:14 AM

As long as others are free, I wouldn't pay a dime for it.
I would pay for Firefox simply to test Web sites for clients when the specification outlines Firefox as a required browser.
In that case, my client would be paying for it. It's not that I don't like ff, I just wouldn't pay for something that I can get elsewhere free. As far as paying for the added features, currently I don't think there is enough improvement to be worth paying for.

pyro

07-22-2005, 10:30 AM

In a sense, I have paid for Firefox, in that I've donated to Mozilla...

theuedimaster

07-23-2005, 03:39 PM

Hear hear! Poor a jug o' whiskey for Mr.Pyro!

BlackHawk

07-25-2005, 09:07 AM

FF, 1 page open, usage 21,564k.IE, same site open,19,000k

Just to add fuel to the fire, I have opened the exact same page (this page in fact) in both FF and IE and the results are FF: 28,168k & IE: 30,112k.

I'm not making a statement however, I just thought that seeing as how we are all sharing...

PeOfEo

07-26-2005, 12:29 PM

Then how come Opera is a good browser and it isn't bankrupt by now? What I meant was you have to be able to let the developers develop for that platform or no one will use it, therefore you cannot force developers to pay for it... opera does not because they have a free version.