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This is great news! Browser editors will finally have to consider their users as their customers again, not their product.

Mozilla is especially guilty of it, their foundation still doesn’t accept donations for browser development. It’s time that people can pay for their browser if they want to, that’s the only way they’ll get respect.



I almost thought you think people should be buying a web browser on retail (like Netscape or Opera back then).

EDIT: For that, see Horse - but that's still Chromium derived: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43853708


> Browser editors will finally have to consider their users as their customers again, not their product.

Do you really think the users are going to pay for browsers?


Yes. We had that business model for Orion browser since day one.

Web browser is is the most important, most intimate piece of software on your computer. It is astonishing that ad-tech has convinced us for so long that someone else should be paying for our browser.


Good luck to you! I think the world would be a better place if people paid for their web browsers.

And yet, I'm more than a little reluctant to pay for mine: It's not the cost, it's the dread that non-open-source software can disappear anytime. I want my browser not to disappear. I want it to continue working even if you go bankrupt or when hardware manufacturers start using a different architecture.


Do you have the same expectations for other things you pay for - including software?




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