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Firefox plan to show ads and shopping in the near future in the browser as an opt-out (bugzilla.mozilla.org)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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First focusing on AI and now this, already cancelled my donations, do we have a good fork to move to?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.