Would You Pay For Firefox Extensions?
By Harry McCracken | Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Firefox is the happy result of untold hours of unpaid effort by the Mozilla community. But Mozilla is announcing a pilot program called Firefox Add-On Contributions, with the aim of helping Firefox extension developers make a buck from their hard work. It’s a platform for requesting and receiving payments for extensions, with PayPal handling the exchange of money. It is, of course, optional.
I kind of like the idea–I try to pay for the shareware I use, and the iPhone App Store has shown the power of selling a lot of copies of something small and useful for just a little money. (I’m assuming that the contribution price for a typical Firefox add-on isn’t going to be more than a few dollars.)
So if you’re asked to chip in for extensions you use and like…will you?
5 Comments
Read more:
4 Comments For This Post
1 Trackbacks For This Post
-
Firefox Addon Makers Can Now Ask for Donations « TechWorthy Says:
July 20th, 2009 at 6:29 pm[…] poll posted on the Technologizer blog, which is run by former PC World editor-in-chief Harry McCracken, asked different questions. […]
July 16th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
AdBlock Plus, NoScript and Firebug – Yes, probably. Of these, I think only NoScript takes donations at the moment. Others would have to have a long track record of stability and updates before they would get support. So, in a pay-for-play world, how would extensions get that track record?
July 16th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
AdBlock Plus – you betcha. $10 USD per year. Easily worth it.
Web Developer Toolbar – yes. $5/yr.
I only use those two. They are worth money. Your mileage may vary.
1Password is also (sort of) an add-on, but I already pay for that.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:15 am
I wouldn’t. Making my favorite extensions no longer free would drive me away from Fx. atm extensions are the only thing keeping me away from chrome or safari.
July 17th, 2009 at 5:23 am
I did without extensions for 12 years… I’m sure I can do it again. I’d never pay for a browser extension.
In fact if I was required to pay, it would be a good excuse to move back to IE, or to Chrome.
Kind of ironic paying for AdBlock plus! I’d rather go back to seeing adverts. I don’t use NoScript after the “AdBlock” fiasco a few months back. The only other extension I use is Glasser which gives Firefox a glass effect on Vista – again not worth paying for (but makes Firefox look really nice)