Search and ad funding for open source [LWN.net]

Search and ad funding for open source

Posted Nov 9, 2011 13:37 UTC (Wed) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848)
In reply to: Search and ad funding for open source by Cato
Parent article: Firefox 8 released

I for one really hate adverts. I'd *far* rather (and do) donate to projects which are important to me, rather than have them bombard me with crap to encourage me to consume more. Ads are never truly relevant; they're paid placements on what you actually want to read.

I expect it is true that most people don't donate to projects they rely on, or really think of doing so, but changing that mindset makes projects much more sustainable, and our mental environment much nicer.

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I doubt it'll work

Posted Nov 9, 2011 14:36 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

LWN is barely able to collect enough fees to support itself - and people are accustomed to pay for magazines IRL.

I'm not sure if it'll be possible support major project like Mozilla this way.

Search and ad funding for open source

Posted Nov 9, 2011 17:09 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I should have mentioned donations (quite a lot of Mint funding comes from them), but as long as ads are easily blockable with Adblock Plus, you can donate instead. Search-based funding doesn't involve graphical ads and the project gets the revenue even if you block the text ads, which I find are quite relevant and sometimes useful.