With Firefox on the eve of it’s 2.0 release, I have a question. Where are the commercial Firefox extensions? It seems to me that there’d be many a computing geek who would be willing to fork over $10 for access to say 5-6 really great extensions.
As far as my knowledge of Firefox and it’s license, I don’t think selling extensions rubs any legal noses in the dirt and I think the community would really be willing to pay if the value those extensions added was real. There would no doubt be a ton of press on the subject. Everyone would want to know what Mozilla thought and how they were going to “handle” it.
Having never developed a Firefox extension myself, I wonder if it’s the format itself that is causing a hindrance. From what I know, extensions are little more than some Javascript and XML. Knowing how extensions work in Firefox, I would say it’s pretty easy to transfer them from one computer to another and that’s a hurdle that said fictional company would have to overcome. I think it would be doable and rather profitable if done though.
All this coming from an avid open-source user? Maybe the real question is where are my morals?
Pants.
I think the real question is where are your pants?
Shrug, the problem is once you charge someone for it, they think they are entitled to support, and to some degree they are. There is also a problem with responsibility. Someone installs your extension, and then gets hacked; next thing you know they are suing you because of the extension.
Another question… Would you personally pay for it, or pirate them?