Categories: developers end users

Contributing to a healthy ecosystem

Over the past year, there’s been a growing debate around how add-on developers can receive compensation for the work they put into their add-ons.

That’s why we’re looking to launch a contributions pilot by the end of June. This pilot will allow participating developers to request voluntary contributions from users in a way that helps explain how those financial contributions help with the development of an add-on. We know that there are great stories about add-ons, and we want to help developers tell them by explaining why they created an add-on and where they plan on going next.

For users, contributions will be optional — they can choose to contribute nothing, or even increase their contribution to an amount they feel appropriately reflects the value they get from the add-on. We think this is a way for members of our community to participate in the ongoing development of the add-ons they enjoy using.

More details will come soon, but for now please fill out this form if you’re an add-on developer and want to participate in our pilot.

Add-ons Contributions Pilot Form

4 comments on “Contributing to a healthy ecosystem”

  1. Gc wrote on

    What will the minimum payment be? Typically services charge something like 30¢ or more per transaction, some services are much higher.

    Are there any future plans to facilitate smaller ‘micropayments’ by allowing a user to transfer funds to an account once (or say once a month), then distribute those funds among multiple add-ons, sort of like a shopping cart?

    The mozilla manifesto encourages creating a system that will work worldwide, not just in high-wage markets.

  2. Nick wrote on

    Hi Gc, thanks for asking. There is no minimum amount for contributions, and Paypal will be the mechanism through which developers can accept payments. Paypal offers a commission structure for micropayments that works out to 5% + $.05, which reduces the commission for payments under $12.

  3. quang cao online wrote on

    thank you, i am interesting in this thing

  4. James Dean wrote on

    But PayPal sucks balls. Very un-Mozilla like.

    :-/