I don't expect a high proportion of people would pay for a browser. My point is that if you're starting at 200M users you don't need a high proportion. You just need a loyal core of fans who see enough value to play the "whale" role and prop up the rest. Given the kind of people that Firefox has traditionally appealed to in the first place I don't think that's an entirely unrealistic scenario.
As for other apps - for my own small development businesses we have spent a lot more than $10/user on all-day-every-day development tools like text editors and diff tools. Also on several other areas like graphics, business admin and communications. For a browser and related resources that we also use on a daily basis whenever we're working on web projects it would be a very quick decision.
I don't accept your premise about only charging for the binaries. You're not going after the people who would rip you off anyway with this model. You're going after the people who genuinely value your product and want to support its continued development. They're going to pay a modest amount without much thought just as we do for several of the software packages we use - despite almost all of them having free (but not necessarily as good in our opinion) competitors available.
> They're going to pay a modest
amount without much thought
Highly disagree... I think if you've been providing a free and open source product to your loyal fans for over 20 years, then suddenly start charging for it, isn't going to get people stepping over each other to hand their money over.
As for other apps - for my own small development businesses we have spent a lot more than $10/user on all-day-every-day development tools like text editors and diff tools. Also on several other areas like graphics, business admin and communications. For a browser and related resources that we also use on a daily basis whenever we're working on web projects it would be a very quick decision.
I don't accept your premise about only charging for the binaries. You're not going after the people who would rip you off anyway with this model. You're going after the people who genuinely value your product and want to support its continued development. They're going to pay a modest amount without much thought just as we do for several of the software packages we use - despite almost all of them having free (but not necessarily as good in our opinion) competitors available.