Developers building functional Add-ons for the Firefox browser can request financial contributions from users through an effort launched this week by Mozilla.

The Contributions Pilot Program is billed as a way for developers to showcase themselves next to their Add-ons and receive a suggested contribution for their work, via PayPal. With the Contributions feature, developers can tell the story of what motivated them to build an Add-on.

"The Contributions Pilot explores how we can help our Add-ons ecosystem by allowing developers to request financial participation from satisfied users," said Nick Nguyen, director of Add-ons at Mozilla.

"Since Firefox launched, thousands of Add-ons have been created to add new features to the Web browser.  These features include Twitter clients, bookmark and search assistants, and some of the most widely used Web development tools in the industry," Nyugen said.

"Contributions are always optional, there is no way to require a user to make a payment in order to enable access or additional features," Nyugen said. A blog detailing the specifics of the program was posted by the Firefox Add-ons team on Thursday.

The Add-ons community, according to Mozilla, is a source of innovation for Firefox users. Add-ons foreshadow the future of Web browsers, and until introduction of the Contributions program, developers had few options for financial support.

The Contributions effort differs from the Mozilla Jetpack program for browser Add-on development in that Jetpack is intended to grow the audience of potential developers by making it easier to build  browser enhancements.