These two goals:

> ... please stop working on projects distracting from the complex and necessary work of browser and web standards stewardship.

> Ditching any direct financial ties to Google or any other browser vendor is both important and necessary...

are inherently contradictory. If you do not want Mozilla to have revenue from search vendors that also have browsers, it has to come from somewhere else. Or are you suggesting they switch the default search engine back to Yahoo [0]?

I am not trying to defend the projects they have chosen to work on, but you have to understand that reducing dependence on Google is exactly why they are working on them [1].

[0] Even when they did that, it was for the US only, and Google was still the default for most of the world.

[1] Although in this case, this appears to come from the Thunderbird organization, so unrelated to the browser. Money is fungible, though.

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manfredz 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are plenty ways to fund digital commons, including people volunteering their time.

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patmorgan23 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A leading web browser can not be built and maintained by volunteers.

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glenstein 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right. Firefox stands alone as the most successful self financed full stack browser that's ever been made without being subsidized by outside revenue streams. I like to use the example of Opera. If "make a better browser" won market share and business creativity won stable revenue, we'd all be using Opera right now because (sorry Mozilla), no browser company was ever better than Opera in my opinion.

In 2026 the rules to making a good browser are (1) already be a trillion dollar company, (2) use Chromium, (3) have some form of distribution lock-in over billions of devices. Otherwise you're cooked. Mozilla swims against the stream better than anyone.

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manfredz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t know, but there are other ways of funding besides -completely- volunteer run.

Take look at Ladybird

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser)?wprov=s...

	▲	aucisson_masque an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You can't seriously compare ladybird, a mostly broken browser nowhere ready or even remotely close to it, to Firefox. Ladybird will be dead in a few years.

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PaulHoule 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The EU says it cares about privacy. although it's actions have normalized enshittification; the EU could fully fund Firefox or a Firefox fork or another browser in a second and stop all the trackers right in their tracks.

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throwaway290 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's American company... unlikely.

	▲	PaulHoule 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Then fork it. Besides, the one thing Mozilla could do to be relevant to 99.9% of web users is to move somewhere other San Francisco and turn their office their into a homeless shelter. They should go to Dublin or Frankfurt or Barcelona, anywhere.

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sylos 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think volunteering is going to cut it. Big orgs have big money and public commons are just targets to be controlled exploited.

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tomaspiaggio12 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

mozilla employs 750 people and has a 1/2Bn dollar deal with Google and still their browser is absolute hot garbage. i think volunteering won't cut it.

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drzaiusx11 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd argue these are not _contradictory_, just incentivized financially to continue since that's how they've operated. What i'm suggesting is a change. There's plenty of counter examples where diverse funding models for community projects can work without taking vast sums from a single, direct competitor. Linux is one. Imagine if MSFT was the sole contributor to Linux and how that would have shaped its development. In recent years MSFT may infact directly contribute developers and funding to linux, but they have a vested interest in doing so, as they run more Linux VMs in Azure than Windows VMs these days...

	▲	eipi10_hn 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because Windows doesn't go open-source and others can't build their OS from windows like chromium. With OS, there are no open source kernels that are actively maintained and security-fix bump every month by full time staff of giant corporation. With browsers, devs already have an open source engine with most of the work and build are from full-time staff of a giant corporation, and then they just lazily build "their own" browsers upon that and brag on social media. Build your own browser engine and see how you can pay the devs to make them work on it.