Linux

I mean, that argument starts to wade in to the Mozilla foundation as a whole, and what their purpose is, and that's a giant kettle of fish.

Theoretical game. They lowball Google on how much Google pays them. How do people react? I don't see them doing that and say, "Man, I'm glad Firefox is reducing Google's influence over them". I see them making a thread about how Firefox is giving Google a discounted rate because they're all corrupt technofacists.

The core problem there still exists IMO. Funding.

What we really need is a reasonable way for open source, free, software, that exists for the good of the whole, to get money. But that has it's own kettle of fish, where does it come from, how big is big enough to get some, what if they charge for support, how open is open enough.

Something something, seize the means of production, communism, etc.

Proton did something similar.

This poll shows promise: https://mastodon.neat.computer/@jonah/112654592627487236

All of these claims clash with the reality of so many core open source projects, used by private users and massive corporations alike, that rely on single voluntary developers or super small groups which receive no flowers and no donations.

In the meantime you can give a look to the Servo project. If Servo is clean for you, you can support them.

You’re definitely not alone. If this happens and it becomes some major news in the community with reasonable visibility, I’m sure many people would support this.

I think this a problem with applications with a privacy focused user basis. It becomes very black and white where any type of information being sent somewhere is bad. I respect that some people have that opinion and more power to them, but being pragmatic about this is important. I personally disabled this flag, and I recognize how this is edging into a risky area, but I also recognize that the Mozilla CTO is somewhat correct and if we have the option between a browser that blocks everything and one that is privacy-preserving (where users can still opt for the former), businesses are more likely to adopt the privacy-preserving standards and that benefits the vast majority of users.

Privacy is a scale. I'm all onboard with Firefox, I block tons of trackers and ads, I'm even somebody who uses NoScript and suffers the ramifications to due to ideology reasons, but I also enable telemetry in Firefox because I trust that usage metrics will benefit the product.

I think Mozilla could find another way of getting profit without without tracking its users or depending on Google's funding.