Good point. Edited.

Which (pr nightmare aside) I wouldn't be against. It's not gonna fly, people are accustomed to 'free' browsers to the point they'd balk at the idea. Even if they weren't most would take a free chromium based browser or Firefox fork over a paid alternative that doesn't give them anything extra. But browsers are massive pieces of tech, they need a lot of dev time, and the money needs to come from somewhere, just relying on volunteers won't cut it.

Mozilla has been looking for sources of funding for years, sometimes in ways that are their own type of pr nightmare and sometimes in ways I'm not thrilled by, but I get their predicament. I wish there would be (more) state funding. EU, US. Whatever. Much like governments should invest in public transit we should invest in critical software infra.

I also wish Google's other branches were divorced from their browser dev branch. The stranglehold on the web given to Google by chrome is a huge part of the problem.

it's simply not possible for something to get very popular without being taken over by a corporation

Please don't excuse unethical and exploitative behavior by pretending that it's unavoidable.

There are examples of other funding models available; for example, what the Blender Foundation does. It turns out, if a FOSS effort focuses on their community, makes users feel involved and important, asks in good faith for contributions and suggestions, treats people with respect, maintains funding and organizational transparency, and has consistent ethical standards.. it can work out very well for them. No selling out required. No data harvesting required. No shady deals with Google required.

In a capitalist world, it is possible (and prudent) to treat your customers like customers. Your line will still go up, and for longer. Yes, if you treat them like products, your line will go up faster, until it won't.

E: if they made this ad network an opt-in with a proper explanation, many people would have opted in. Not everyone, but many would have. And their reputation would not have been sullied.

I don't want to throw the word enshitiffication around, especially when I'm not sure if I can spell it, but the platforms that people jump ship to when that happens are probably especially vulnerable to people jumping ship again.

I can't imagine Mozilla effectively marketing Firefox as anything but the bullshit free browser, and when they lose that, people will just move to the next actual bullshit free option.

Kinda but Thunderbird is community driven, and spun out into an independent subsidiary.

And I wouldn't call it serious, the performance is atrocious.

It's so bad I went and installed outlook from 2016

There was a graphic here a while ago. What was it, about 4/5 are Azure and Office 365, Windows less than 1/5.

Let me tell my management they no longer have to pay windows license for the ~10,000 user machines, and then the servers.

While a single consumer can get away with it (and MS doesn't care because it means they're using Windows and likely using MS services, all while getting telemetry from the desktops), it's far from "nobody buys a windows license any more".

Even SMB's will pay, because if they don't MS will hammer them financially. No SMB could stand up to what MS can do to them - $200 windows license is cheap insurance.

Because Mozilla promised us privacy, and “privacy-friendly” ad tracking is still worse privacy than not baking ad tracking into the browser in the first place.

I don't think "privacy" works in a way you snap your fingers, and bam, you have privacy, without any progress or stations in your way. Especially in today's web. Also, it's not just on Mozilla. On the contrary. I feel like Mozilla is the only "bigger name" in this market who tries to navigate in this shitstormy sea that is the web now.

Tho, it's just me, but it sounds much better if my browser handles all the tracking and data sharing business in a controlled manner with advertisers in a "privacy-friendly" way than no control overall (especially since it's Firefox and not Chrome/Edge), hoping only the other side would respect my preferences and requests.

But in the end, as I read other comments here, the problem is just the default state of the checkbox, got it. Feels a bit silly - in this particular case - but I can understand it.

I made a very simple HTML page to count the money for my work. I've tried everything and I ended up hosting it just to be able to access it from Firefox. It might work with Android, I don't know, but on this internet aids MIUI it's impossible. But MIUI is just some pimped Android so chances are it's the same.

I managed to open it locally in chrome (spits), but the URL didn't even say the usual file path but some sus looking mi.com address, so I'll stick with just hosting it.

Thanks for the insight. I deleted Fennec and migrated over to Mull.