I don't mind side-projects, I mind that Mozilla looks completely directionless from the outside. It might even look like a Google-funded adult daycare. I can't trust that.
"In the early 2000s, the Mozilla community built Firefox. We toppled the browser monopoly, gave users choice and control online, and helped create a healthier internet.
Twenty years later, Mozilla continues to fight for a healthy internet — one where Big Tech is held accountable and individual users have real agency online."
They list a bunch of projects on the site that are kind of all over the place. It's almost as if they don't know yet what they want to do. Mozilla is synonymous with Firefox and the Mozilla browser before that, but it is clear from the site that browsers do not fit in with their future. I'm not even sure they know what their future is. They look like a research organization that's dong research for the purpose of finding something to do? They are also accepting applications for funding.
The only purpose Firefox has in this organization is to fund exploratory research via the Google search deal. There is no plan. These people don't deserve our money and are not responsible enough to be custodians of a project as important as an independent browser.
A new organization should fork Firefox, rebrand it, contribute real resources and monetize it enough to keep it healthy. I'm not talking about junk like Zen or Floorp where they just put a skin on Firefox and have no real development resources to speak of. Someone should do to Mozilla what Mozilla did to Netscape.
Personally, I think that's a more worthwhile approach than what Ladybird is doing, although I'm rooting for them to succeed.