The standard point is most around how big that ‘partly’ is, and how attached a project can become to that part. If a project has, for easy math, a $10M bankroll and $5M comes from, say, Goog or MS, the project can face a moment where the corporation comes and says, ‘we don’t like that you’ve implemented this feature that interferes with our control of users. We’re pulling our funding unless you remove it.’ (more realistically, ‘we see you have allocated some dev time to this feature request we don’t like. Cancel it before the public can demand it.’) If that happens, you have to have a project lead with some real rectitude to say, ‘okay,’ and just cut their budget in half. The more diversely sourced a FOSS project’s funding is, the harder it is to control, and vice versa.
Wauw, that’s crazy speculations. Google buys a service from Firefox, that doesn’t give them the right to manage Firefox. Give me 1 example where Google did what you say? Otherwise, let’s archive that fantasy rambling as paranoid speculation.
It’s a standard discussion point, not my argument in particular. It’s the same one as for why it’s a problem to have so much corporate money behind news media, political campaigns, and just about anything else.
But
It’s all speculation, both the idea of priority manipulation happening and your idea it does not. The general population doesn’t know anyone at these projects, so everything has to be discussed in vague generalities. You can say ‘I trust X never to take a bribe, because I know X.’ but you can’t say ‘I trust all members of the profession X is in, because they are in that profession.’
Saying you don’t trust Google is just sensible. Saying you don’t trust management at something like Mozilla because they are faceless management, (not that all the things said about choices made inside Mozilla are likely to encourage trust) though a bit generalizing, is also fairly understandable. As such, it’s not at all unusual that people are going to hold some distrust for the combination of the two, especially when one of the big drivers of Firefox usage is specifically that it’s supposed to be more respecting of privacy than chrome or edge. The user base is already primed to be distrustful of tech companies, and not through paranoia but experience.
I’m not saying manipulation of Mozilla by Google is guaranteed to happen but it’s honestly less speculative to expect creepy activity from google, a company for which the business model is ‘do sneaky shit on the internet,’ than to assume absolutely everything going on is totally trustworthy.
You do know the difference of “built by” and “partly funded by”, right?
What exactly is your problem by Mozilla/Firefox being partly funded by Google?
The standard point is most around how big that ‘partly’ is, and how attached a project can become to that part. If a project has, for easy math, a $10M bankroll and $5M comes from, say, Goog or MS, the project can face a moment where the corporation comes and says, ‘we don’t like that you’ve implemented this feature that interferes with our control of users. We’re pulling our funding unless you remove it.’ (more realistically, ‘we see you have allocated some dev time to this feature request we don’t like. Cancel it before the public can demand it.’) If that happens, you have to have a project lead with some real rectitude to say, ‘okay,’ and just cut their budget in half. The more diversely sourced a FOSS project’s funding is, the harder it is to control, and vice versa.
Wauw, that’s crazy speculations. Google buys a service from Firefox, that doesn’t give them the right to manage Firefox. Give me 1 example where Google did what you say? Otherwise, let’s archive that fantasy rambling as paranoid speculation.
But
Saying you don’t trust Google is just sensible. Saying you don’t trust management at something like Mozilla because they are faceless management, (not that all the things said about choices made inside Mozilla are likely to encourage trust) though a bit generalizing, is also fairly understandable. As such, it’s not at all unusual that people are going to hold some distrust for the combination of the two, especially when one of the big drivers of Firefox usage is specifically that it’s supposed to be more respecting of privacy than chrome or edge. The user base is already primed to be distrustful of tech companies, and not through paranoia but experience.
I’m not saying manipulation of Mozilla by Google is guaranteed to happen but it’s honestly less speculative to expect creepy activity from google, a company for which the business model is ‘do sneaky shit on the internet,’ than to assume absolutely everything going on is totally trustworthy.
“Partly funded by”?
https://windscribe.com/blog/windscribe-expose-mozilla/
That’s what you call “partly”. You know, unlike “solely”…? So what is your question here?
Do you mean “almost completely”?
Which is still partly, because it’s not solely. But yes, that is a rather large part of the total sum.