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There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. At least not for any sane definition of "respect"

The arguments are technically nuanced, but I went into it a little a while back: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/113199184170538484

Raising money is pointless if doing so compromises the values you claim to stand for.

Firefox, or at least the ideal of Firefox - an open browser that serves the interests of people rather than corporations is so important.

It's also an incredibly expensive proposition (in part because of how the web has evolved complexity, thanks in part to how corporations have driven, and ultimately practically captured various standards)

I deeply understand Mozilla's desire to continue existing to serve that mission...but it can't be like this.

Many people are in my mentions talking about and/or promoting various firefox forks.

Look, if Mozilla can't afford to keep developing/maintaining firefox without resorting to the sad path, then the question that needs to be asked is how any other organization can? What about the approach is different?

It's one thing to package firefox with some of the bad things turned off. It's another to take on the responsibility of maintaining that codebase sans-mozilla.

There is clearly a lot of effort fractured over a lot of projects, perhaps enough to actually take on the task, but I'm not aware of any project committed to a hard fork of firefox, with everything that entails (and if you had the resources to go that route, I'm not convinced that is the best path to take either)

I can only really think of a handful of groups I think have a chance at success, but I don't think any of them are currently considering it.

I think Tor Project are probably best placed to do it - they are already as close to maintaining a hard fork of firefox you can be without actually maintaining a hard fork. I understand why they don't - but, if anyone has a shot of making that path work, I think it's them.