Given that Brave is a for-profit business backed by VC money[1], sooner or later it'll become what you hate and you will find yourself wishing there was a browser ran by a strong non-profit like Mozilla.

That being said, perhaps they should just piggyback off WebKit/Blink and save themselves a ton of resources.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/brave-software

I'm aware that Brave is a for-profit company, this must not necessarily mean that they'll do evil things. And if they would and Mozilla is no longer around, this could also be because Google stopped funding them.

Mozilla may be a non-profit but there’s a saying: “non profit doesn’t mean they don’t make money”.

It’s not too difficult to disable, but Firefox does push suggestions by default and has a revenue sharing agreement with Pocket.

> Firefox [...] has a revenue sharing agreement with Pocket

"Mozilla Corporation" bought Pocket in 2017.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(service) :

> On February 27, 2017, Pocket announced that it had been acquired by Mozilla Corporation, the commercial arm of Firefox's non-profit development group. Mozilla staff stated that Pocket would continue to operate as an independent subsidiary but that it would be leveraged as part of an ongoing "Context Graph" project.[6] There are plans to open-source the server-side code of Pocket,[11][12][13] with more than 50 repositories already available on the company's GitHub account, including their iOS app.

I stand partially corrected! Didn’t realize they were acquired but they are still using pocket for revenue.

In fact, this little nugget supports my original post: “the commercial arm of Firefox's non-profit development group”

Pocket has been acquired by Mozilla a few years ago.

It is kind of a conundrum. The Mozilla situation seems clearly to be self serving and crippling the potential of the browser. The CEO's pay exemplary of that - and similar situations are there with brave. The founder was forced out of Mozilla for a reason, but setting that aside, the liberty they took with collecting crypto for businesses while those businesses were unaware put me off of them in a profound way. The niche the browser itself fills is obviously good but the methods seem... off, not malicious intent, just questionable. Changing the ad economy isn't bad for example, a great driving motivation.

The worst thing about using Firefox is that the longer you use it the more things you have done to un-fuck it and the more work it is to replicate all those things on a new system.

Same! I switched from FF to Brave a few months back, and I'm liking it a lot.

I miss a few features, but nothing major.

I used to work with Brendan and despite being trans felt he sorta got the shaft from Mozilla. I know everyone was upset with him, but for a year and a half I worked with him and he was never anything but cordial to me... an out trans queer person.

So when he launched Brave I wanted to give it the benefit if the doubt. But the early messaging about what conditions ads are replaced was hamfisted and I stopped using it relatively quickly.

That being said... all the browsers (FF, Brave, Chrome, Safari, etc.) embody the agenda of their respective organizations. The question you may want to ask is "what organization has the most motivation to address issues I care about most?"

This is why I use Lynx.

I don't know Brendan, but I agree that from everything I've gathered he was treated very badly by Mozilla and then to make matters worse he was woke mobbed. Absolutely lost respect for Mozilla after that. The CEO issue, to a lesser degree, indicates to me that they don't really understand how to run a tech company properly.

Yep! Lifetime FF user and I switched to Brave a few weeks ago. It took a little while to get used to the interface but otherwise enjoying it.

How much was the CEO getting paid?

I'm no expert, just reading web pages: Apparently Firefox market share dropped from 30% to 3.46 over the same time her income went from 500 k to 4 million.

An old write up: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

A few million seems reasonable to me. It’s less than a CEO of a tech company makes.

I dunno, for a non profit the % administrative overhead is apparently ridiculous.

Clueless as I am I had a look at page 6-7 of https://nonprofitlight.com/page/6 where we find helm men of charities earning around 4 m.

This entry strikes me as funny:

--------------

https://nonprofitlight.com/ny/new-york/trustees-of-columbia-...

TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

Total Revenue $5,554,552,356

Total Expenses $5,268,492,284

Net Assets $15,984,284,555

Lawrence Gerald Lenke PROFESSOR OF SURGERY $4,741,060

OR ----------

https://nonprofitlight.com/ky/louisville/university-of-louis...

UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION

Total Revenue $126,934,461

Total Expenses $122,421,563

Net Assets $126,332,991

Fredric Scott Satterfield Head Football Coach $4,140,900

--------

https://nonprofitlight.com/ca/mountain-view/mozilla-foundati...

MOZILLA FOUNDATION

Total Revenue $28,388,184

Total Expenses $21,889,786

Net Assets $53,411,636

Mark Surman EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PRESIDENT $286,990

----------

Right, now I'm more clueless than I started out.