That said, there are some things that simply cannot be disclosed.
Does that hurt Mozilla's mission? I doubt it. It is simply part of the operational process.
Have you seen Firefox with Bing btw?
Money is money. Absent some evidence of a conflict on the part of people at Mozilla, I would have no objection to that clause from MS/Bing. I would object to the deal as a whole on other grounds, though.
May I ask why?
Mozilla was testing having Bing search defaulted in their Test Pilot project. So I suspect such a deal may have been very close.
(I think Microsoft actually offers such a Firefox from their site)
It'll be just as closed. It would still have some remains of open source, but the technologies wouldn't work with anything non-Google.
Which essentially is the same thing.
Heh, Mozilla should start MozillaSearch :P
Hypothetical future scenarios based on some rather extreme assumptions I do not agree with are not going to change that.
You are, of course, free to reach different conclusions, but the level of hostility and condescension I've received here for voicing my opinion in response to a direct question is disturbing to say the least.
This sentence lets one think about the importance of openness in the Open Source community. I wonder if the community would accept the same clause if Microsoft/Bing were to provide the next three years of Firefox searching.