And I’m sure Mozilla is furiously looking around for new funding sources right now, governments could be of interest, but I expect them to be very careful about letting money influence the product. They know their independence is a key feature, and Google has so far allowed them to remain independent aside from default search engine choice.
And yeah, I don't want to work for someone who likes paleoconservative Pat Buchanan enough to give him money.
As for "They know their independence is a key feature", the question is, what sort of independence?
Like, how much do they value their independence to do user-based profiling, if a sov. tech fund says that's completely forbidden.
Should we respect that sort of independence?
How many people have you worked for? You've probably already violated this principle. His views aren't exactly fringe and he's reasonably popular. Eich was giving him money because his position was reasonably popular position in the US tech scene.
The Bush family ended up disgracing itself so there is a great argument that Buchanan should have been president.
When there is easy freedom to change jobs, as there had been in tech for decades, then tech workers can be picky about their employer.
Plus thousands to Tom McClintock, Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, to list only the contributions listed in the article.
> As much as we want projects like this to succeed and beat the Google/Apple-centric monoculture we’re stuck with.
I've never heard even a whisper of Mozilla looking for sovereign tech funding.
You would surely think European countries want a way for their citizens to access email, bank, government accounts, etc. without US control, right?
My assumption is they want to be in charge of things, without some foreign government getting involved and saying that "no personal data collection" and "no AI".