Mozilla is not and never has been a browser company. They have always been a charity with a for profit arm that does a browser. However never has a browser been more than an after thought to any of the leadership.

Of course what the world really needs is a browser company and so we try to pretend Mozilla is that, but they are not. Support an alternative browser (I'm not aware of any though. There are browser skin companies but nobody making the hard parts of a browser)

I’m aware of at least two honest-to-goodness new browser projects:

There’s Servo, which used to be from Mozilla, but then they abandoned it. Now I believe it’s independent after a long period of dormancy.

There is also Ladybird, whose founder is a prolific and technically brilliant person but who is also, at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist ideas.

Neither project, last I checked, is really close to being a “daily driver.” But they’re both in active development, so maybe in the future they’ll become legit alternatives to the Google/Apple duopoly.

> There is also Ladybird, whose founder is a prolific and technically brilliant person but who is also, at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist ideas.

I know nothing about Ladybird or their founder, so I'm taking your word for it that they are "at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist ideas."

Accepting the premise, this leads to an interesting philosophical discussion. I'm utterly repulsed by all those things, but I'm also repulsed by viewpoints and even personalities of some actors and musicians and such. In my younger days I couldn't even enjoy their art. There would be songs or shows I loved but couldn't listen to or watch once I knew about the musicians/actors views. However as I've gotten older, I've gotten more to a place where I'm able to separate the art from the artist and appreciate it more (still not perfectly, but I hope to get there someday).

I'm now asking myself if I could use and/or support a browser like Ladybird (assuming it's a good product, again I know nothing about it) even despite the founder's reprehensible views. I'm not sure, but I feel like I want to be able to.

You will never find somebody you 100% agree with. The question is when does something become so bad you will boycott them in other areas. Still a hard question, but the framing can help.

Indeed, thanks that is very helpful framing, thanks! Doesn't eliminate the subjectivity, but definitely helps limit it's scope by giving a more specific point to focus on

The art-vs-artist hand-wringing seems to be a particular affliction for Americans and particularly US progressives. I suspect it's something to do with America's protestant puritan heritage. There's a metaphysics of contamination at work that's hard to explain without religion. As a liberal European atheist I have no problem using software written by edgy young fascists (assuming it's good software). Just as I have no problem admiring art by (to take one of a million examples) the sexual predator and borderline sadist Pablo Picasso.

As a someone from the US who is atheist and probably would be lumped in the "progressive" bucket, I can provide my own perspective which might be helpful:

I bristle at taking an action which would support (morally, financially, etc) currently living fascists and/or Nazis, whose ideologies and in certain cases the people themselves (e.g. Musk) are actively working to dismantle and destabilize the government of my country.

In that respect, using software written by someone like Andreas Kling (Ladybird creator) or Musk, DHH, etc is much more reprehensible to me than admiring the art of Picasso, who was a horrible person but who is dead and cannot hurt anyone else.

That's a fair argument and an interesting distinction.