:: Re: [DNG] Devuan, Firefox and Apuls…
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Author: Rick Moen
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] Devuan, Firefox and Apulse
Quoting dev (devuan.2@???):

> So, this[1]? I've honestly never bothered to look until you
> mentioned it.


Primarily that, yes. Mozilla Corp. are highly dependent on contractual
funding from all of those firms listed, but IIRC the biggest share is
from Google, Inc.

So, when I've given public lectures about Web browser security and
privacy (such as the one I gave in Feb. 2011 at SVLUG, for which slides
and lecture notes available from http://www.svlug.org/), I've stressed
that, although absolutely nothing about this even faintly resembles an
anti-user conspiracy, nonetheless at the end of the day Mozilla Corp.
won't ship software whose _default configuration_ runs contrary to the
perceived interests of their major funders.

My follow-on observation is that this is one reason the browser
_defaults_ protect user security poorly compared to what an aggressive
reconfiguration + added extensions can accomplish, and that we should
be grateful for Firefox, etc. being tweakable in that manner.

The company's disruptive switchover from XUL/XPCOM to WebExtensions is
impairing that, of course (for now). Time will tell, about that
transition.

Anyway, it's always worth pondering 'How is this firm making money?
Who are its customers? Who are its funders?'