Without any doubt Mozilla's public oversight role (via m.d.s.policy) is extremely important.
Google actually doesn't operate transparently either, except in the sense that it chooses to participate in m.d.s.policy. You won't find a public process behind Google's decision to require CT for Symantec's roots before it was mandatory for other roots for example, they just announced the policy as a done deal.
You are not alone in concluding that Mozilla's distrust decisions (I wouldn't characterise them as "punishment") are in practice copied by the other root trust stores. It is entirely possible that Microsoft (for example) has a large team of dedicated experts independently investigating incidents and just coming to coincidentally similar conclusions. After all, the facts won't be different if a Microsoft team investigates them than they are when Mozilla and third parties do so for m.d.s.policy. But it's a hell of a coincidence...
I would note that for initial trust decisions Microsoft in particular does not follow m.d.s.policy. If you run Windows there's an excellent chance that your computer (and thus Internet Explorer, Edge and Chrome on that computer but not Firefox) trusts poorly run Certificate Authorities from a variety of organisations and countries which don't seem very trustworthy.
For example the governments of Sweden, Slovenia and Thailand.
[Edited: This used to mention Venezuela but the Venezuelan government CA was in fact distrusted by Microsoft]
Now maybe Microsoft's team carefully vetted all these dozens of Certificate Authorities that aren't trusted elsewhere and concluded they're doing a great job. In some cases we know they weren't able to satisfy Mozilla (or volunteers contributing to m.d.s.policy) but in other cases they never applied at all. Maybe they're just shy?
So far we can say this doesn't seem to have caused any serious reported problems. So maybe it's fine.
If Apple is the sleeping giant of PKI, Microsoft is the come-back kid. The actual set of CAs trusted by Microsoft has massively shrunk under the leadership of their new Root Program manager, and their transparency greatly improved. https://aka.ms/rootupdates shows a regular cadence, particularly on even months, of removing trust in a large number of CAs. While they still add CAs faster than any other program, they also have strong contractual guarantees on CAs in a way unlike that of Mozilla, Apple, or Google. And Microsoft is notoriously not afraid of using lawyers for noble causes.
[[Ryan Sleevi wrote the m.d.s.policy post this HN item is about]]
That link says the even number month changes are CA led.
Now of course you certainly have much better insight than I do into what's behind those CA led changes because I'm just a Relying Party with their nose pressed against the window. Maybe that new Root Program manager is encouraging participants to clean stuff up with an implied threat that if they don't Microsoft will. But as an outsider it still looks a lot like the old Microsoft root programme to me. Also Microsoft's "revoke or else" rule still sits badly with me despite its purported use to prevent people scamming Microsoft's customers. But I guess I'm glad to hear you think they've "greatly improved".
Google actually doesn't operate transparently either, except in the sense that it chooses to participate in m.d.s.policy. You won't find a public process behind Google's decision to require CT for Symantec's roots before it was mandatory for other roots for example, they just announced the policy as a done deal.
You are not alone in concluding that Mozilla's distrust decisions (I wouldn't characterise them as "punishment") are in practice copied by the other root trust stores. It is entirely possible that Microsoft (for example) has a large team of dedicated experts independently investigating incidents and just coming to coincidentally similar conclusions. After all, the facts won't be different if a Microsoft team investigates them than they are when Mozilla and third parties do so for m.d.s.policy. But it's a hell of a coincidence...
I would note that for initial trust decisions Microsoft in particular does not follow m.d.s.policy. If you run Windows there's an excellent chance that your computer (and thus Internet Explorer, Edge and Chrome on that computer but not Firefox) trusts poorly run Certificate Authorities from a variety of organisations and countries which don't seem very trustworthy.
For example the governments of Sweden, Slovenia and Thailand.
[Edited: This used to mention Venezuela but the Venezuelan government CA was in fact distrusted by Microsoft]
Now maybe Microsoft's team carefully vetted all these dozens of Certificate Authorities that aren't trusted elsewhere and concluded they're doing a great job. In some cases we know they weren't able to satisfy Mozilla (or volunteers contributing to m.d.s.policy) but in other cases they never applied at all. Maybe they're just shy?
So far we can say this doesn't seem to have caused any serious reported problems. So maybe it's fine.