Firefox gets 90% of its funding from Google, putting Google effectively in control of Mozilla.
Ideally, Firefox would be financially supported by its users, like Wikipedia. But that requires ads nagging users to donate, preferably on a subscription plan.
Most of Firefox's users block ads, and they refuse to pay Mozilla a dime under any circumstances. Their users are freeloaders, providing no value to Firefox's other users or to Mozilla.
It would be nice if Mozilla could ignore the freeloaders and simply nag for donations anyway, but if the freeloaders leave and Mozilla tries to serve its donor users, they'll lose all of their Google funding and die.
There is at least a group that are willing to pay for Firefox if its ultimately a browser built for the user base against a hostile web. But that has never been on offer, donations have always only ever been for Mozilla as a whole and the past decade has been no end of user hostile projects one after the other combined with other projects people want nothing to do with.
I don't know if its possible because its not been tried, but it doesn't work from a low trust position and Mozilla is very much not trusted.
Firefox gets 90% of its funding from Google, putting Google effectively in control of Mozilla.
Ideally, Firefox would be financially supported by its users, like Wikipedia. But that requires ads nagging users to donate, preferably on a subscription plan.
Most of Firefox's users block ads, and they refuse to pay Mozilla a dime under any circumstances. Their users are freeloaders, providing no value to Firefox's other users or to Mozilla.
It would be nice if Mozilla could ignore the freeloaders and simply nag for donations anyway, but if the freeloaders leave and Mozilla tries to serve its donor users, they'll lose all of their Google funding and die.