Mozilla, the browser, is great.
Mozilla efforts, such as Rust, have been historically great.
Mozilla leadership is currently awful. They focus is on the wrong things - web VR and low-quality foundational AI models. Maybe because they think the web is at risk of disappearing outright. But the true enemy is Google, and they're currently its well-behaved prisoner.
Mozilla can't bite the hand that feeds it, but someone needs to point the FTC, Congress, and the EU at Google. Everything they do, buy, and work on is to point an overwhelming majority of internet users at its ad products. Chrome, Search, Android, YouTube, Apple default search engine deal, etc. Google has become inescapable. And that's rather anti-competitive if you're trying to advertise your business or selling ad tech.
Nevermind that the web commons and standards are constantly in Google's blast radius for funneling everyone into their gaping maw.
Microsoft and Apple dont have a good history so assuming there is something big here?
From what I understand, the arguments about self-preferencing kind of always get thrown out due to a more strict interpretation of the law. Did with Apple, and with Facebook when they were acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp.
Of course, there's also criticism for attempting those.
1. Under her leadership Mozilla has lost virtually all of its users. It has been reduced to less than 10% of what it had before, maybe worse - I haven't kept up.
2. At the beginning of Covid, a time when remote work was on the rise and tech valuations were through the roof, a time when the browser was more important than ever, she took her largest payout and fired hundreds of employees. She was compensated at over $5M dollars, enough money to pay a team of engineers for years.
3. Firefox has utterly failed to capture Enterprise market, where Chrome has managed to dominate. I doubt most people are even aware that a corp managed Firefox is an option, they have done such a poor job marketing it.
4. Every initiative Mozilla has come out with has completely failed to gain traction. Something like a VPN could have been a great fit for Mozilla but they did nothing with it. Mozilla has been incapable, organizationally, of capitalizing on technology - the thing they're kinda supposed to do exclusively.
She has failed in every conceivable way as a CEO. She has failed in terms of the mission, she has failed her employees, she has failed her users, she has failed to be an example as a leader.
Mozilla, as it exists today, is a convenient project for Chrome to point to and say "look, there's competition" - perhaps the only reason why Google continues to fund Mozilla.
Microsoft and Apple are at least competently run and have incentives to push to reduce Chrome's power.
If I could/had to pay/donate for it - I'd gladly do, but it's virtually impossible.
That said, I think income from Firefox's default search engine pretty much dwarfs any income that could potentially be gained from donations/buy-to-support.