> They haven't had the best interests of there users in mind for a long time
Mozilla are a non-profit. They don’t work for their users. I’m honestly convinced a non-profit open-source model isn’t a good fit for browser development.
Kagi’s Orion [1] has the right idea. If the users pay you’re accountable to them.
Although I think they have the right incentives, a browser is too big an investment for each of these privacy-focused companies to make their own. I suspect what needs to happen is that Kagi, Mullvad, Proton etc should to start a common org in which they sit on the board. That way they can each hold the others to account, but there would still be one pool of money funding browser development, with some chance of getting big enough to take over from mozilla.
Development costs money. This is outlined in their FAQ [0]:
> Are there plans for a Windows/Linux/Android version of Orion?
> We currently do not have the resources to hire a new team to do any of these platforms yet. Since Orion is funded by its users only, it is entirely up to the number of subscribers and Orion+ sales we have that will enable funding a new team to make Orion for any new platform.
I understand that, but my point is that, as someone with no Apple hardware, my money gets me essentially nothing as far as Orion goes. I'm basically funding software for everyone else when I subscribe to Kagi.
There's not really accountability to the users when a bunch of them are funding software for the rest of them to use. The rest of us don't even know if Orion is any good, even if we're paying for it. It's hard to hold them accountable when I can't even try the product.
My thinking is on a few ideas about accountability.
One is that, since Kagi subscriptions also help fund Orion (according to the Orion website), Kagi users that don't have Apple products can't actually verify the functionality of the browser they're helping to fund. That makes accountability hard in terms of Kagi users verifying that Orion is something they're happy to be funding. Maybe I would think it sucks and rather they not spend any of my money on Orion and send the entirety of my subscription to fund search? I don't know - I can't use Orion.
Also, since Kagi subscriptions help to fund Orion, Orion is clearly not accountable only to users of Orion. In theory, Kagi users who don't/can't use Orion could demand that Kagi subscriptions stop funding Orion. Or they could theoretically say, "I'll only fund it if you start selling user data to make it possible to raise additional funds for a Windows port." That's probably not something that will happen, but the idea that Orion is solely accountable to users of Orion doesn't seem to be true, since Kagi users are also involved. Hell, if it means my Kagi subscription would get cheaper, sell the data. None of my data is in there, so I don't care.
I just don't think this idea of Orion being accountable solely to the users funding it is true, basically.
> since Kagi subscriptions also help fund Orion (according to the Orion website), Kagi users that don't have Apple products can't actually verify the functionality of the browser they're helping to fund
Well yes, if you don’t use Orion Kagi won’t be accountable to you as an Orion user.
> the idea that Orion is solely accountable to users of Orion doesn't seem to be true
Nobody claimed as much. The point is Kagi has some accountability to Orion users where Mozilla has almost none to Firefox users beyond their eyeballs.
Right idea, but it doesn't really seem usable right now. It crashed six times on me in an hour, including twice when I was trying to submit a bug report about the crashes. Multiple other users are reporting similar issues.
Growing pains, I hope, but it doesn't bode well...
> I’m honestly convinced a non-profit open-source model isn’t a good fit for browser development.
You think the freedoms granted by Free and Open Source licenses are a problem? How's that?
I see little value in the 'Kagi' browser, it looks like just another WebKit distribution. It promises to be free of telemetry, but refusing to even release your source is a death-knell for a privacy-oriented browser.
In its heyday, Netscape actually made a great paid browser. And Opera too. Even Trident derivatives like Netcaptor were excellent paid browsers. It was a good business model for users and devs alike, despite being closed source, because it aligned their needs.
It was Microsoft trying to EEE the web with bundled IE and ActiveX that led to free browsers becoming the norm, and with it came the normalization of giving up control and privacy rather than paying $50 for a browser. Google sealed the deal with Chrome.
Maybe browsers shouldn't be free. If it takes giant multinational conglomerates subsidizing them to make them free, at the expense of users and the Web as a whole, maybe that's just not a good business model.
If Kagi can make Orion profitable and sustainable, it might jumpstart other paid browsers again. Maybe even other renderers, eventually.
After Manifestv2 and the Firefox situation, I tried out Orion and was ready to pay for it ($150 for a lifetime license), but it kept crashing on me every few minutes :( If they fix that, I'd be very interested in supporting its continued development. Would rather it be open source, but not for any privacy concerns... their team is just too small to do all the work on their own.
Most non-profits are accountable to somebody, usually whoever grants them money. In this case Google just pays Mozilla oodles of cash every year as cheap insurance against monopoly regulations and doesn't really care what they do. The worse Firefox is, the better it is for Chrome.
So the board and the org are accountable to nobody (else) and can do whatever they want. As long as they keep getting millions from Google, there's no real incentive for them to change. And there's a very real disincentive... if they actually do anything significant, they risk alienating their primary funder and the entire org goes bankrupt the next day.
