The standard point is most around how big that ‘partly’ is, and how attached a project can become to that part. If a project has, for easy math, a $10M bankroll and $5M comes from, say, Goog or MS, the project can face a moment where the corporation comes and says, ‘we don’t like that you’ve implemented this feature that interferes with our control of users. We’re pulling our funding unless you remove it.’ (more realistically, ‘we see you have allocated some dev time to this feature request we don’t like. Cancel it before the public can demand it.’) If that happens, you have to have a project lead with some real rectitude to say, ‘okay,’ and just cut their budget in half. The more diversely sourced a FOSS project’s funding is, the harder it is to control, and vice versa.
Wauw, that’s crazy speculations. Google buys a service from Firefox, that doesn’t give them the right to manage Firefox. Give me 1 example where Google did what you say? Otherwise, let’s archive that fantasy rambling as paranoid speculation.
It’s a standard discussion point, not my argument in particular. It’s the same one as for why it’s a problem to have so much corporate money behind news media, political campaigns, and just about anything else.
But
It’s all speculation, both the idea of priority manipulation happening and your idea it does not. The general population doesn’t know anyone at these projects, so everything has to be discussed in vague generalities. You can say ‘I trust X never to take a bribe, because I know X.’ but you can’t say ‘I trust all members of the profession X is in, because they are in that profession.’
Saying you don’t trust Google is just sensible. Saying you don’t trust management at something like Mozilla because they are faceless management, (not that all the things said about choices made inside Mozilla are likely to encourage trust) though a bit generalizing, is also fairly understandable. As such, it’s not at all unusual that people are going to hold some distrust for the combination of the two, especially when one of the big drivers of Firefox usage is specifically that it’s supposed to be more respecting of privacy than chrome or edge. The user base is already primed to be distrustful of tech companies, and not through paranoia but experience.
I’m not saying manipulation of Mozilla by Google is guaranteed to happen but it’s honestly less speculative to expect creepy activity from google, a company for which the business model is ‘do sneaky shit on the internet,’ than to assume absolutely everything going on is totally trustworthy.
So not a single example, but paranoid speculation, based on your general distrust. That’s fine - you’re allowed to feel that way.
It’s a silly and stupid fallacy, to say that it’s speculation that they are not being manipulated. But no, it’s not speculation, it’s the general principle to say that something needs proof. But I guess you are always in a state of flux. “Be weary of gods, because we can’t prove they are there, but I believe they are - because someone else can’t prove that they are not there…” That’s so incredible silly.
But thanks for the talk. Now, please go find some other paranoid person to share your speculations with.
That’s not how the null hypothesis works. You are presupposing the negative and then ignoring the possible, and even the probable, to maintain it. Treating corporate malfeasance as unlikely as the existence of gods is skepticism ad absurdum. Corporations acting in ways that are harmful to their employees, customers, and neighbors isn’t the nebulous ‘must have been the spirits’ activity of religion. It’s the history of corporations.
Google management is perfectly willing to engage in suspicious practices. It’s basically their business model. Since you need examples because apparently you haven’t been paying attention in your day to day life: Google tracks as much as they can of what their users and adjacent people do. This occurs even after they ‘opt out’ of the tracking. This is well known but here is an AP article talking about it if you’ve somehow made it to 2025 not knowing about it. Google makes deals to obtain data on people from other sources as well, including personal medical data (e.g. Project Nightingale), again without consent. The idea that the people at google, or any large corporation, would ignore the incentives of their business and not apply any pressure to align Mozilla with their interests when they spend millions of dollars per financial quarter on lobbying, and many times that on PR, is absurd. Expecting them not to seek profit is akin to expecting a living organism not to seek food. Trying to hold the null hypothesis of ‘We must first assume nothing wants food’ and then ignoring common experience until a peer reviewed double blind study can show you the patently obvious is just not feasible.
You have no proof of any wrongdoing by Mozilla, you are just paranoid. Feel free to waste your time arguing, just to justify your paranoia. You might find a paranoid audience, but it’s not me.
The standard point is most around how big that ‘partly’ is, and how attached a project can become to that part. If a project has, for easy math, a $10M bankroll and $5M comes from, say, Goog or MS, the project can face a moment where the corporation comes and says, ‘we don’t like that you’ve implemented this feature that interferes with our control of users. We’re pulling our funding unless you remove it.’ (more realistically, ‘we see you have allocated some dev time to this feature request we don’t like. Cancel it before the public can demand it.’) If that happens, you have to have a project lead with some real rectitude to say, ‘okay,’ and just cut their budget in half. The more diversely sourced a FOSS project’s funding is, the harder it is to control, and vice versa.
Wauw, that’s crazy speculations. Google buys a service from Firefox, that doesn’t give them the right to manage Firefox. Give me 1 example where Google did what you say? Otherwise, let’s archive that fantasy rambling as paranoid speculation.
But
Saying you don’t trust Google is just sensible. Saying you don’t trust management at something like Mozilla because they are faceless management, (not that all the things said about choices made inside Mozilla are likely to encourage trust) though a bit generalizing, is also fairly understandable. As such, it’s not at all unusual that people are going to hold some distrust for the combination of the two, especially when one of the big drivers of Firefox usage is specifically that it’s supposed to be more respecting of privacy than chrome or edge. The user base is already primed to be distrustful of tech companies, and not through paranoia but experience.
I’m not saying manipulation of Mozilla by Google is guaranteed to happen but it’s honestly less speculative to expect creepy activity from google, a company for which the business model is ‘do sneaky shit on the internet,’ than to assume absolutely everything going on is totally trustworthy.
So not a single example, but paranoid speculation, based on your general distrust. That’s fine - you’re allowed to feel that way.
It’s a silly and stupid fallacy, to say that it’s speculation that they are not being manipulated. But no, it’s not speculation, it’s the general principle to say that something needs proof. But I guess you are always in a state of flux. “Be weary of gods, because we can’t prove they are there, but I believe they are - because someone else can’t prove that they are not there…” That’s so incredible silly.
But thanks for the talk. Now, please go find some other paranoid person to share your speculations with.
That’s not how the null hypothesis works. You are presupposing the negative and then ignoring the possible, and even the probable, to maintain it. Treating corporate malfeasance as unlikely as the existence of gods is skepticism ad absurdum. Corporations acting in ways that are harmful to their employees, customers, and neighbors isn’t the nebulous ‘must have been the spirits’ activity of religion. It’s the history of corporations.
Google management is perfectly willing to engage in suspicious practices. It’s basically their business model. Since you need examples because apparently you haven’t been paying attention in your day to day life: Google tracks as much as they can of what their users and adjacent people do. This occurs even after they ‘opt out’ of the tracking. This is well known but here is an AP article talking about it if you’ve somehow made it to 2025 not knowing about it. Google makes deals to obtain data on people from other sources as well, including personal medical data (e.g. Project Nightingale), again without consent. The idea that the people at google, or any large corporation, would ignore the incentives of their business and not apply any pressure to align Mozilla with their interests when they spend millions of dollars per financial quarter on lobbying, and many times that on PR, is absurd. Expecting them not to seek profit is akin to expecting a living organism not to seek food. Trying to hold the null hypothesis of ‘We must first assume nothing wants food’ and then ignoring common experience until a peer reviewed double blind study can show you the patently obvious is just not feasible.
Bla bla bla…
You have no proof of any wrongdoing by Mozilla, you are just paranoid. Feel free to waste your time arguing, just to justify your paranoia. You might find a paranoid audience, but it’s not me.