it's particularly strange to see Mozilla engage in these silly machinations when the Thunderbird team has moved on to the model of direct user funding.
In one of your other posts, you talk about their merch sales and others also talk about their bundling of services such as vpn and etc., which all also sound like small potatoes. Does that not sound contradictory? Why bother with any of this if search licensing covers their costs many times over? And if merch and mozilla branded bundles work, then why not also let the users fund them like Thunderbird allows instead of enraging these users by signing them up unsolicited for things such as "privacy preserving ads" and such?
Where did you get the impression that I endorsed merch sales as a major diversification of revenue? I think it is a rounding error. I was replying to someone seemingly claiming $50 keychains were the key to solving all their revenue issues as if it presented a new and untested idea.
Meanwhile, practically everyone claiming Mozilla should just start collecting donations seems like they are suggesting that it's a revenue panacea that can take the place of search. So that's the key difference.
Also, if you're following what I'm saying I'm other posts, you should note I explicitly said I have nothing against donations. I said they were likely to be a modest side hustle rather than a replacement.
Imagine what it's like from my perspective to go out of my way to say I have nothing against donations to have an internet rando claim I'm contradicting myself by not acknowledging their usefulness on the margins.
I never said you endorsed the donations, just that it seems to me to pointless to mention, as a response to my original post, given the ad/search revenue. My question remains why Mozilla (not you) seems against taking direct donations when they engage in other donation collection activities. I don't think we are taking opposing points here - I would like Mozilla to take donations to provide a clean browser to its fans (including me). Further, it just seems strange that the ad/search revenue number seems to be some line in stone - can't they operate a browser without the hundreds of millions of ad/search deals?
