The title misses something more important: Firefox is and has been for a very long time the only browser who wasn't made by people trying to extract profit from you.
Everything follows from this. Edge people, Chrome people have been living in a fairytale for believing that the keepers of their portal to the web were offering a product as complex and expensive as a browser without asking for anything in return.
Anyone knows that any company that gives you something for free will eventually want something from you. You accepted a free browser from a for-profit entity and paid nothing. Now, Faust has come to collect your soul.
... and so what? Your response was that they're not a company - Mozilla Corporation IS a private, for-profit company and one of their responsibilities is managing Firefox. Similar structure is used by OpenAI, so I guess OpenAI is also not a company?
So the top-most entity is the Mozilla Foundation, they control and dictate what the subsidiary, also called Mozilla, can and cannot do. The OpenAI foundation cannot dictate what OpenAI Corp can and cannot do.
1. Mozilla isn't working in a capital intensive domain like Transformer Tech unlike OpenAI so there is no need to bend over demands this much.
2. Mozilla Corp is fully owned by Mozilla Foundation. OpenAI Corp was created by the OpenAI non profit to take external investment. The OpenAI non profit chose to give chunks of the OpenAI Corp to investors because it needed money. By selling stakes, they gave control of the company away. That's the difference.
3. OpenAI Corp answers to their stakeholders of which OpenAI foundation is only one and a minor stakeholder. Mozilla Corp answers to Mozilla Foundation only. That's the difference.
4. Presentation. The mozilla websites for the foundation and the subsidiary both use the org domain which is used by non profits, unlike openain's com use. Not a rule but a choice in presentation.
"Through special voting and governance rights held solely by the OpenAI Foundation, the OpenAI Foundation appoints all members of the board of directors of OpenAI Group and can replace directors at any time."
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> Mozilla Corp is fully owned by Mozilla Foundation
~85% of Mozilla Corp's revenue comes from "search partnerships, subscriptions and advertising revenue" a.k.a. from Google - not from Mozilla's own products.
Mozilla Corp is in practice owned by Google.
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> Mozilla Corp answers to Mozilla Foundation only
In 2020 Mozilla laid off 250 employees[0] and then gave its CEO a $2.5 million USD pay increase[1]. Next year the CEO got another pay increase of $1.3 million USD[2].
They sure sound like a very nice Foundation to answer to - not very bothered by laying people off to give the CEO a pay increase or by losing market share for 10 years straight. Again, how are they different from other companies?
Everything follows from this. Edge people, Chrome people have been living in a fairytale for believing that the keepers of their portal to the web were offering a product as complex and expensive as a browser without asking for anything in return.
Anyone knows that any company that gives you something for free will eventually want something from you. You accepted a free browser from a for-profit entity and paid nothing. Now, Faust has come to collect your soul.