Always defending…

I am not interested what people want, I am interested what actual happened and what Mozilla plan to do next to get the whole picture. Difference between a fanboy and someone who is objective.

It is not a good thing what Mozilla did because even if Mozilla makes money, the CEO fires their employees. So it does not change anything except influencing negatively sections like security. They made over 500 million dollars according to last quarter results, you think they use the money to hire more people, then why fire them in the fist place. You think just because you make some money on your own results in kissing million dollar deals goodbye. You are dreaming, if you cut the deals no one will continue doing something with you or give you another change, besides there are contracts which bound you often for years to it. You simply assume that because Mozilla makes money will prevent them from not making other deals with Google, Yahoo or another bigger fish, this is baseless claim and history usually shows the opposite, greed. Bottom line is Google needs the competition otherwise they get sued for mass market monopoly by the EU and other countries. Also Mozilla makes no new products they imitate Google.

Mozilla had over 20 years now to get independent and it ended in loosing more people, more developers even people who did much work on the idea behind, an idea the leadership seems not really interested in.

Mozillas effort are too late, to slow and their leadership makes the wrong calls, the entire time. This is not even news, the community gave Mozilla tons of tons good tips for eMail service, Calendar, Search engine and Mozilla comes with crap like Pocket no one uses.

Mozilla communicated at no time, not in the beta announce, or homepage that this is basically copy and paste Mullvad cooperationship. People believed this is Mozillas own creation, servers, app, idea or whatever. This was not the case, Mullvad did played here with open cards. The community clearly expected independence, yet nothing. You contradict your own argument, you say on one side money makes them more independent, on other side this story shows, making millions of dollars does not mean they release own products, instead they collaboration with others. Why should someone in his right mind support that when there are no benefits over the original or it is even more expensive. This makes no sense.

Thunderbird for example showed that after they went independent made much more progress without Mozilla. We got better encryption implemented, nice gui changes and so much more. Stuff that community complaint about since years, yet Moz did not listed and shit on their own community. After 2017 the app improved so much that its finally usable and stable with more security benefits. Technical independent from Mozilla with the help of new collaboration with others. Just because Mozilla gets money, means nothing for existent or new products, is the underlying point.

If mozilla is just rebranded mullvad, why does this matter?

Because the apps and servers are not the same, or how you prove it without any independent audit. Moz made changes, besides logo and name changes in the code. You cannot have it both ways, you cannot take over something or partner with someone and then believe and expect security experts have no interest to reveal if what they possible change has no impact. Trust but verify, it is that easy. Mozilla like rest does not get any extra bonuses here. People expect professionalism especially if you pay for a service that others offer for free like ProtonVPN free subscription which is for a bit basic surfing enough and masquerading more than enough.

Update, found an audit, relatively fresh with less media attention by Cure53. Updated OP accordingly.