It does not matter how few they are, if they are the ones making the decisions then they represent Mozilla. Unless dramatic change occurs immediately, we can only conclude that Mozilla is shoveling crapware into Firefox.
A web browser should display information FULL STOP. When the new HTML standard comes out, implement it. Until then just provide security fixes.
It's really not that hard or expensive (500 Million USD should be enough).
Stop changing the UI, adding crap that should be addons (that's why there's addons), adding adverts, adding spyware ("telemetry"), etc.
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Curiously all the Mozilla developers and apologists who are so enthusiastic about defending Firefox (and down voting critical comments) have taken the day off...
I mean, it's Saturday, so yeah, they probably did. This comments section looks more like a pitchfork mob than a group that wants to have a reasonable and civil conversation about embedded extension policy and revenue models. I myself would prefer to spend it with my loved ones than arguing with a comments section mob on the internet.
By summarily dismissing a bunch of legitimate concerns by multiple users you are basically saying users don't matter.
That kind of ivory tower attitude never worked well without leverage.
https://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Up to date browser engine (at least it seems that way, it does pretty well on https://html5test.com/), still gets security fixes, but the UI hasn't been changed significantly in years.
You'd lose the non-security bug fixes and the performance improvements. I wouldn't like it, and it would surely be obsolete/irrelevant extremely fast.
Sometimes it seems it's more about job security. How many rewrites do you need?
Mozilla's Law:
(Use McConaughey Voice)
As Intel processors get faster... Mozilla's software stays the same... speed.
Debian. FreeBSD. OpenBSD. Dillo. Netsurf.
Or, Windows 10.
Sometimes, free stuff is a product. Sometimes, you pay and are still the product.
How many people would need to pay that to fund the Firefox team for the next five years though? My guess is: not enough.