But Mozilla became something else, and staffed itself accordingly, and marketed itself accordingly. The culture evolved to be broad and inclusive.
Some people would argue (as I think you have) that broad inclusivity is, at best, a distraction from technical excellence.
Others would say that inclusivity / diversity is a strength, and Mozilla is an experiment in demonstrating that.
I don't think we can draw any conclusions on that argument from the Mozilla example either way, honestly.
And of course I don't know how you viewed the Org when you left -- did it need a recalibration toward excellence with the accepted risk of alienating 30% of the staff and volunteers? Or did it just need better leadership to get more focused results out of the existing team?
I don't know, and I'm sure you won't want to say! But clearly what has happened in the last ten years has been unproductive.
I'm sure you'd have done a better job at Mozilla than the MOFO BOD has. And I suspect you'd have been able to do a much better job with Mozilla's trust fund disbursement resources, while avoiding the (frankly, obvious) mistakes made at Brave.
No disrespect intended. Seeking revenue is hard, and "obvious" from the outside doesn't map precisely to "not even worth a try" on the inside. I also wonder if the outside view was wrong, and that if you had pushed through the initial negativity, whether people would have acclimated to the novel revenue models, and you could pour more resources into the technology. People put up with worse in other browsers.
Anyway -- I appreciate your conversation here and all of your years at Mozilla. I hope something sustainable and good can come from Brave. I remain a Firefox user, pending further developments. :)