But I don't think the author's suggestions are compatible what what we (or at least, I) want Firefox to be, either.
1. Spinning off a variant named PrivateFox just sends the message that the regular Firefox will no longer respect your privacy. It will also make regular, free, not-private Firefox users second-class citizens of the Internet. People deserve to have their privacy protected, regardless of whether they can pay or not. In fact, people who can't pay (minors, the poor, citizens of oppressive third-world regimes, etc.) are often in need of the most protection. Moreover, even if you can afford PrivateFox, the payment creates a paper trail that might negate the benefit of using PrivateFox.
2. Crowdsourcing sounds cool, but only if everyone benefits. There's no point in creating "The World’s First Fully Private Browser" and keeping it proprietary. If there exists technology to improve everyone's privacy, it should be included in every copy of Firefox by default.
3. Intentcasting is an interesting concept, but in the context of a web browser it sounds like just another "Ubuntu sends my searches to Amazon" debacle waiting to happen. If I want good privacy, I probably don't want to tell faceless multinational corporations what I want to buy, either.
Unfortunately, the only alternative that I can think of is a variant of Wikimedia Foundation's annual donation drive. As a long-time Firefox fan, I would certainly donate as much as I can. (Is there someone at Mozilla who can give creepy stares in a banner ad as well as Jimmy Wales does?) But again there's a problem: Mozilla's budget is several times the size of Wikimedia's (300MM vs. 80MM), and I'm not sure that the moral value of Firefox, although significant, exceeds that of Wikipedia. Mozilla needs to be seriously trimmed down if they're ever going to be supported by donations.