> The real problem is not the royalty cuts, though. Mozilla has already received more than enough money to set themselves up for financial independence. Mozilla received up to half a billion dollars a year (each year!) for many years. The real problem is that Mozilla didn't use that money to achieve financial independence and instead just spent it each year, doing the organisational equivalent of living hand-to-mouth.

Imagine a world where a non-commercial open source browser has billions of dollars in the bank, and through the interest alone, achieves total financial independence to pursue development purely on behalf of its users.

I personally don’t think that world exists because any such situation would get pilfered away exactly like this one.