Building a browser is pretty complex, but on the other hand, the OpenBSD developers are building an operating system without funding from anyone but their users.
I wonder if Mozilla could survive solely on funds from their users or if it's two different worlds.
It's important to remember that the Mozilla Foundation does more than just Firefox -- Thunderbird, Firefox OS, Mozilla Labs, Mozilla Research, etc. all get a slice of the pie.
So while Firefox would likely survive, it'd imagine it would look much more like the post-Netscape, pre-MFL years. No more work on stuff like Rust, Servo, asm.js, things like Thunderbird would atrophy...
That said, I'm not sold on Mozilla needing Google; I'm sure they could swing a deal with Bing. What strange bedfellows that'd make.
I would like to think they'd annihilate each other like antimatter and antimatter. Microsoft tried to smother OSS on many occasions, both directly, through FUD, and by proxy (SCO). Embrace extend extinguish. Steamrolling Windows-only solutions over standards. They just killed patent reform efforts.
It just seems like they embody the opposite of Mozilla organization's ideals.
I wonder if Mozilla could survive solely on funds from their users or if it's two different worlds.