[labawi]

It's not either or. They could make it easy do disable all various background activity, document users prefs and respect provided settings (perhaps with different branding), accept targeted donations etc.

Firefox is already providing automatic updates. Would it be so bad to release a point version (do they even to that anymore) instead of a remote preference change?

Still, it's not exclusive - they could do both, while providing a clear power user mode, where you may need to update, because they don't do such shenanigans.

It's not an idle offer - I'm offering 1k€ to properly document user prefs and not second guess their setting (could be a compile time switch, possibly with altered branding, but on a supported/LTS versions). Anyone want to set up a gofund me or something?