[troyvit]

> The countries in turn can require that services in those countries must support Firefox, or perhaps specifically ESR versions of Firefox.

The countries can also trade that support for features that might not be in the best interest of its users, such as introducing closed blobs to the code, "benign" trackers that allow government oversight of surfing, breakage when using VPNs, etc.

People could fork those browsers if the code is still open, but look at how many people use Floorp, or Vivaldi.

I feel it's akin to government support of journalism.

[eesmith]

Firefox can decline that money.

Firefox can be bound to enough different sovereign funds which explicit reject it, so they can't be controlled that way.

By "fully free software" I deliberately meant to exclude closed blobs.

I also deliberately did not say mandate use of that browser, only that use of that browser is acceptable.

I mean, Naenara, a Firefox fork, shows your dread is easily possible by even a third-world country. It doesn't take all of the EU to pull it off.

The US already has government support for journalism, both with special legal protections, and in some cases with direct funding, as with NPR and PBS.

[troyvit]

Those are good points. If FF can diversify the sovereign funds its tied to then it can cancel out some of the problems.

I knew where you were coming from re: fully free software. My concern was more how its sovereign donors could influence that.

I didn't know about Naenara. Checking it out.

And yeah I agree about gov't support for journalism, but in the case of NPR (I work for one of their member stations), when large entities like X decide to label them "Government Sponsored" or whatever it indicates that there are some who see a conflict of interest. That could carry over to browsers.

[eesmith]

NPR is government funded in that lots of different governments, including university radio stations, decided to buy their news feed instead of (or in addition to) CBC and/or BBC.

If that's a conflict of issue, then having a paltry 40 sovereign funds would also be an issue.

It's also blowing smoke, as a single man, Murdoch, owns hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets, but the single owner of an entity which is too small to be considered a DMA gateway doesn't care about the details.