Right. Firefox stands alone as the most successful self financed full stack browser that's ever been made without being subsidized by outside revenue streams. I like to use the example of Opera. If "make a better browser" won market share and business creativity won stable revenue, we'd all be using Opera right now because (sorry Mozilla), no browser company was ever better than Opera in my opinion.
In 2026 the rules to making a good browser are (1) already be a trillion dollar company, (2) use Chromium, (3) have some form of distribution lock-in over billions of devices. Otherwise you're cooked. Mozilla swims against the stream better than anyone.
There's a strong desire to keep the web an open platform, if the alternative to WebKit isn't going to be Firefox, it'll simply have to be something else. I'd gladly contribute to the cause, beit ladybird or something else. For now it would be monetarily until my impending retirement when I can contribute hours without impacting my family.
I wouldn't discount ladybird or others simply because they haven't shipped their mvp just yet. They're closing in on a usable product. Maybe they never make it, but servo and others may. Saying they'll be dead in a few years isn't contributing much besides pessimism for anything but the status quo.
The EU says it cares about privacy. although it's actions have normalized enshittification; the EU could fully fund Firefox or a Firefox fork or another browser in a second and stop all the trackers right in their tracks.
Besides, the one thing Mozilla could do to be relevant to 99.9% of web users is to move somewhere other San Francisco and turn their office their into a homeless shelter. They should go to Dublin or Frankfurt or Barcelona, anywhere.