Firefox bites the hand that feeds it

Mozilla recently decided to enter a no win, hostile, socially politically correct battle.  Why?  Because they lack business sense.  For details, see Firefox’s Unusual Approach to Decreasing it's Browser Share.   Why does this garner a follow up article?  Because in light of them choosing to alienate a large segment of the planet, they then apparently began to bleed money and now have to beg for it.

With my latest Firefox update my homepage took on a slightly new look (note the donate button):

I find this interesting.  Statistically, those that donate the most to charitable causes are religious.  And it is these people who are most likely to donate to causes such as Mozilla.  Yet Firefox has decreed that these types of people are not welcome in their management:  specifically as their CEO (there were several others on the board that also resigned, but we are unsure of why … but we could easily speculate given the timing).  

Given this new begging page, I wonder if a donations backlash has already transpired (?).  Even if it hasn’t, it is odd to alienate those most likely to support you fiscally.  Any business that can manage to solicit donations has reached an happy place.  They have another revenue source that most would love to tap into.  How odd it must be, for them, to watch Firefox building barriers to this established revenue source and jeopardizing their financial security:  and for what? … a political whim.

It is noteworthy to point out that charitable giving is not relegated to mere check-book charity, but also encompasses hands-on charity:  Or volunteerism.  And this raises an interesting point, as to whether Mozilla’s volunteer numbers will likewise plummet (?).  This would be disastrous given the open sources reliance on volunteer programmers.  Since many of these volunteer programmers are under the ostracized umbrella of Mozilla’s newly defined undesirables, these volunteers may simply look for other charitable causes to invest their time.  Many programmers and volunteers have opinions and leniencies in regard to these hot button issues.  Mozilla has already indicated it isn’t interested in entertaining these undesirable people within its fold.  These people cannot climb the corporate latter.  Mozilla is an hostile work environment for them.  These well-educated programmers have been directed to volunteer elseware.  

The biggest beneficiary to this `forced outsourcing’ would likely be Chrome.  The Chromium Project is similar to the Firefox one, and would welcome Firefox disenchanters’ with open arms.  Google does have business savvy.  I haven’t seen it disparage religious groups and fire people for their personal traditional beliefs.  There’s no religious glass ceiling at Google headquarters.

A good business knows you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.  Even most dogs know that.  Yet one fiery fox has yet to learn that lesson.