People aren't entitled to the continued work of waterfox devs but they are none the less entitled to honestly and respect and when they discover from third parties that a browser that was sold to them on the basis of privacy is now the property of an ad company it smacks of disrespect and dishonesty. They may not have PAID the developers any money by virtue of them not asking for any but they invested their trust by installing their software.
If you don't want people to rely on you, or get frustrated when they feel poorly done by it would be best not to put up ad copy on your own site suggesting that they do so.
Basically you have misidentified reasonable expectations as entitlement. I suggest you reassess.
> browser that was sold to them on the basis of privacy is now the property of an ad company it smacks of disrespect and dishonesty.
I’m sorry but Waterfox has never been touted by a privacy tool in the same vein as something like Tor, as I’ve mentioned in the blog. The expectations were too high for something like that.
Also, from what I know the largest rev streams are search syndication. I think if it was labelled <search syndicator> buys <one of its clients> it wouldn’t have been so negatively received.
> it would be best not to put up ad copy on your own site suggesting that they do so.
The first 2 of your 6 top points are no telemetry and limited data collection. How is that not soliciting users to install based on increased privacy?
* On moral obligations
If you solicit people to use your foo for no money and they come to rely on your foo and then withdraw or change the nature of your foo abruptly you may leave people worse off either perceptively or in actuality than if you never existed.
You are managing to create moral obligations for yourself without actually deriving any benefit. It's common to misjudge the nature of that obligation. Your users may imagine that they are "owed" a timely fix to their free software for example but its as false to imagine no obligation exists at all. You have an obligation not to leave people worse off than you found them or at least make a good faith effort in that regard.
People herein are imagining the extremely likely eventuality that their personal information will be sold and that since you didn't bother to inform them of a situation that would arouse this concern they imagine that you didn't tell them BECAUSE you had something to hide.
They have a piece of software on their machine which they believe could violate their privacy ergo they are worse off than they started. Furthermore they believe that the only reason they aren't MUCH worse off than when they started is because someone spilled the beans on reddit.
If you don't want people to rely on you, or get frustrated when they feel poorly done by it would be best not to put up ad copy on your own site suggesting that they do so.
Basically you have misidentified reasonable expectations as entitlement. I suggest you reassess.