I'm not sure the counter argument you're making tbh.
The license or patch cycles of either project is irrelevant in this example. The money changing hands between the original product and it's competitor is the issue at stake here.
I'll spell it out in Mozilla's case:
If money is provided by a direct competitor, and that same money is _critical to the continued existence of the original project_ as it is in Mozilla's case, that project and it's staff now have a vested interest in avoiding _anything_ that could endanger that flow, as it now poses a very real existential risk. This is the game they play and the conflict of interest I'm merely pointing out.
Google gets to keep slowly eating the entire browser pie. Should regulators come calling, they can even point at Firefox and say "see, we're not monopolizing this space! there's Firefox over there" To me it appears as a sick form of puppetry.
The Linux Foundation has many, diverse corporate donors, and Linux enables software like ChromeOS, yes. These are all true, but doesn't change the argument that it's a bad call to take the vast majority of your income from a single, direct competitor.
I truly don't grok the point you're trying to make, but that's likely a me problem. Your points appear to all be asides to the core issue at hand.
The license or patch cycles of either project is irrelevant in this example. The money changing hands between the original product and it's competitor is the issue at stake here.
I'll spell it out in Mozilla's case:
If money is provided by a direct competitor, and that same money is _critical to the continued existence of the original project_ as it is in Mozilla's case, that project and it's staff now have a vested interest in avoiding _anything_ that could endanger that flow, as it now poses a very real existential risk. This is the game they play and the conflict of interest I'm merely pointing out.
Google gets to keep slowly eating the entire browser pie. Should regulators come calling, they can even point at Firefox and say "see, we're not monopolizing this space! there's Firefox over there" To me it appears as a sick form of puppetry.