I don't care about Brendan Eich quite as much as I care about the Google / Chrome monopoly, and Brave just makes this monopoly stronger by depending on Chrome. By being Chrome, actually.
I want the web to be built around something else than ad-/tracking-supported software and Brave is being very self-contradictory with this.
Don't use Brave if you care about the global picture / tracking around the globe.
We started on Gecko. By many measures, big spreadsheet, Chromium won. We would be dead on that short hill you want us to charge up and take with spears against Maxim guns. I share your dislike of monoculture or evolutionary kernels that win by market power more than merit, but having us die for no benefit isn't the way to overcome Google.
Brave rewards is opt-in, off by default. If you dislike ads, don't enable it.
I suggest you consider that your big-picture thinking is short sighted. Instead of spears vs. Maxim guns, the better trope and line of attack is judo: use Google's weight against it, by differentiating a level up in a way that puts users first and if they opt in, pays them 70% of the gross.
(I'm assuming you are educated on how our private ad system works. If not read my comments in the past year or so, easy to find from my profile.)
Brave is a separate fork and completely unreliant on Chrome. It also is the most privacy-focused browser so it's the opposite of "tracking-supported software".
If Chrome disappears, Brave ceases to exist. Brave totally relies on Google developers working on Chrome and do the vast majority of what it takes to build the browser. Brave only does superficial work in comparison. Brave may itself be privacy-focused but only exists thanks to Google's business model which is mostly tracking the world.
So, yes, Brave is mostly funded by tracking since it is mostly Chrome with some lightweight work on top of it.
Correct, completely forked from Chromium (not Chrome) and in separate development. Brave continues to roll out superior features while the rest of the Chromium world lags.
It does not matter that Brave lives in its own, separate source repository. This code is regularly rebased on Chromium.
Your cookies rely on the flour you use to make them even if they have chunks of chocolate that the flour doesn't have. No flour, no cookies. (Except in this case it's even worse, the cookies is already done, you just add some colors...).
I too can take chromium and put it in my own git repository and change some minor stuff. It will be "forked" and "separately" developed but it would not mean a thing.
We rebase and look at all the changes, neutralizing not only on-by-default tracking Google puts in Chromium for its own benefit, but many other experiments and flagged features. We carry forked files too.
Of course, we can't maintain all of the upstream ourselves, although we wish Google had fewer typists adding bad or marginal things; but neither can Samsung, Opera, or even Microsoft. But if Google stopped maintaining, the remaining Chromium browsers would carry on.
Your comments suggest a lack of familiarity with our GitHub.
It's not perfect (since its funding is mostly Google) but Firefox is my current browser of choice. It notably has very good support for blocking tracking and unwanted stuff thanks to uBlock Origin, which works best on Firefox according to its main developer [0]. And while it is funded with Google's money (which is a huge caveat), I still hope this changes in the future. Firefox could be funded differently. [By the way] maybe Mullvad browser is an interesting choice for this exact reason?
Other (independent) initiatives like NetSurf [1] and Ladybird [2] are on my radar. NetSurf has been around for a while; Ladybird seems impressive, achieving some great progress and result with little resources. I should actually try Ladybird more seriously when I get the chance, and maybe contribute if I find the time :-)
I want the web to be built around something else than ad-/tracking-supported software and Brave is being very self-contradictory with this.
Don't use Brave if you care about the global picture / tracking around the globe.