There is one issue people haven't glossed over. Mozilla derives over 85% of their revenue from Google (by making google the default search engine). So a lot of their development involves getting funding from google. The problem with this is that you cannot fight for open standards (against google, it looks like of late) when you derive most of your funding from your adversary. You need an independent revenue stream, like Red Hat. Firefox can probably offer non-tracking services to corporations that have doubts over google's data policies.
PS : I am a fan of Firefox, but it has been crashing way too often of late. Only the fact of me being a power web user (I have more than 70 tabs open on average) has kept me a continued Firefox user.
Google is not what I would call an adversary. Mozilla, Google, Microsoft and others are willing to go in the same direction, they don't share the same priorities and it's all about negociations and stuff.
When Mozilla and Google renewed their partnership, I heard that Bing was ready to pay Mozilla a bigger check than Google was, yet they choose to stick with Google because they thought it was a better option for the user. If it's true, I think we can trust them about the way they earn money and use it.
On the other hand, as far as I understand, Firefox OS is built with partners from the industry, which probably means that development costs are shared, and not only supported by Google's money.
Last but not least, we probably have a lot of different experiences with firefox, but my setup does not crash every so often...
Maybe you have an extension that is causing your crashes ... I suspect something that is not used by very many people.
As a side not I am proud to work for Mozilla. The first thing we ask before doing anything is "Will this make the internet a better place?" ... too many companies do not live their missions or, at least, don't live up to them.
It seems that any problem with Firefox results in this user-blaming. How often is one obligated to reset one's profile? If extensions make the browser slow and unstable, do you expect users never to install any? Mozilla seems to have a real problem hearing criticism about its browser. But when you push it back on the user, the truth is that a lot of people aren't going to accept that blame. They're just going to ditch your browser for something which doesn't create this sort of problem with completely normal, average usage.
There is no user blaming here. In normal circumstances Firefox is very stable so if it is crashing the fix is extremely likely to be one of the things I mentioned.
You should never have to reset your profile but if your PC (or Firefox) crashes it can cause profile issues and a reset then helps to regain stability.
The most common causes of crashes are extensions and addons. Because Firefox allows extension developers very deep integration with Firefox they can occasionally cause instabilities. Of course we want users to use extensions but occasionally one gets through that causes problems.
Most extensions do not make the browser slow and unstable, just badly written ones.
Nobody at Mozilla has problems with accurate criticisms about Firefox as it shows us where to focus in order to make the browser better.
Yep, that's the current default on FxOS builds. Beyond that, I'm totally ignorant of the business deals that are in place around Firefox and FirefoxOS.
