OpenOffice -> LibreOffice fork and transition seems particularly instructive here:
A huge, user-facing organization? ✅
Managing a bunch of connected, complex software projects? ✅
With a huge amount of documentation (wiki, etc) for both developers and users? ✅
Deeply engaged in open standards debates that affect everyone? ✅
It's not about the individual software projects. It's about all of the above. LibreOffice came out stronger after the fork. So could a fork of Mozilla.
@pfm @ParadeGrotesque @raucao yeah, it would have to involve people who had already contributed substantially to these projects.
I hear there's a bunch of Mozillians available out there these days though...
The bigger problem is organization and funding. People need to eat and pay rent. And Yahoos and Googles of this world will not be interested in contributing, even if their contributions were to be accepted.
NLnet might be a good place to start looking for funding:
https://nlnet.nl/foundation/can_do.html
@rysiek @pfm @ParadeGrotesque @raucao #TorProject already depends on Firefox; maybe such a fork could leverage those existing efforts (and come out ahead on privacy as well ideally).
@rysiek Note that MDN apparently made a call for direct funding some time in late 2018, and "You will be MDN member number 45" does not sound like that was an overwhelming success: