> The Floorp project is a much newer entrant. It is developed by a community of Japanese students called Ablaze. Development is hosted on GitHub, and the project solicits donations via GitHub donations. According to its donations page, donors who contribute at the $100 level may submit ads to feature in the new tab page—but the ads, which are displayed as shortcuts with a "sponsored" label, can be turned off in the settings. I've been unable to find any information about the project governance or legal structure of Ablaze.
So a group of contributors, presumably upset about Mozilla making "user-hostile" changes like displaying ads in the new tab page, create a fork of Firefox, and then solicit donations for their fork using the exact same revenue model?
It's not the exact same revenue model. Floorp doesn't use tracking whatsoever for sponsored ads in the home page. And donations to Floorp directly goes to development, unlike in Mozilla.
I think the issue is that the donations Mozilla receive don't go to Firefox's development. This is not the case with Floorp, Ladybird and Pale Moon where donations and sponsorship money (PM used to accept sponsors but they don't now) do go to development.
So a group of contributors, presumably upset about Mozilla making "user-hostile" changes like displaying ads in the new tab page, create a fork of Firefox, and then solicit donations for their fork using the exact same revenue model?