This reasoning is silly and bizarre. What, exactly, is the massive risk you're taking when you use a VPN that could go away at some point? Not only is a VPN a commodity that many other service providers can easily fill if the worst was to happen, Mozilla's VPN is just a rebrand of Mullvad which would be a cinch to switch to.
So much for trusting Mozilla and caring about privacy and security. Evidently, the potential risk of losing a cheap & convenient VPN app is a far bigger issue! /s
I still disagree greatly with your conclusions.
What, exactly, is the massive risk you're
taking when you use a VPN that could go away at some point?
In reality, the cost to me would be "only" a few hours of research to find a suitable alternative if/when Mozilla folds their VPN service.
Still, like most people, I rely on a lot of software and a lot of services in my life. I work many hours per week. I don't like to spend my limited free time fixing crap and making lateral jumps to alternative things and services if I can help it, unless there's some sizable advantage. If I had to spend an hour or three on everything in my life every six months, it would add up to a lot and I choose to spend the finite hours of my life differently.
So much for trusting Mozilla and caring about privacy and security.
For whatever it's worth: I care deeply about Mozilla (and privacy and security) and I do support them financially via donations.
As someone else mentioned, apparently this goes to the Foundation which funds other social causes instead of the Corporation that develops Firefox. Donations won't actually help Firefox much at all. To support the Corporation directly, you'd need to pay for one of their paid products like Pocket or their new VPN.
> This doesn't follow. Mozilla has a history of introducing and subsequently shuttering many services, so therefore I don't care about "privacy and security?"
It follows like this: here's a great privacy & security product you claim is "ideal" for you, made by a company you "trust 100x more than the competition". But it's somehow not worth it to you as someone who cares about privacy & security?
The speculative risk of a couple of hours every year (but in practice, more like 20 mins to switch to Mullvad, which even if you didn't know about before, you know now) is more valuable than what appears to be - by your own words - one of the best privacy & security products to come along in a generation?
Empty praise. Deep concerns for privacy & security that are conveniently not reflected in product choices. Honestly, it's a mystery why Mozilla devs even try to cater to this crowd. They talk up a storm about caring about privacy & security yet when a great product comes around, there's always another reason not to use it. Always another reason why it doesn't measure up. With friends like these, who needs enemies.
you'd need to pay for one of their paid products
like Pocket
It follows like this: here's a great privacy &
security product you claim is "ideal" for you
appears to be - by your own words - one of the
best privacy & security products to come along
in a generation?
more like 20 mins to switch to Mullvad, which
even if you didn't know about before, you know now
Deep concerns for privacy & security that are conveniently
not reflected in product choices.
I do support them with product choices, and also with thousands of hours of my time as a web developer over the years, always fighting to support Firefox in the projects I worked on, even when the product owners could not have cared less or were openly hostile to the idea of spending any time whatsoever supporting something that wasn't IE6 or Chrome.
I will not ship web-facing code that doesn't support Firefox.
With friends like these, who needs enemies.
Hope someday I have "enemies" who spend a few thousand hours in the trenches for me over two decades and also throw money my way. Wouldn't mind an army of those.
If it makes you feel any better, I'll probably support their VPN product too eventually if it actually survives their terminal ADHD.