First, thank you for a thoughtful response. I appreciate the time you've spent outlining your own view on browsers, and ZorinGroups' as well. I agree that there are no perfect choices when it comes to browsers. What I'm suggesting is that there are more decent choices and that one of those has been tossed aside for a less decent alternative.
There are a couple points that I'd like to ask you about further.
That was the exact statement. This was the statement that I was initially responding to, asking for greater clarification. You've thoughtfully responded to many of my points. I haven't, however, seen any evidence that this statement is true. I trust that we're all in agreement that Firefox is not a "malicious privacy infringing nightmare". Far from it, in fact.
A change in the TOS doesn't represent actively harming anyone. I agree that a poorly communicated change does breed distrust. That's the extent of the harm that Firefox has caused its users at this point.
You are correct about who I was referring to. I was also referring to his ouster from Mozilla as evidence of them as an organization not backing down. Brendan was revealed to have made donations to the pursuit political enforcement of homophobic ideals which included at it's front and centre, stripping equality rights from a minority group. His forced resignation was largely driven by Mozilla employees and their internal actions.
You'll have to excuse my confusion about this portion of your statement.
It is absolutely true that Brave maintains ongoing ties with their own CEO. I trust you don't need me to provide evidence of such. Please allow my refusal to extend any forgiveness to Brendan Eich for his ongoing silence about his past homophobic speech - Quite literally, the least he can do.
I like your comment about us as users being free to make our own choices. It glosses over a very critical part of this conversation that I took for granted as browser cannon. We know well from the money Google paid to Mozilla in order to secure google search's spot as the default search option in Firefo - for decades - that there is immense value to that position. While we have the freedom to change to whatever browser we'd like, many users won't. As long as the product's revenue source scales with users, there is immense value in being the default choice.
Brave browser's token-based source of revenue does scale with users. Yes, it's turned off by default in Zorin, though it can be turned back on. Speaking of least-worst options... I really don't want to be so cynical as to suggest there must be some sort of revenue kickback here. I simply can't understand Zorin group's thinking here though. It surely can't just be a change in wording of Firefox's TOS. There must be some other as-yet-unspoken influence.
Why else would you give that coveted top spot to the crypto-advert-token-homophobe who runs Brave?
We need to talk about Balena Etcher.
Which is, as of right now, still not just a recommended option, but the option new users are told to utilize while installing Zorin, as per the ZorinOS installation guide.
The user privacy issues that were revealed have been discussed on this forum before (how I first learned of them too - and then promptly decided to stop using Balena software).
What similar or dissimilar actions did Zorin Group take when that actual real-life privacy infringement occured?
For what reasons did Zorin Group arrive at the conclusion that privacy infringement didn't warrant any action at all that might alter new user behaviour and safeguard those Zorin users who are arguably the most vulnerable of all?
I love this! I'm happy to be a part of such a place and I look forward to hopefully assisting other new forum members as so many of you have done for me (albeit unknowingly) in the past year since I first switched to Zorin OS. Thank you to everyone whose contributions I've pored over while troubleshooting. The bits of knowledge I've gleaned from your words have been invaluable.
I simply wish that Zorin, the OS, would uphold the same virtuous standards of freedom and acceptance as the ZorinOS Forum does. It's my belief that in making Brave the default browser, they are failing to do so.