Annual salaries from 2015 (reportable compensation from IRS Form 990):

Mitchell Baker, Chair $977,382 + $45,530
Bob Lisborne, Director $92,000
Mark Surman, Exec. Dir./President $170,699 + $40,602
Jim Cook, Treasurer $934,526 + $45,530
Angela Plohman, Secretary/VP Operations $121,322 + $30,342
Christopher Lawrence, VP Learning $153,492 + $62,538
An-Me Chung, Dir. Partnerships 154,946 + $72,672
Daniel Sinker, Dir. Partnerships 123,630 + $64,215
Hiram Paul Johnson, Marketing Lead 126,605 + 54, 903
Andrea Wood, Online Organizing/Fundraising Lead $135,048 + $46,322
Samuel Dyson, Director Hive Chicago $114,860 + $63,549

source: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2015_Mozilla_Found...

Perhaps the author is telling the truth. Consider the salary costs of retaining skilled "maintainers" like the above personnel.

Note I am not condemning Mozilla. They do good work.

However I am not quite sold on the idea that their purpose for existence is to "keep the web open" or whatever tagline they are going with.

For example, an "open" web would be one made for all browsers to access, not just a select few who have chosen to try to keep up with an arms race of recently-added, non-optional "features" that carry serious costs to users. The key word I wish to emphasize is "non-optional". Users are not given choice and that is most likely intentional.

Many a web developer presents the user with a small selection of "acceptable browsers", the ones that will run third party code and readily show heavy, third party advertising. Anything else is "prohibited" and must be a "bot". Users are sometimes even shamed for not using the web browser or version that the web developer wants them to use, calling the user's software "outdated" when they have almost no information about the user's software except its behavior and some easily forgeable HTTP headers. In many cases, e.g., where the user is just retrieving some information, that is just silly.

Not every website needs to show advertising. Not all information is commercial. Not all information is graphical.
I am not using one of the select few targeted browsers to read HN or post this comment, but I am getting the same information as the readers who are. And for some reason(s), web developers flock to this "outdated" website. Why?

Clearly the web can be both accesible by simpler user agents, and fully-functional for the most bleeding-edge features of corporate-sponsored browsers at the same time. The original web standards, e.g. basic HTML, still work, very effectively. The web as a means to offer basic functionality such as HN can be "backwards compatible" with user agents that are far more simple than Firefox, Chromium, etc.

The select few browsers that many web developers target overwhelmingly controlled by corporations and other advertisers. Netscape and the idea of corporations paying to use a browser may exist only as entries in the historical record, but I do not think we can say that browsers are truly separated from corporate funding (and influence). Browsers are still commercial, in a sense, IMO. While it might be viewed as "free software", the authors of these few browsers are well-paid by their corporate (or "non-profit") employers and the end goal is "market share", ideally a monopoly.

This is fine if the web is 100% commercial. But it did not start that way and it still isn't 100% commercial. Non-commercial uses are still alive and well.

It is not necessarily Mozilla's fault for the direction the web moves in, e.g., making content less accessible by simpler user agents. However, if their purpose is to make the web "open" or some such "non-commercial" aim, then what could they do to enable and promote use of simpler user agents (and thereby promote their acceptability among web developers)? I can think of a few things. I am sure others could as well. There is no shortage of users who are dissatisfied with the (lack of) variety of user agents that are available.

http://bitcheese.net/web_browsers_must_die

The question is whether Mozilla really wants to listen to users who might criticize dismiss their browser as, e.g., too bloated.