Mozilla was a firehose of money back then. Financially they were and still are Google: literally they get a fraction of Google's own revenue stream. That was mo

Mozilla was a firehose of money back then. Financially they were and still are Google: literally they get a fraction of Google's own revenue stream. That was more than sufficient to reward their developers in whatever way they liked. Those devs weren't leaving Mozilla because of money. They left because they were being given a nearly blank slate on which to create a browser they felt would be much better.