I've been watching Mozilla's actions because they often seem to be incongruous with what you would expect them to be from their publicity. In other words they o

I've been watching Mozilla's actions because they often seem to be incongruous with what you would expect them to be from their publicity. In other words they often say one thing, but do something else. Opening the user research would make this more obvious, so that's probably why they don't allow this visibility, even though it would make sense according to their published principles. Why are they doing this? I've no particular inside information, but occam's razor says it's follow the money - that Mozilla's true reason for existing is as a protection for Google, and that Mozilla's published positions are virtue signalling, but their actions serve their real masters at Google. It sounds controversial, right? But if you are ever interested in the red pill, explore this possibility by considering these facts.. (and if you're not - leave this post up so others get the chance to think about it for themselves) - Google provides 95% of the money for Mozilla - Mozilla is a lightning rod that attracts and focuses the user centric parts of the ecosystem/market, but ultimately fails to achieve the goals of giving users power and instead year after year the power remains with google - Mozilla must play a fine line between virtue signalling to prevent competitors who would truly organize for users benefit, vs actually doing things that would tip the balance of power towards users - Mozilla thus talks about lofty goals to capture the idealist mindshare, but consistently fails on good execution so the pragmatic choice remains to use google products instead - This pattern has been so consistent over the years I've come to the conclusion it's deliberate .. and the reason is probably because: follow the money, ie Mozilla is funded by Google - If Mozilla leadership isn't doing this intentionally then they are being used/played by Google, however Mozilla's CEO is now a corporate lawyer not an idealist, who's taking home big bucks, so that's an indication that Mozilla's leadership is in on the game . So in answer to your question, Mozilla's user research can't be open because that would increase visibility of situations where Mozilla's conflict of interests cause Moz to do things that benefit Google rather than general web users, and Moz's leadership don't want their hypocrisy to become known or their game will be up and the paychecks stop.