The rejection, in the end, was because "it is unacceptable for a CA to be closely tied, through ownership and operation, to a company engaged in the distributio

The rejection, in the end, was because "it is unacceptable for a CA to be closely tied, through ownership and operation, to a company engaged in the distribution of malware", as Kathleen puts it. I read through all of Rachel's walls of text, and nothing there dispels the referred-to connection. And it seems like Mozilla's concern is: "Is it in Mozilla's users interest to have this CA in their trust store?", which is probably the only sane way to run a trust root program. That means any concerns about the well-being of the company which runs the CA must be ignored.