“Generally a browser's most important thing is their engine.”
Think more, and you'll realise that #Vivaldi is an #exception. It's only #sellingPoint, as I said, is the #UI. There are many other #privacyFocused #browsers, #VivaldiBrowser's #powerfull #features are what keep it #afloat TBH.
"It's somehow fine for them to take the work of others, but this doesn't go both ways? Does this not sound a bit weird to you?"
If they make their work #available to be accessed by anyone, they'll die in the end. #VivaldiTechnologies is a much smaller company compared to #Google and #Mozilla.
"But even with Mozilla actively trying to make Firefox the worst it can be, the debloated forks are nowhere near as popular as the main thing, so your whole argument falls flat in reality."
No, it doesn't, because #FF was released much earlier than V. This means it had much more time to become #popular enough to keep it's #userbase, while Vivaldi wouldn't.
"forks are unlikely to become more popular than the main thing to begin with. They'd have to really fuck shit up to make a fork suddenly take all their marketshare, and at that point its just the market working as intended."
Yes, for more popular browsers. But for new ones, this is not true.