UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

However, Firefox's user-centric development model has been declining for years now as Mozilla has grown and become accustomed to raking in hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Mozilla has been actively imitating Chrome for some time now. It is becoming less unique.

Mozilla's future plans for Firefox continue to make it less like Firefox and more like Chromium. The coming changes to the addon APIs, deprecation of XPCOM/XUL, etc, will probably erase any useful distinction between Firefox and Chrome. Electrolysis, while nice in theory (because who isn't tired of the janky Firefox UI), will also probably erase Firefox's advantage in memory usage.

It saddens me to say it, but Firefox needs to die and be reborn--the Phoenix needs to rise again from the ashes. Perhaps this has already happened in a sense with Pale Moon, although Pale Moon isn't even in Debian, so using it requires extra effort.

But it won't really happen (Firefox dying/forking) until Mozilla hits rock bottom. Only when they are forced to confront their bloated bureaucracy and their lack of user-focus will any real change happen. It will require (near)bankruptcy, leadership change and many layoffs. And who knows if Firefox would even survive; it's so enormous and complex, would anyone pick up the pieces? Would a community effort even be able to?

Anyway, we won't have to wait long to find out. The way Mozilla's going, I'd be surprised if they still exist in their current form in 3 years. Sad, but hey, Netscape died to give birth to Firefox, so maybe Mozilla's death will give birth to...Phoenix? (Can we use that name now, after all these years?)

Pun intended? But seriously, whenever I see one of these browser-blockers (and it seems Opera gets hit too), I just leave the site and never come back. Chances are, your site is not unique and I'll find what I need somewhere else.

developers can spend more time developing features

IMHO, those are "features" which no one really cares about. Stop messing around with fancy CSS and JS, spend the time developing a simple site that almost naturally works in IE too.

On the recent discussion here about the Session Saver code, one Mozilla dev said that it needs rearchitecting, but that the issue is "manpower." I don't understand how a company that rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars per year can't afford to rewrite a problematic component--they had the manpower to write the bad design in the first place. Can they not afford to hire another programmer or two? Even now that they've cancelled FxOS? Where is the money going?

And generally Mozilla is taking Firefox in a direction that loyal users--who have used Firefox for nearly two decades now!--do not want. Mozilla is chasing Chrome users, rather than maintaining Firefox's useful, unique features. They just don't get it: if people wanted to use Chrome, they'd use Chrome. If they turn Firefox into Chrome, there'll be no reason to use Firefox instead of Chrome.

The handwriting is on the wall. Mozilla is no longer focused on making the best, most user-empowering browser. They are chasing ghosts, and when the money runs out...

Who says the addons have to be unmaintained?

https://github.com/Pale-Moon-Addons-Team

And look man, a lot of addons don't need to be "maintained," they just keep working. An addon that adds a button to the UI or something like that--it doesn't need to be constantly churned. Something like NoScript and ad-blocking addons need more attention, but a lot of very useful addons that let users customize their browser will continue working as long as the underlying APIs do.

So please lay off the scary language. Better be careful, when the Pale Moon comes out, addons become "dangerous"! :P