UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency • Hacker News Board

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#161

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:15 AM UTC

alphapapa wrote: post #73

NeutronBoy wrote: post #4

While I applaud the effort that's gone into this, I urge people to consider (and use and contribute to!) Firefox. It's one of the last truly open-source browsers - both in terms of source code visibility (which Chrome(ium) has), and in terms of being able to contribute (which Chrome(ium) has not).

I tend to agree with you: Firefox is definitely more user-focused than Chrome or Chromium. 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 les…

XUL failed... and while I really appreciate what XUL (and even XULrunner) offered, nobody really used it much in practice. XPCOM while interesting wasn't very widely used either... Neither got traction outside the Mozilla sphere of software dev.

I would actually love to see some more work on creating consistent extension APIs so that a single add-on is easier to write against the big 4. I know that FF is caving in favor of more Chrome like models in some places... In general it's sometimes because they are better models, and some because they are chasing chrome.

In some ways Chrome actually is better in terms of UX... in others (configuration in particular) FF has been better. Mozilla has never been just Firefox though. They are an important part of web development... And I'm glad they're out there... I do think some people are holding onto how things were for the sake of resisting change, and likewise some are changing for the sake of.

It's not just "the voice" of the community... it's millions of voices screaming for different things, and those stearing paying attention to the majority for most of them.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#162

Post by Frondo » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:18 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #150

Frondo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. He wasn't imprisoned, nothing was done to him with the force of law. He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those…

> Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. This is a very disingenuous way of describing it. More proper way to describe it would be that a group of political activists put pressure on Mozilla to fire Eich because of his political views, for political reasons, and Mozilla as organization caved. There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his…

"There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his job, and no single instance or evidence of any problem with his job."

I don't know if that's true. I don't know how many gay folks work for Mozilla, but I'm 100% it's a non-zero number. They might have had a real problem with his donating to Prop 8. I couldn't say whether they did, being neither gay nor a mozilla employee, but I could imagine it might make them uncomfortable, just from the conversations I had with my gay friends when gay marriage was becoming a thing. Given that, I kinda think your confidence that there was "no single instance" of a problem is probably misplaced.

"Mozilla has to accept consequences of being the organization which will fire you because you hold unpopular political views."

Mozilla didn't fire him. He resigned of his own volition, as I and many others have pointed out. You're free to want as little to do as possible with that organization, or with any organization, but usually when I boycott something it's for real stuff, not stuff I just made up in my head. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#163

Post by sergiotapia » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

NeutronBoy wrote: post #4

While I applaud the effort that's gone into this, I urge people to consider (and use and contribute to!) Firefox. It's one of the last truly open-source browsers - both in terms of source code visibility (which Chrome(ium) has), and in terms of being able to contribute (which Chrome(ium) has not).

Firefox is unacceptably slugging and jittery on a brand new 27 inch iMac. Laughably slow and jittery. I would switch but it's just too slow and unresponsive.

Opera, I would use but I don't trust the chinese parent company.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#164

Post by ptaipale » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #157

gnarbarian wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment: I think excessive welfare does more harm than good. Should I politically screen my employees to ensure that they don't hold views that contradict mine?

No, because screening your employees is an action on your part. Mozilla took no action against Eich; he chose to resign himself. He could have elected to stay on, instead choosing to accept all of the consequences his views may or may not have for the company. The equivalent situation in your case is having your views on welfare known and your employees (and anybody else transacting with your company) deciding whethe…

That is disingenuous. Eich was forced to resign in a way that would be called "constructive dismissal" in some jurisdictions.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#165

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

chocolateboy wrote: post #43

JoshTriplett wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And this is the kind of thinking I'm talking about. The kind of thinking that says "security-sensitive software with no active maintenance and regular updates is a security hole waiting to happen"? Letting users install and run unmaintained software is dangerous. They'll get exploited. (And they'll blame the browser for that, and rightfully so.) You can still do what you want; it's entirely possible to install loca…

> it's entirely possible to install local untrusted addons. You just have to poke some settings that are intentionally hidden from most end users It's possible to install unsigned addons in ESR, developer and unbranded builds of Firefox. It's no longer possible to install them in the regular release or beta versions. The hidden setting was disabled in Firefox 48.

I don't get this. I mean, it's ok to have an option to install untrusted code off by default. It's even OK to bury it somewhere in "advanced settings". But after that, I think you're done your due diligence in protecting me from myself, and anything beyond that is impeding, not protecting.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#166

Post by stephenr » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:33 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #150

Frondo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. He wasn't imprisoned, nothing was done to him with the force of law. He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those…

> Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. This is a very disingenuous way of describing it. More proper way to describe it would be that a group of political activists put pressure on Mozilla to fire Eich because of his political views, for political reasons, and Mozilla as organization caved. There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his…

He resigned, stating that it's because he "couldn't manage effectively". Basically: the staff didn't respect him.

As I said elsewhere, if you can't get yourself out of a situation like that, you probably don't have the chops to be CEO of the organisation anyway.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#167

Post by stephenr » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

gnarbarian wrote: post #130

Frondo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. He wasn't imprisoned, nothing was done to him with the force of law. He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those…

>I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It's called not talking politics or religion at work. Or not discriminating against someone because of something unrelated to their job. There is zero conflict of interest between Eich supporting prop 8 and h…

You can't police people's thoughts/feelings.

Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations).

Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#168

Post by gnarbarian » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:46 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #167

gnarbarian wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It's called not talking politics or religion at work. Or not discriminating against someone because of something unrelated to their job. There is zero conflict of interest between Eich supporting prop 8 and h…

You can't police people's thoughts/feelings. Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations). Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech.

>You can't police people's thoughts/feelings.

Cheers, Of course not.

>Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech.

Fair point. Riddle me this:

Should we force a baptist cake company to bake a cake for a gay wedding, force a Jewish bakery to bake a swastika cake, and force a Nazi bakery to bake a Jewish cake?

If not one. Why should we force one and not the others?

If you think the government should force nothing on any baker I agree with you.

>Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations).

Which people? As far as I know there wasn't any actual fallout beyond saber rattling.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#169

Post by byuu » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:47 AM UTC

ptomato wrote: post #80

byuu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was not fired. Straight from Mozilla themselves: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... "On April 3, 2014 Brendan Eich voluntarily stepped down as CEO of Mozilla." He could have stayed if he wanted to. Yes, it would have hurt their brand if he did, and yes it should have. Because yes, I and many others care very much if the CEO of a product donates to strip a minority of equal rights. Than…

95% probability that was "voluntarily step down or we'll fire you."

Then you're basically saying that the entire board and Eich himself are liars. And I don't believe that's a fair thing to say with zero evidence to the contrary.

Eich was a person that could have made the entire situation disappear in an instant by making a (completely meaningless given their history) matching donation to the HRC, and issuing a short post apologizing for his actions. Sure, many would see right through such a transparent act; but it would completely deflate the opposition in an instant -- guaranteed.

He didn't do so. To this day, he's still completely unapologetic for his actions. As much as I dislike the man, the one thing I cannot fault him for is that he is a man of integrity. I don't see him lying and pretending he voluntarily resigned.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#170

Post by gnicholas » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:47 AM UTC

bobajeff wrote: post #113

NeutronBoy wrote: post #4

While I applaud the effort that's gone into this, I urge people to consider (and use and contribute to!) Firefox. It's one of the last truly open-source browsers - both in terms of source code visibility (which Chrome(ium) has), and in terms of being able to contribute (which Chrome(ium) has not).

I use Firefox on my phone. I am more comfortable with it for privacy reasons. It's a pretty nice browser outside of that. However I'm using a pretty beefy phone whereas when I used my Moto G it wasn't quite the best browser in terms of resources however a lot has changed since then. (Like Chrome no longer having tabs integrated into the task manager. That feature was great for devices with not too much RAM and horrib…

Yep, support for older computers is a huge plus. My 2008 iMac is nearly half a dozen Mac OS versions behind, but I can still get the latest version of Firefox. Safari and Chrome stopped updating years ago. From a security perspective, it's Firefox all the way.

I also happen to use Firefox as my daily driver on my main laptop, largely due to the Tree Style Tabs addon, which I have not seen a decent substitute for on Chrome/Safari.