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Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#61

Post by jstewartmobile »

roca wrote: post #57
jstewartmobile wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they paired up with a search provider other than Google, does that make them any more independent? If they only get 70%, or 50%, of their income from a search engine, does that make them independent? A non-profit that has a taxable subsidiary and receives the bulk of its funding from the search industry does not strike me as being particularly independent.

What are you claiming now? Are you claiming Mozilla was the tool of Google, switched to being the tool of Microsoft or Yahoo, and then back to being the tool of Google? Or are you claiming that Mozilla is the tool of the "search industry" which is some amorphous group containing all of the above? Google (and other companies in some countries) pay Mozilla to be the default search in Firefox. It's a business transactio…

It is super, super simple. When 80%+ of your revenue depends on a search engine, and you still have payroll to make, you are by definition dependent upon it, regardless of which one it happens to be at the time. The article title is "Maintaining an Independent Browser is Expensive". I'm just calling it out.

From the tone of the replies, kicked off by a guy in the analytics industry who went so far as to google me for a comment, Upton Sinclair is screaming from the grave:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

edit: And granted, they can currently play Google against Bing, although that isn't a terribly impressive degree of freedom.

edit edit: And where did the word "secret" enter into the conversation? It's like you depend on a search engine (or a batch of them during your break from Google) for most of your revenue, and I'm the one who has to prove that you're not influenced by that???

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#62

Post by pcwalton »

staunch wrote: post #59

Mozilla does not need 1200 people to make Firefox. Mozilla has 1200 people because they blow all of their money irresponsibly, and that's apparently how many people you can hire with the bribes/revenue from Google it pays to maintain its monopoly. The chairwoman takes over $1M year? Why would an open source project need anyone who would be so unethical? This is like a city councilperson paying themselves $1M/year. It…

In that alternate reality, there would be no Rust and no Servo, which would mean there would be no Firefox Quantum (as well as no ripgrep, fd, exa, Parity, etc.)

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#63

Post by cdancette »

steve19 wrote: post #6
cknight wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched back to Firefox 57 about a decade after abandoning it for Opera. I remember the advocacy movement around Firefox 1.0 which I was quite involved in. I thought (and still think) it was great. I don't plan to go quite as far this time, but do plan to try and convince all my friends and family to get on board. It'll be a harder task for sure since Chrome is not IE6, but as the resident IT guy that everyone ask…

Firefox on Android is so frustrating. Things like no swipe down to refresh, despite all other apps implementating that pattern. On my phone, scrolling by swiping is slow, it scrolls such a short distance. Meaning going down a long NH page takes many swipes. All other Android browsers seem to get it right. Fonts also seem "off". It's these small things that make the experience frustrating. I truly want to use it, but…

The thing that annoys me the most is to change tab: on chrome / brave we can just swipe the top bar and change tab. On firefox, we need to first click on the tab button, and then find the right tab by looking at a huge list of tabs. I find it much less practical and that's what got me back to chrome.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#64

Post by gsnedders »

erikbye wrote: post #44
mercurial wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Gecko ? It's their original engine. You probably mean Servo (the experimental Rust engine).

I guess it's not wrong to call it their original engine, just remember it's a two-decades-old development that started at Netscape.

Well, arguably started at DigitalStyle.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#65

Post by jacobr »

staunch wrote: post #59

Mozilla does not need 1200 people to make Firefox. Mozilla has 1200 people because they blow all of their money irresponsibly, and that's apparently how many people you can hire with the bribes/revenue from Google it pays to maintain its monopoly. The chairwoman takes over $1M year? Why would an open source project need anyone who would be so unethical? This is like a city councilperson paying themselves $1M/year. It…

So if they had just enough people to "make Firefox", what would they do with it?

It's quite easy to see what Firefox would be with "just the browser". Take a look at some Firefox fork which packages almost identical software but with worse distribution, marketing, etc. What is the market share?

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#66

Post by techsupporter »

I wish the Mozilla store hadn't gone away. I've used Firefox for a very long time but it's been three or four laptops ago that I was able to adorn my machine with Firefox (or Thunderbird!) stickers. Yes, it's a small thing, and I tout Firefox whenever I can, but I'm also a sucker for something I can slap on something that I carry around.

(I suppose I could also just make my own or have someone print them up for me alongside giving money to the Mozilla Foundation.)

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#67

Post by Sylos »

staunch wrote: post #59

Mozilla does not need 1200 people to make Firefox. Mozilla has 1200 people because they blow all of their money irresponsibly, and that's apparently how many people you can hire with the bribes/revenue from Google it pays to maintain its monopoly. The chairwoman takes over $1M year? Why would an open source project need anyone who would be so unethical? This is like a city councilperson paying themselves $1M/year. It…

> The chairwoman takes over $1M year? Why would an open source project need anyone who would be so unethical? This is like a city councilperson paying themselves $1M/year.

The Mozilla Corporation is 100% owned by the Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation determines the loan of the chairperson. And they pay the chairperson so much, because the industry pays chairpersons so much. Mitchell could find an even better paying job in no time, I'm sure.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#68

Post by gsnedders »

chungy wrote: post #60
Sylos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Android-version is also just a Blink wrapper. It's almost impossible for Microsoft to port Trident/EdgeHTML to other operating systems, because it's so deeply integrated into Windows.

Way back when, there were versions of IE 4, 5, and 6 for non-Windows OSes such as HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, and Mac OS (Classic and X both). It is not unreasonable that they could do it again.

Note those releases were based on an entirely different codebase to the Windows version of IE.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#69

Post by edejong »

roca wrote: post #52
rlv-dan wrote: post #40

This begs the question: Is it healthy that one of the most important technologies today (web) is also very complicated (=expensive) and thus effectively limiting number of players.

It's not healthy, but unfortunately maintaining compatibility and staying abreast of modern platform features (so that apps and content don't fully migrate to the single-vendor platforms) just mandates a lot of complexity.

The reason why it’s expensive is that no HTML5 proposals are taking into account the cost of development and maintenance. “Anything goes” as long as it competes with the walled-garden platforms. Spending without budgeting nor cost evaluation is similar to going to a casino spending your life savings thinking you’re the lucky one.

Re: Maintaining an Independent Browser Is Expensive

#70

Post by techsupporter »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #31
sverhagen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it just released for Android and iOS? (I get that that might not be what you meant...)

The iOS version is a WebKit wrapper by necessity (Apple mandates that all alternative browsers use the system-bundled WebKit for user experience reasons), and while it’s possible they’ve ported Edge’s engine to Android I’d bet that Edge for Android either wraps WebKit or Blink/Chromium. The primary value proposition for Edge on mobile is syncing of tabs/bookmarks/history/etc, not its engine.

> (Apple mandates that all alternative browsers use the system-bundled WebKit for user experience reasons)

So far, this is the only thing that really drives me bonkers about iOS and has for a long time. I'd love to be able to use an actual third-party browser with a third-party rendering engine, even if it meant having to install a particular signing certificate or some such. Doubly so for using browser-specific extensions. Who knows, maybe iOS 15?

(While I'm wishing for ponies, the ability to change OS-level default applications would be nice.)

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