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Firefox Was Always Enough

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Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#221

Post by ska »

buran77 wrote: post #136
MattGaiser wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just nobody to write the RFP. So many ways of doing business assume that something will be purchased.

> Or just nobody to write the RFP Then look no further than public institutions, where (leaving everything else aside) almost every tender is public [0]. You'll never see Thunderbird in any of the submitted bids because there's no company behind it to write the bid and put its weight behind it. It's a good canary to see if a service or product has anyone capable of supporting it, or if it can be monetized in any way.…

There is a ton of public procurement out there. It all has some level (sometimes an insane level) of hoop jumping and domain knowledge to be successful with. In my limited experience, the people who understand this don't have a lot of overlap with people who advocate and use open source solutions - although I have seen a few (e.g. CentOS rollouts).

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#222

Post by Brakenshire »

thrower123 wrote: post #68

I just don't know if 8% of desktop browser share is enough. It's creeping down into Opera range, and at that point, you're not a real option, you're a niche enthusiast brand.

I agree, they’re currently locked in a negative spiral, the share needs to be higher to be stable, otherwise maintaining compatibility will not be a high enough priority for web developers. 8% on desktop means 3-4% on all platforms and less in selected markets.

To regain market share they need to be the unambiguously better browser. I thought there was a really solid path to do that with their parallelising efforts, in particular a fully parallel layout engine in combination with their other work would have meant drastically improved UI speeds, notably on Android, but elsewhere as well, it would have eliminated a lot of development difficulty and allowed a much more native-equivalent level of performance. That would have made a good basis for an embedded engine to compete with electron.

That path seems to have been closed off with the Servo team being fired. I’m not sure where Mozilla is going now, it’s not enough to tread water.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#223

Post by bosswipe »

leadingthenet wrote: post #39
yummypaint wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. Combined with dark patterns used by microsoft and google to steer users toward their own browsers, it's an uphill battle. I'll stick firefox and appropriate extensions on a friends computer so they can watch youtube etc completely ad free, which is a major tangible QOL improvement, but then…

It's definitely not the best browser on macOS.

It's so weird to me this type of comment pops up on every firefox discussion, but I use firefox on mac everyday and it's rock solid, never run into any problems.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#224

Post by tannhaeuser »

etempleton wrote: post #2

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox n…

I hate to bring it to you, but every single one of your priorities have been long rejected: Thunderbird was officially discontinued like ten years ago, Mozilla had just let go a large number of devs in early 2020 and then again a couple weeks ago, among them all Servo developers.

Even if you wanted to financially support Firefox or Thunderbird development through donations, there would be no way to. Your money will go to the Moz foundation, and end up in all sorts of endeavors except the ones you care about: Moz spends money on discontinued mobile operating systems and new languages and language runtimes (Rust, WASM) nobody needs (sorry Rustees). Above all, your money likely goes to salaries and pension plans for CEOs and upper management.

When it has been suggested many times that Moz just needed to put the money they got from Google into a fund to finance FF development.

As to TFA's point about "sitting on the table to decide about web standards", that also hasn't worked out. It hasn't helped to keep "web standards" in check, nor did Mozilla's own contributions become part of them. All in all, Moz just acts as a fig leaf for the web end-game, pretending there's a community or some such.

With respect to "web standards", our best bet could be to demand that W3C, WHATWG clear up their shit and publish formal standards (possibly in an executable language to base a new formal browser/viewer app on). The way it is now helps no-one except Google.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#225

Post by boomboomsubban »

jlokier wrote: post #87
wongarsu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox can trace its history back to Netscape Navigator, released in 1994. It has failed and come back before. Even if the Mozilla Foundation fails, Firefox would likely survive in some form.

That was in the age of desktop browsers. Nowadays most browsing is mobile, and all mobile devices come with a high quality browser component which is effectively part of the operating system already, used pervasively by applications on the device as a component rather than a standalone browser. Installing a browser, any browser, is already a niche thing to do for the majority of internet users today.

>Installing a browser, any browser, is already a niche thing to do for the majority of internet users today.

And yet there are a range of choices for terminal only browsers. You've overall right, but I doubt that minority of users would let Firefox totally die any time soon.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#226

Post by BrendanEich »

pmoriarty wrote: post #85
SmokeyHamster wrote: post #54

>The problem? Firefox’s founders are all long, long gone. Brendan and Mitchell are Mozilla’s founders. Well then, you should have thought about that before you forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich because you disliked his unrelated politics. You can be a woke company that belittles everyone who doesn't share your narrow ideology or a company that makes a good web browser with a sound business model. You can't be…

Does Brave have ad blockers as feature rich as uBlock Origin and uMatrix?

Yes, and more. See https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ and prior posts in the series.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#227

Post by jonathansampson »

pmoriarty wrote: post #85
SmokeyHamster wrote: post #54

>The problem? Firefox’s founders are all long, long gone. Brendan and Mitchell are Mozilla’s founders. Well then, you should have thought about that before you forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich because you disliked his unrelated politics. You can be a woke company that belittles everyone who doesn't share your narrow ideology or a company that makes a good web browser with a sound business model. You can't be…

Does Brave have ad blockers as feature rich as uBlock Origin and uMatrix?

Most blockers these days use the same lists; this includes Brave. Brave also does additional work, liking inspecting the CNAME to see if the domain is an alias for a third-party, known tracker. One area where Brave is a little behind is in the aesthetic blocking, things like clearing elements off a page. We have that ability as well, but it's not quite as mature and well-rounded as you would see in something like uBO. Our work is not complete :)

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#228

Post by BrendanEich »

BrendanEich wrote: post #226
pmoriarty wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Brave have ad blockers as feature rich as uBlock Origin and uMatrix?

Yes, and more. See https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ and prior posts in the series.

We support uMatrix as extension and will continue to do so even after Chrome breaks it via Manifest V3. We don't build all its powers in (yet).

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#229

Post by deadbunny »

jonathansampson wrote: post #214
deadbunny wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their entire business model is sketchy. They'll collect payments on your behalf whether you're signed up to them or not while removing your ad revenue.

This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018. In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design. Within 48 hours we had a new build of Brave out which held the tips locally, in the browser. The tip would be attempted for up to 90 days; if the unverified publisher were to verify…

> This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018.

Great, I love being incorrect and learning something new.

> In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design.

So it wasn't incorrect or misinformation then?

Glad you've fixed that shitty practice but that doesn't expunge it from history or make the fact anyone in a decision making position thought that was in any way ethical/acceptable.

Re: Firefox Was Always Enough

#230

Post by BrendanEich »

djsumdog wrote: post #155
SmokeyHamster wrote: post #54

>The problem? Firefox’s founders are all long, long gone. Brendan and Mitchell are Mozilla’s founders. Well then, you should have thought about that before you forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich because you disliked his unrelated politics. You can be a woke company that belittles everyone who doesn't share your narrow ideology or a company that makes a good web browser with a sound business model. You can't be…

From the article: > I remember when Brendan Eich was briefly the Mozilla CEO. It was noted that a founder has a special place and ability as a leader. We never got to find out, but there was some sense to it: a founder has particular authority, without getting that authority through consensus-building. If you bring in a decisive outsider they will probably fail, lacking the authority (and probably the wisdom) to guid…

Brave has never done and will never do "ad injection".
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