LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom • Hacker News Board

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#31

Post by masklinn » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #21

dralley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 20 million lines of security sensitive code. Of course it's difficult to properly fork. The same is true of Chromium, btw.

And yet we see quite a lot of Chromium forks - Brave, Vivaldi and Edge come to mind. For Firefox, the number seems to be a lot lower.

> Brave

Company trying to make money off of its fork.

> Vivaldi

Company trying to ???

> Edge

Microsoft, who found that maintaining a chrome fork would be less expensive than playing catch-up with their own in-house browser.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#32

Post by tokai » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

ameminator wrote: post #24

When I heard about all these shenanigans over at Firefox, I switched to Vivaldi, and I am enjoying the experience so far

Its not free or open software, so using it is a step back.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#33

Post by iandinwoodie » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

numbsafari wrote: post #29

yosito wrote: post #2

Why are there not more successful forks of Firefox? While it's still my browser of choice, I think it's safe to say there are a significant number of developers who are not happy with the leadership of Mozilla. What's preventing other forks from taking off?

One reason is that there's a ton of social pressure not to fork, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29106440 Another is that doing so, and sustaining the effort, is a non-trivial amount of work. Throwing up a web page and a single release is one thing. Keeping up with the release cadence of an org like Mozilla, and the demands and expectations of a browser user base is something entirely different. Als…

Out of curiosity, why do you think "libre" is a terrible moniker?

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#34

Post by EE84M3i » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

user3939382 wrote: post #22

diegocg wrote: post #15

How is this any different from a standard Firefox install with telemetry turned off

Hopefully it's a lot different. If you proxy Firefox you'll see that even with everything turned off that you possibly can through the UI, Firefox phones home many times, especially during launch and exit.

I would be really surprised if the Firefox developers refused a patch adding a new about:config setting for whatever you're talking about.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#35

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #21

dralley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 20 million lines of security sensitive code. Of course it's difficult to properly fork. The same is true of Chromium, btw.

And yet we see quite a lot of Chromium forks - Brave, Vivaldi and Edge come to mind. For Firefox, the number seems to be a lot lower.

Yeah, because of the usual open source problem: funding. Brave is funded by venture capital and crypto-crap, Vivaldi by advertising deals and Edge by the infinite coffers of Micro$oft.

Firefox forks tend to dislike associating with any of the above.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#36

Post by _jal » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

dralley wrote: post #27

iakov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Mozilla is harming Firefox much more with their decisions. Adding ads to address bar and sending metadata to unknown third parties alienated lots of users, I can’t blame them for looking for alternatives - or making one.

I'm not thrilled with every decision Mozilla has ever made but I think people have gotten so used to the unlimited resources that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are able to pour into their unprofitable ecosystem moats that they've lost sight of what running a self sustaining business in this space would even look like.

> they've lost sight of what running a sustainable business in this space would look like

Is the claim that it is economically impossible to create a browser without turning it in to surveillance malware?

To the extent that's true, it is the best argument yet for shutting down the web.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#37

Post by dralley » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

revolvingocelot wrote: post #23

dralley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 20 million lines of security sensitive code. Of course it's difficult to properly fork. The same is true of Chromium, btw.

Chromium is the one with all the forks, right? I don't think "it's a browser, stupid" is the only reason. ...although reading some of the other comments elsewhere, it is a pretty good one. Chromium-based browsers do tend to have some form of corporate support.

OP said this:

>> is the suggestion that FF is too complex to properly fork without full time devs?

How many Chrome forks don't have "full time devs"? A lot of them (Vivaldi, Opera) aren't even open source!

The only one I can think of is ungoogled Chromium which is basically equivalent to this Firefox one in that the actual changes being made are miniscule.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#38

Post by Nextgrid » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #25

vladvasiliu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say if there's any harm, it would rather be related to money, as in Mozilla has less to bargain for their deals with their sponsors. However, seeing how these forks are just "cosmetic", they still use the same rendering engine, which doesn't increase Google's relative user base. As far as this monopoly is concerned, all these forks are still Firefox.

> As far as this monopoly is concerned, all these forks are still Firefox. Not in the website statistics I guess, unless the forks present themselves as Firefox, which I doubt.

To defend against browser fingerprinting you absolutely want them to present themselves as Firefox.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#39

Post by funcDropShadow » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #21

dralley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 20 million lines of security sensitive code. Of course it's difficult to properly fork. The same is true of Chromium, btw.

And yet we see quite a lot of Chromium forks - Brave, Vivaldi and Edge come to mind. For Firefox, the number seems to be a lot lower.

Edge, for example, is a fork maintained by Microsoft. It is a strategic project for a multi-billion company. That is not comparable to a fork of your average open-source project.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#40

Post by hidden-spyder » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #4

Genuine questions. Aren't such forks harming the actual Firefox developers by decreasing the Firefox user base? Doesn't it help the Google monopoly on the web?

> Doesn't it help the Google monopoly on the web?

Can't answer your other question, but this fork has a chance of helping those who don't want to use Mozilla Firefox avoid switching to Chromium browsers by offering a choice.