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?
No, since a fork is still fundamentally Firefox.
LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
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Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#62Genuine 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?
If a fork like this would decrease ff's user base, Mozilla can change ff or have their lunch eaten by said fork. Hard to see a down side.
Is this fork going to actively develop Firefox if Mozilla's lunch is eaten? Are they going to continue implementing the ever moving standards? That's the down side.
Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#63Earlier 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.
> the unlimited resources that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are able to pour into their unprofitable ecosystem moats
No sane company pours money into unprofitable anything. They pour money into those moats precisely because it pays dividends.
Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But it's absolutely comparable to a fork of Firefox. This does not solve the GPs question, why do so many people fork Chrome instead of Firefox.
>But it's absolutely comparable to a fork of Firefox.
It's still not comparable for a fairly simple reason: the list of companies in the world that are as big as Microsoft consists of Google, and Apple, both of whom already have their own browsers.
As for why Microsoft chose Chromium, it's probably a combination of marketshare, the fact that it is a bit more cleanly architected as a result of having a decade less history than Gecko does, and the fact that they have ambitions of making a stripped down version of Electron part of the standard Windows userspace.
Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#65Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#66Why 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?
>Why are there not more successful forks of Firefox? [...] What's preventing other forks from taking off
Some of the replies to your question state "money" but there are also more fundamental reasons of choosing Chromium over Gecko: technical functionality and performance (especially on mobile).
You'd think an ex-Firefox programmer and Mozilla co-founder such as Brendan Eich would have chosen Gecko for Brave but he didn't. He explains in a previous comment why he switched from Gecko to Chromium: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062636
So the "hidden" reason people are not comfortable saying (except maybe Brendan Eich) is that Gecko isn't as good as Chromium as a foundation for forking. That's why you get a bunch of companies independently choosing Chromium instead of Gecko such as :
- Github Electron based on Chromium
- Qt QtWebEngine uses Chromium
- Opera Vivaldi switches from Presto to Chromium
- Microsoft Edge switches from Trident to Chromium
- Brave switches from Gecko to Chromium
Some speculate Gecko's MPL license instead of Chromium's BSD might also be a factor.
Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#67So my choice is to trust one of either: 1. The Mozilla developers who are capturing telemetry, but probably just using it to push ads (at worst, and possibly not even that). 2. Some new devs who may have good intentions, but who are unknown to me, who are not capturing telemetry, but nevertheless have control over my browser.
It's just a custom build of the latest Firefox version with some patches applied. Everything is very well documented and you can build it by yourself, there is no need to trust "some new devs who may have good intentions"
Sure, I could review the source code. And then review it again next week when a change is released. I don’t want to have to though.
Trust matters.
I don’t trust Mozilla not to push ads, but I do trust them not to build in intentional backdoors and steal my personal data, because there’s a whole public organization there, with a reputation and responsibilities and heads that will roll if they are caught doing nefarious things.
You might ask why I trust thousands of other open source community led projects? Largely because they have built rep and get at least a minimal vetting via distro package management.
I’m not saying this fork is malware. But I don’t know it isn’t, and the browser is the #1 critical component that handles all my most sensitive data.
Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#68How does this compare with IceCat and Fennic?
It's a lot more up to date than IceCat, which rarely has binary packages for distributions and hasn't seen an official binary release from the FSF since version 60.7.0 a few years ago.
Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> the unlimited resources that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are able to pour into their unprofitable ecosystem moats No sane company pours money into unprofitable anything. They pour money into those moats precisely because it pays dividends.
My point (which I'm confident you do understand despite the pedantry) is that the browsers themselves are not profitable without taking into account their effects on the entire ecosystem.
Mozilla doesn't have an ecosystem like Google, Microsoft and Apple do. If they want to stay afloat they have to be profitable with the browser alone. So trying to directly compare that to the "free candy" approach which the others can get away with is unrealistic.
It's like asking why Target and Best Buy can't match the prices of Amazon retail, which has a money fountain named AWS in their backyard that can subsidize their other activities for "ecosystem growth". If Amazon retail had been a separate standalone business which had to succeed on its own for the past decade, it probably would have been run differently.
Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm not OP, but you, in GGP, said:
>>>It's 20 million lines of security sensitive code. Of course it's difficult to properly fork.
Did you forget to switch accounts? Which is it? Easy or hard?