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

librewolf-community.gitlab.io

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

#151

Post by geofft »

alexmcc81 wrote: post #125

Once I would have used this, but I can't just can't bring myself to trust forks by small or unknown teams. We trust browsers with passwords to everything in our lives, like our bank details. The FAQ doesn't even cover who created LibreWolf. Why should I trust them? Even if I do trust the developers, are they really capable of keeping a modern complex browser secure in the hostile environment of todays internet? It ha…

What I'd like to see is a Firefox (and Chromium) fork with

- automatic builds and uploads via GitHub/GitLab CI (or similar) from a well-commented build script

- all the knobs for reproducible builds set up, so anyone can fork the repo, run the CI themselves, and see that it's bit-for-bit the same thing

- an automatic merge or rebase of the latest stable release tag, and the result of that merge being plugged into automatic updates

- an automatic merge or rebase of the latest beta tag (or even nightly), and some form of alerting if the build fails

- perhaps some Selenium + Wireshark automation to see what requests happen and make sure there are no unexpected ones

And, actually, it seems like LibreWolf is on the way there. https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/browser/common has a decently-well-commented build script that grabs the latest tarball from Mozilla and builds on top of it and even supports building on nightly, and their documentation (https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/docs/) mentions that as well. But I don't see where it is run / who runs it, and what they do if the build fails.

(Honestly it seems like setting up the release automation and alerting is a substantial project in itself.)

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

#152

Post by bityard »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #130

I recently looked at the changes they make to the default preferences and so many are nothing to do with privacy, and some of those that are also reduce the user's safety (e.g. disabling Google Safebrowsing). I'd advise any prospective users to comb over the changes very carefully before using it.

There are those of us who would choose privacy over safety every time...

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

#153

Post by kovac »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #148
kovac wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This indeed is true and I truly wish they made Vivaldi open source. However, free and open software is an ideal. Like any ideal, it can be used as a front and abused inna way that defeats its purpose. In its original form, free and open is noble. But since then, corporations have figured out how to monetise it. So, IMHO, we need to be very careful about anything free and open coming from corporations because their co…

We need to be careful about free and open software and your solution is to use non free and closed source software because they can make money off open source software? This makes no logical sense.

I'm not proposing any solutions. Just stating that a software with source open may not necessarily mean it's free and open in the sense it was originally intended. What one wants to do with it I think depends on one's own values.

I use qutebrowser, vivaldi and brave (on mobile) and sometimes console based browsers when I can get away with it. Qutebrowser and Lynx are open source. Vivaldi and I think Brave aren't open source? I'm using them because I read about their team, their business model, their past and hung out in their forums and decided that I'd support them. Doesn't mean anyone else have to. And there's nothing wrong with making money off opensource software and that's how it was intended in the first place. Original open source software authors didn't mean that the software has to be free of charge. For me, I don't want to support an organisation that sacks the researchers of their core product but the execs pay themselves millions of dollars. Most of those dollars come from Google. I'm sorry that that makes no logical sense to you.

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

#154

Post by nix0n »

mgbmtl wrote: post #43
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?

This will be an unpopular opinion here, but for developers, telemetry is a really useful way to make decisions about the direction of a project. Otherwise if it's just on a whim of the lead dev, that often does not scale. And we've seen with lots of projects, that actual regular-user feedback, not power-users, is crucial in taking those decisions. Switching off telemetry is easy, but I suppose you also have concerns…

> regular-user feedback, not power-users, is crucial in taking those decisions

In general, that's true. But Firefox is an exception to this.

The most important thing to a regular user, is that their websites work. But for websites to work, the developer had to test in Firefox. So, Firefox's alienation of power users has hurt its regular userbase.

There's also the distinction between users vs customers. Most users pay nothing for Firefox. A relatively small number of free-software lovers provide donations. If they want more of those people to give more money, Mozilla would have to cater to power users. This leaves Mozilla's main customer as being Google, who doesn't really want Firefox to be good.

The other exception to this, is if the software you're making is so specialized, that you can get by on a handful of large institutional customers. Obviously this is not where Mozilla is, it's just another case where telemetry is not necessary.

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

#155

Post by wintermutestwin »

jfk13 wrote: post #149
wintermutestwin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On another thread, I was told: "Firefox is feeding your data to Google. You need to disable it in the user.js file"

Oh, some random stranger on the Internet said so? That must be right, then.

I was not proclaiming that it was a fact. I am openly frustrated and confused. An oft repeated claim is that "people just don't care about their privacy." I am moderately technical and I am totally unsure of how to keep my data from these parasite companies. Achieving privacy is incredibly arcane and confusing. Instead of quipping at me with a low value post, why don't you tell me exactly what Mozilla's telemetry does? Do you know?

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

#156

Post by alexmcc81 »

geofft wrote: post #151
alexmcc81 wrote: post #125

Once I would have used this, but I can't just can't bring myself to trust forks by small or unknown teams. We trust browsers with passwords to everything in our lives, like our bank details. The FAQ doesn't even cover who created LibreWolf. Why should I trust them? Even if I do trust the developers, are they really capable of keeping a modern complex browser secure in the hostile environment of todays internet? It ha…

What I'd like to see is a Firefox (and Chromium) fork with - automatic builds and uploads via GitHub/GitLab CI (or similar) from a well-commented build script - all the knobs for reproducible builds set up, so anyone can fork the repo, run the CI themselves, and see that it's bit-for-bit the same thing - an automatic merge or rebase of the latest stable release tag, and the result of that merge being plugged into aut…

I see Brave are interested [1] in reproducible builds but it's not implemented yet. [2] I'm not sure if their CI artifacts are public or not.

[1] https://brave.com/building-brave/ [2] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5830

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

#157

Post by jfk13 »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #155
jfk13 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, some random stranger on the Internet said so? That must be right, then.

I was not proclaiming that it was a fact. I am openly frustrated and confused. An oft repeated claim is that "people just don't care about their privacy." I am moderately technical and I am totally unsure of how to keep my data from these parasite companies. Achieving privacy is incredibly arcane and confusing. Instead of quipping at me with a low value post, why don't you tell me exactly what Mozilla's telemetry doe…

If you want to know about Mozilla's telemetry, you could start with https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid and its links to additional details.

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

#158

Post by jl6 »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #135
jl6 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nefariou…

Or just trace it’s network activity without a code audit.

Doesn’t help if the exfiltration only occurs monthly and you only monitored for a week, or if there’s something locally malicious, or if side channels are involved, or if it’s manipulating data sent to legitimate sites (e.g. instructions to your bank, while logged in as you).

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

#159

Post by chrisjc »

hnarn wrote: post #121
tristor wrote: post #108

I examined this and it appears that you can get the same effect yourself by enabling ETP strict mode, disabling telemetry and suggestions, and installing uBlock Origin in Firefox, which is a pretty common configuration for a lot of people. I suppose it's easier to just install this and have that already set up, but it's not exactly hard to do this in Firefox for the average HN reader and you most likely /already have…

If anything, these types of projects should come as some sort of external wrapper to help you compile or configure the software to give you the wanted behavior. I don’t know a lot about how Arch’s AUR works but this seems like something that could be made an AUR package for example with special configuration while still using “base” Firefox to put it together, rather than profiling it as a new product.

Forgive my ignorance, but couldn't this be done as an extension? (Maybe even withing uBlock Origin itself, if they were to add an option?)

Or do extensions not have access to these settings?

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

#160

Post by xanaxagoras »

fsflover wrote: post #71
Nextgrid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which forks are actually doing this?

The one we're discussing here, LibreWolf. Here's my UA:

`User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0`

Note that I am on Linux, so your line of thinking has some validity.

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