Orion Browser

What’s the main reason for you to pay for it?

> A piece of software will always be more trustworthy when it is free and open source than when it is closed source

Agreed.

I argued something different though, and that is that a zero-telemetry browser is more trustworthy (from a privacy perspective) than an open-source browser that has telemetry by default.

The simple reason for this is that literally anyone can test and verify zero-telemetry claim by installing a free web proxy and monitoring connections.

Proving trustworthiness for a browser with telemetry, even if client is OSS, is much harder.

> A web browser interacts with so many servers

A zero-telemetry browser, especially one blocking ads and trackers by default like Orion, does not.

Just one such rogue connection found by anyone on the web would be enough to destroy zero-telemetry browser's entire reputation and credibility.

> A FOSS browser has no such concerns since the code can be checked for malicious behavior.

That is somewhat an illusion. For example server side code that is receiving and processing browser telemetry (including personal information such as IP addresses), is not open source and can not be checked for any major OSS browser, as far as I know. Even if it was FOSS, the user would have no way of knowing that is the code that is actually running on the servers.

With a zero-telemetry browser there is no such concern. This is why zero-telemetry is a much more powerful claim if trust and privacy are of concern.

Ultimately, what defines trustworthines overall is the business model of the browser, because that is what defines incentives of the browser vendor. As an average user, would you rather trust a browser with a business model where users pay for the product, or a browser depending on the world's largest ad and tracking network for revenue?

Most browsers depend directly or indirectly on ads/tracking business models for revenue. Orion is again a rare breed in this regard, as it only generates revenue off of the users directly paying for it.

Correct, and this is why trustworthiness is a matter of the business model, which is what defines incentives.

For many browsers today, users are not the same as customers, and this is problematic from a standpoint of trust and alignment of incentives, regardless of whether they are FOSS or not.

I have been orion as my daily driver for months now and I have been impressed with where this project is going. Kagi the company offers two products, (1) Kagi Search, which I also use as my daily search driver, and (2) Orion Browser the topic of this post and browser I believe is heading places. I support both and will continuing to due to the features and responsiveness from the dev team. A couple of things to mention:

(1) While not all extensions don't work out of the bat, reverse engineering how each works usally results in how to integrate with it. A good example is bitwarden and touch id integration. Search the Orion feedback page and you will see what I mean.

(2) Absolutley love vertical tabs. When I go down rabbit holes of investagations it makes all the tabs easy to organize and remove tabs that don't serve any purpose anymore.

(3) The privacy settings that it offers make your digital footprint just a little smaller compared to other offers. Biggest plus is browser profile isolation.

(4) Combaitibility mode is fantasticly convient to find and use and makes broken experiences easier to fix.

(5) Big bummer is streaming services don't always work, but the developers promise to work towards a solution.