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Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

teams.live.com

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Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what is "support" for them, but I've never been able to make calls in it. Only the chat function works.

That's what I was thinking too. I have to keep Chrome installed on my Linux machine exclusively to use Teams for voice and video calls, since calls have never been possible in Firefox and the Linux desktop client is so buggy.

Linux desktop client seems to be dead; as of last week, trying to download the deb or rpm package results into 404.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#63
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, I don't care that you have two backlogs. Support the prevailing web-standards or lose me as a customer. I'm already sick of how much I have to kowtow to large companies because they treat developer time as costly, but user time as free.

> Support the prevailing web-standards or lose me as a customer. Respectfully, a lot of developers don't care about losing a small percentage of users. They will get to focus their effort on Chrome users and increase the service quality for them.

Seems like a strange business decision to give up a a percentage of the market to the competition like that.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#66

Looks like someone made a boo-boo it’s simply based on the user agent, w/e string matching they do is too strict they aren’t checking for actual JS/WebASM compatibility or anything like that. Chrome stable with a non standard user agent doesn’t work on via the windows live url but works through the O365 corporate one, same with Safari Mobile without any user agent modification. This to me looks like stupidity more th…

> Looks like someone made a boo-boo it’s simply based on the user agent, w/e string matching they do is too strict they aren’t checking for actual JS/WebASM compatibility or anything like that.

Microsoft has repeatedly engaged in malicious anticompetitive behavior. Without any additional information, I therefore think it's rational to place a high prior probability on this being malicious anticompetitive behavior. The data itself might be consistent with either an accident or malicious anticompetitive behavior. In that case, the prior dictates the posterior.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#67
post #59

This may be unrelated. Is it legal to ship a Firefox fork as a distribution with a Chrome user agent by default?

as long as you don't include any of the firefox or mozilla branding, because you don't have the rights to those: absolutely.

There are also Firefox extensions that let you set a custom user agent. It might make you easier to fingerprint (unusual combination of user agent and browser features means very very high uniqueness), but it will allow you to bypass buggy user agent checks if needed.

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#68

Controversial opinion: I used to like Firefox but at some point you have to accept the reality: No developer likes to have 2 backlogs, one for Chrome and one for FF. IMO It's better to adopt Chromium-based browsers and put pressure on Google to avoid letting it become the sole decision-maker about the web.

It's not a controversial opinion as much as it is incongruent. > IMO It's better to adopt Chromium-based browsers and put pressure on Google to avoid letting it become the sole decision-maker about the web. But by using chromium/blink-based browsers, you have already taken the pressure off Google. You have already given them what they want, so you've forfeited your hand. For anyone out there who values the swiftly fa…

> For anyone out there who values the swiftly fading open-ness of the Internet, Firefox or other smaller FLOSS browsers are the right tools of choice.

Mozilla had their chance at this decades ago and Firefox was the dominant browser against IE, 16 years ago, until they did a deal with Google, fell asleep at the wheel and allowed them to overtake and get sabotaged via Chrome's dominance. The same Mozilla CEO at the time believed they could live without Google's money [0] and now 16 years later, they are still heavily reliant on Google and at this point are on life-support.

Mozilla already gave Google what they wanted and forfeited their so-called 'privacy-focused browser mission' over giving the CEO a decades streak of multi-million dollar pay days, whilst the 'Mozillians' only got layoffs and all left with little to nothing.

Mozilla is now a joke to the 'open-ness of the web'. They have nothing to fight with and lost as soon as the took Google's money.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#69
post #56

My organization (which uses Teams) forcibly migrated all Firefox users to Edge a couple of weeks ago and uninstalled FF. They were citing incompatibility with some software and I assumed that meant the new ERP system being adopted by one of the larger departments.

At least Edge is now Chrome...

Re: Microsoft Teams is blocking Firefox Nightly

#70

Looks like someone made a boo-boo it’s simply based on the user agent, w/e string matching they do is too strict they aren’t checking for actual JS/WebASM compatibility or anything like that. Chrome stable with a non standard user agent doesn’t work on via the windows live url but works through the O365 corporate one, same with Safari Mobile without any user agent modification. This to me looks like stupidity more th…

Sounds like Hanlon's razor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

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