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Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

floorp.app

21–30 of 203 posts

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me at least it helps to know that it's not somehow secretly connected to some American intelligency agency

Japan is not "connected to some American intelligency agency"??

If you receive any email from US agencies and you are a Japanese company you can just say “no thank you I’m not interested” and it will most likely stop there.

If you are US company you don’t have a choice as it is the law.

Mozilla, Google, Facebook, Cloudflare, Signal, all have to respect the local laws.

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me at least it helps to know that it's not somehow secretly connected to some American intelligency agency

Japan is not "connected to some American intelligency agency"??

the connection is less direct, less direct connections imply increased safety.

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does this on every single one of its products, but not even from the nation its designed in, but the state!

I think they’re asking why it’s so prominent (more in the title of this submission than the website itself) as if it’s the main feature of the browser

Japanese people are proud of their country. In some nations, like France or Bulgaria it’s taboo. But in the US or Japan it’s fine to be proud of where a product is coming from.

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#24

Who funded this? Why?

According to the developer (Ablaze)'s website [0], development of Floorp is entirely funded by sponsors on GitHub [1].

[0] https://support.ablaze.one/articles/floorp/who-build-floorp

[1] https://github.com/sponsors/Ablaze-MIRAI

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for someone who prefers to buy made in Japan over made in China. A made in Europe sticker would definitely appeal to me more than a made in China. At least on products that are not mass produced from established brands.

I definitely have a preference for made in America, but that really only applies to physical products since there are strong associations with reputation and quality; the "country of origin" of software is far less well-defined in general, especially in the case of OSS.

It is only partially true now.

It was very true before, but more like 10 years ago.

For example, Apple, one main reason they chose to produce a lot of the phone in China was because of infrastructure and skills that people have, and not costs anymore.

China (in particular when you see markets like Yiwu!) has an impressive ability to produce all type of quality and grade of products.

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for someone who prefers to buy made in Japan over made in China. A made in Europe sticker would definitely appeal to me more than a made in China. At least on products that are not mass produced from established brands.

I definitely have a preference for made in America, but that really only applies to physical products since there are strong associations with reputation and quality; the "country of origin" of software is far less well-defined in general, especially in the case of OSS.

It's sort of strange to me how many Americans seem to share the same sentiment when my experience has often been the total opposite.

China has some of the best factories, supply chains, and collaboration in the world. And while yes, of course, loads of intentionally cheap, low-quality goods are churned out regularly, many Chinese companies also make really solid products, often even the best products until you reach a certain ultra-luxury price bracket that they simply aren't trying to compete in.

For example, sure, an LG/Samsung/Sony OLED will be way nicer in terms of picture quality than any Hisense on the market. But the cheapest OLED on BestBuy right now is a last-gen, clearance 46" LG that costs almost ~$700; if you want a 50"+ model, be prepared to spend $1,000 minimum. On the other hand, the 75" U6H I got for $600 was better than any comparable non-OLED offering by non-Chinese companies until you got into the $1,000-1,200+ price range.

Midea is another good example; sure, Bosch, Miele, and Zojirushi often have much nicer luxury products, but if you're a middle/working-class person who doesn't want to or can't spend $300+ on a rice cooker, it'll be hard to beat--unless you get lucky like me and find the one weird guy in your town who happened to be moving cities and selling off all his appliances, including some perfect-condition JDM Zojirushi with an inverter for $100 (and also happen to have a Japanese friend you can annoy to help you figure out what all the Kanji menus do).

Same can be said for handset manufacturers like Xiaomi, etc. And a lot of audio gear as well; $100-200 Russian Oktava microphones easily punch several hundred to several thousand dollars above their class, Chinese brands dominate the mid-range IEM market, and Chinese headphone brands like HiFiMan are difficult to beat in any price bracket -- first paycheck I got, I spent $1,600 on Sennheiser HD 800 S because I wanted the HD 800 as a kid, but realistically, $300 HiFiMan Sundaras will get you almost there for over a thousand less.

Personally, every "made in America" thing I've bought that wasn't manufactured before like 1990 either fell apart and/or was ridiculously expensive compared to things made elsewhere. My association of made in America is either:

A. Truly craftsman, low-volume, specialized products that have an inherently high price tag

B. More commonly, low-quality, over-priced junk that survives only because of nationalism or protectionism alone

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#28
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for someone who prefers to buy made in Japan over made in China. A made in Europe sticker would definitely appeal to me more than a made in China. At least on products that are not mass produced from established brands.

I couldn't care less where my item is produced. It just so happens that a large variety of high-end products are produced at a higher level of quality (and cost, generally) in the West (including S Korea and Japan); but if someone introduced me to a Nigerian, Mexican, Thai, etc product that surpassed my current choice, I would switch in an instant. I don't understand caring at all about the source, unless there is so…

Some people care about items not travelling twice the globe before landing home.

Other people care about work conditions for the produced items they buy, namely not manufactured by children, for which country origin could be an indicator.

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#29
post #2

What's the point of stating that "it's made in Japan"? I just don't get it. Does it have improved IME or CJK support? It's not like Japan is famous for its quality software to be honest.

> It's not like Japan is famous for its quality software to be honest.

Exactly. The developers are probably proud to have built something (presumably) high-quality in Japan and they want to promote that fact to help shift the country's image I guess.

Re: Floorp – A customisable Firefox fork from Japan

#30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they’re asking why it’s so prominent (more in the title of this submission than the website itself) as if it’s the main feature of the browser

Japanese people are proud of their country. In some nations, like France or Bulgaria it’s taboo. But in the US or Japan it’s fine to be proud of where a product is coming from.

believe me the French are very, very proud of their country, that doesn't really mean you need to buy into rather cringy economic 'patriotism'. Especially when it makes zero sense as in the case of software. It's not like this browser came out of a 500 year old artisanal Japanese crafting shop, where the browser recipes where handed down the family tree

With these kinds of things it's basically, I have no way to differentiate my product, so I'm gonna slap the country flag on it for good measure

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