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I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

howtogeek.com

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Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#331

Post by Yizahi »

surajrmal wrote: post #184
squarefoot wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. I would add to the list the Linux Foundation too. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-annou...

Note that the effort there is to shift chromium to a more open governance model. This would mean Google has less influence on the project.

How is that possible? Would Chrome Chromium maintainer make a different implementation decision from the original Chrome, and then support and develop a real branch in the code? To have Google less influence? I highly doubt it. It is all chromewashing, to make it sound as if Chrome Chromium is an independent browser.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#332

Post by nh2 »

segasaturn wrote: post #301
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment I was replying to has an inaccurate mindset: Linux supporters generally still envision this as a community project, with community contributors, and they are so successful, that companies knock at the door politely and are lucky to get code into the kernel. It's actually the other way around: This is a collaborative corporate project, with corporate employees contributing, but there are some rand…

I actually agree with you that Linux development has been captured by corporations. Except that I believe it's not sustainable. Eventually the Shareholders are going to come knocking and ask why so much engineering time and money is being wasted on some hippie-dippy Open Source junk and not returning value to them. It needs AI in it, or maybe a Linux Pro subscription with ads for the freeloaders. This is why I'm glad…

> ask why so much engineering time and money is being wasted on [Linux]

Most likely the corporations will say "because that is much cheaper than developing our own; 10 of our devs on Linux an 99% of devs from other corporations are much cheaper than 1000 of our devs on our own OS". And the shareholders will likely accept that.

The key thing is that for most corporations that contribute to Linux, Linux is not the product (except Red Hat, SuSe etc). Google, Facebook, etc, just need a good OS to run their billions of servers on.

> so we can fork when their interests stop aligning with ours

You can fork but you likely cannot maintain Linux as-is. Where do the 1M hours/year come from? That's hard to do in free time.

That is also fine from the perspecitve of Free Software. The 4 freedoms do not include "the program must be maintainable with little enough manpower for people to do it in their free time, free of independence on corporate interests":

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

The GPL is great in that it gives large power to users of the software, no matter if those users are corporate or personal, and even if the makers of the software are mostly corporations.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#333

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

The firehose of cash is ads and user tracking, not serving better video.

It's such an unprecedented amount of money that it corrupts everything else and distorts the market.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#334

Post by gorhill »

bartread wrote: post #55
ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

It’s also laziness in software development practices. Developers (still) only develop and test with Chrome. My last job a bunch of us used Firefox as our main browser, which was hugely helpful. As recently as yesterday I ran into an e-commerce site that didn’t work in Firefox (CPC Farnell, I’m looking at you), giving some obscure security error in multiple languages. I thought it might be caused by an extension at fi…

I randomly browsed the site with Firefox stable and I couldn't see any obvious malfunction. What exactly is not working? Is there a specific webpage where the malfunction can be seen?

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#335

Post by ilbeeper »

Yizahi wrote: post #331
surajrmal wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the effort there is to shift chromium to a more open governance model. This would mean Google has less influence on the project.

How is that possible? Would Chrome Chromium maintainer make a different implementation decision from the original Chrome, and then support and develop a real branch in the code? To have Google less influence? I highly doubt it. It is all chromewashing, to make it sound as if Chrome Chromium is an independent browser.

The origin(al) is developed within the chromium project, Chrome is already a Google styled chromium fork.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#336

Post by globnomulous »

qntmfred wrote: post #22

I used Firefox before Chrome took over, and then stuck with Chrome until about a year ago when I started using Brave. Last week I switched to Edge. I know some people will turn up their nose at such a choice, but it turns out to actually be a very nice browser. I'm even using it on my phone now too.

Same experience. I've found Edge to be the smoothest-feeling browser I've used on Android. Brave may be objectively faster, but somehow Edge feels better. If Microsoft did this deliberately, I'd love to know how.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#337

Post by endemic »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #161
ceejayoz wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to...

Where is the article titled "I don't know how to explain that ads (and the "suckers" who view them) are what keep the internet running"

Sure, I don't mind the ads. The pervasive tracking and data collection and profile building is where I draw the line. Tons and tons of JS churning my browser to sell me stuff. If my adblock eventually causes some sort of economic disaster, so be it.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#339

Post by Apocryphon »

wruza wrote: post #135
ethbr1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was fast because in 2008 it used V8 [0] and other browsers didn't. Eventually competitors caught up. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine)

And that was fast because google pushed on megabytes of javascript and tight loops in it. Regular ajax (now known as htmx) webpages worked absolutely fine in other browsers. I regularly scrolled through a whole freebsd single-html handbook and it never lagged in e.g. presto. Websites aren't expensive to run even on a slow interpreter. Even medium-complexity apps don't do much and could be written in python or ruby ba…

Nah, I remember Firefox in 2008 being a miserably bloated and slow experience. Guess it was because of no Electrolysis and any other refinements in the last two decades.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#340

Post by taylodl »

ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

> it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads

AKA depriving content creators of their revenue. If you're saying their content isn't good enough to pay for directly, and isn't good enough to endure ads in order to engage, then why are you trying to consume it? Look elsewhere.

> or without the surveillance mechanisms that come with them

I agree with this depending on what you mean by "surveillance." There's a minimum amount of "surveillance" required to measure ad penetration and effectiveness and essentially provide assurance to advertisers that they aren't getting scammed. There's a whole other level of "surveillance" where the ad network (usually Google) is building a dossier on all your interests and every site you've ever visited. Some of that information enables targeted advertising, but you should always retain the right to opt-out, and see all the data that's been collected on you and edit it. You should also be able to opt-in to that data being sold and getting a cut of the proceeds, should you so desire. I wouldn't, but I could imagine some people would.

Bottom line - people gotta make money to eat and oftentimes they're not giving away content for free. If you don't want to pay for it - that's your choice as a user: pay and consume or don't pay and move on. Calling on hackers to figure out a way to steal it may not have a future that works out to your liking.

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