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A look at Firefox forks
31–40 of 390 posts
Re: A look at Firefox forks
#32It is an indictment on the state of the web that regardless of Mozilla's missteps, Firefox remains the best choice for a secure, open-source web browser that isn't another chromium reskin.
You can’t get an OSS team to fix vulns in a meaningful amount of time, let alone research them. Waterfox/Palemoon stay months behind the official branch and are always vulnerable.
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Re: A look at Firefox forks
#33I read in a few places that LibreWolf's anti-fingerprinting features are breaking websites. One person complained that their meeting got scheduled incorrectly because the browser was messing with the user's time zone (for privacy reasons).
It does that. Users have the simple option of disabling it in settings with one checkbox.
Re: A look at Firefox forks
#34Microsoft, a company that competes directly with Google, thought it was a good idea to use Chromium as a base for Edge. Why doesn't Firefox switch its efforts into improving Chromium for users instead of reimplementing so many pieces?
Microsoft can push Edge on Windows users that don't know any better. They also aren't concerned about the web, as long as Edge is a vehicle for Bing and their ads. In that sense, Microsoft's interests align very well with those of Google's. Chromium is controlled by Google and their interests. It is Open Source; however, Google has complete control over it, even though it has other contributors as well. Yes, it can b…
Microsoft can always decide to fork Chrome. Not integrating upstream changes from Chromium anymore and develop their own browser based on one specific Chromium release.
Re: A look at Firefox forks
#35The browser engine landscape presents an interesting paradox: we have an open specification, yet multiple implementations with their own quirks and incompatibilities. This seems to undermine the very purpose of standardization. Consider our current situation: - The spec is largely influenced by the same big tech companies that develop the engines - Major engines (Blink, WebKit, Gecko) are all open source - Significan…
Because reference implementations are often less efficient.
If the standard exists as an abstract interface then future implementors can make different tradeoffs.
Re: A look at Firefox forks
#36This recent Mozilla stuff has got me wondering if one could fork Firefox, strip out the AI/adware code, then sell the binaries. How much would people pay (who would pay for a web browser)? Just Firefox, minus the crap. Would it generate enough revenue to cover the maintenance costs? Etc, etc.
Arguably that's what Librewolf, Waterfox, and Palemoon are doing, except via donations.
Considering how quickly Netscape died once IE appeared, I think the market is so small that sites will never test against them and they'll never get a seat on a standards board.
Re: A look at Firefox forks
#37The browser engine landscape presents an interesting paradox: we have an open specification, yet multiple implementations with their own quirks and incompatibilities. This seems to undermine the very purpose of standardization. Consider our current situation: - The spec is largely influenced by the same big tech companies that develop the engines - Major engines (Blink, WebKit, Gecko) are all open source - Significan…
There was a reference implementation called Amaya.[1] It died, because the set of web standards is vast and sprawling, and without a business model implementing them has been seen historically as overly expensive.
In the absence of a reference implementation, the only other suggestion for consolidation is to take an existing implementation and crown that as the winner. The problem is that implementation, regardless of open source, remains under the control of its altruistic parent company. That company then effectively gains sole control over the direction of the web, which we typically agree is a bad thing. The web is (and always has been) bigger than one engine.
Re: A look at Firefox forks
#38It is an indictment on the state of the web that regardless of Mozilla's missteps, Firefox remains the best choice for a secure, open-source web browser that isn't another chromium reskin.
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Re: A look at Firefox forks
#39There's an article about insecurities in Firefox (https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...>), which is a few years old now, but it made me curious as to whether it actually is better to run a Firefox fork, like Librewolf; Firefox itself; or a Chromium fork like Ungoogled Chromium.
Unfortunately I don't really understand the implications about the security issues and I don't know whether any of the issues have been solved, so I don't know how to evaluate the security risks versus the privacy risks.
Re: A look at Firefox forks
#40Microsoft, a company that competes directly with Google, thought it was a good idea to use Chromium as a base for Edge. Why doesn't Firefox switch its efforts into improving Chromium for users instead of reimplementing so many pieces?
I see these statements as "Everyone should be like me!". Same statement is always applied to KDE & Gnome & Xfce and of all the numerous open source solutions.
Chromium maybe open source but the "Chromium" standard code branches are still controlled by Google. This is why Chromium is/has removed Manifest v2 extensions, used by ad-blockers. They are using the narrative "it is less secure". While Mozilla / Firefox is proving them wrong.
Which should it be in the market, a monopoly or a competition? I vote for a competitive market because the ladder leads to a stale and stalled mentality. Advancements don't progress when everyone things and does the exact same thing.
China showed how stale the mentality for ML is in the USA and why that mentality of "be like everyone else" needs to be looked down upon.