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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#41

Post by rrgok »

herrherrmann wrote: post #26
rrgok wrote: post #16

The 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…

If there was a group/vendor you could trust to develop such a universal engine to rule them all, that could work out. But, alas, no big tech company could ever be trusted with such a task (they would try to push their agenda, e.g. by preventing ad blockers).

How is that any different from now? Look what happened recently with Mozilla and Firefox...

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#42

Post by mrweasel »

rrgok wrote: post #16

The 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…

The issue is that if someone found a major issue in Blink, would it even be feasible to get every Chrome, Brave, Edge and Vivaldi user to switch to Firefox while the issue is fixed?

The argument is still the same as with OpenSSH and OpenSSL. Having a single dominant code base is a security risk. The risk of OpenSSL has been realized and we now have good alternatives. OpenSSH have alternatives, but we're one major security issue away from having to shutdown remote management for potentially days. If anything we need even more browser engines, Blink is 90% or more of the market. Ideally no engine would be more than 20% of all users.

Personally I still think it's worth it to have multiple engines, both for security, but also to ensure that enough people maintain the skills to keep development active. Or if the US government forces Google to sell Chrome, then there's no guarantee that the buyer would spend the same resource on Blink as Google does. Now I'm all for slowing down browser development (allowing alternative engines to develop and give web technologies a chance to settle down a bit) but with the wrong buyer it not only slows down, it stops, IE6 style. Having WebKit, Gecko, and more, helps push things forward in that case.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#43

Post by sshine »

ramon156 wrote: post #17
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #3

It 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.

I don't get the public "step down" that people are taking from using Firefox. How many users are actually switching? I doubt it's much. Many are audible about it, though. Yes browsers share your data, it's a browser... Firefox is not doing much worse than chromium browsers

I switched on mobile and on MacOS. I intend to switch on Linux soon.

> Yes browsers share your data, it's a browser...

No, my software does not betray me. If money could buy better software, I’d spend it. Unfortunately, commercial end-user software (and SaaSS) almost always has deep ties with advertising.

I don’t mind crash reporting.

I don’t mind opt-in telemetry for QA.

There is no justification for telemetry by default, not informing of the extent, using it for advertisement, and selling your data as payment for use of software.

Companies that figured out that a steady source of ad revenue beats subscription money will always compromise their customers.

I don’t want that. And Firefox is now in the category of software that cannot be trusted until a worthy steward of a fork steps up.

In the meantime, I’m using Orion by Kagi until I have a non-WebKit alternative.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#44

Post by sshine »

INTPenis wrote: post #27
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #3

It 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.

Big corporations on the w3c board, and their control of the largest platforms, have contributed to the enshitification of the web by making web standards move just as fast as Windows APIs or Office formats. Making it much harder for open source volunteer driven projects to keep up. I compare an open source project trying to make a browser to an open source project trying to keep up with MS Office formats or Windows g…

Netscape / Firefox once broke the browser market.

We need a hero.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#45

Post by mrweasel »

rrgok wrote: post #13
peppers-ghost wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having one browser engine dominate the web is not a good thing. If there was ever a terrible zero day found everyone would be in trouble.

Why not if everybody at the end will implement the same spec? I would understand if Firefox wanted to implement its own spec, but what is the purpose of having N different implementation of the same spec with their own idiosyncrasies? At the end of the day, the engine of the major browser engines is open-source anyway. Sorry, I don't know how I missed day zero-day.. Anyway my point still stays..

What if the developers of the dominate engine becomes complacent and decides that it's "good enough" and we get stuck in another IE6 situation where development stops for years and years?

Yes, Chromium and Blink are open source, but they are effectively Googles open source project. If you're unhappy with their direction you'll need to fork it.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#46

Post by lxn »

Dwedit wrote: post #8

I 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).

I can confirm that. I switched to using LibreWolf as a work-dedicated browser parallel to Firefox Developer Edition.

In two weeks of using it, I got annoyed by the following: - no automatic dark-mode (against fingerprinting, some websites don't have a setting to switch it on - not sure if you can turn it off) - timezone is always UTC (can be worked-around with an extension, messed up my time tracking app and some log viewer) - login on some websites/tools is broken altogether by the strict privacy settings (did not even bother to debug, I switched to Firefox) - WebGL off by default (you can turn it on via config flag)

I switched from Firefox to Chrome and back and never had to debug and work-around so many issues. It's a decent browser, but I'm not sure the value it brings justifies the costs of time spent debugging and the inconveniences.

I will continue to use it for work, but I will not switch entirely from Firefox because I want my history available across devices.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#47

Post by bad_user »

andix wrote: post #34
bad_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Microsoft can always decide to fork Chrome

Sure, but they gave up on developing their own engine, so why would they?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#48

Post by chneu »

ramon156 wrote: post #17
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #3

It 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.

I don't get the public "step down" that people are taking from using Firefox. How many users are actually switching? I doubt it's much. Many are audible about it, though. Yes browsers share your data, it's a browser... Firefox is not doing much worse than chromium browsers

I switched after years of annoyances with mozilla.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#49

Post by smjburton »

If Mozilla needs additional funding, I'd much rather contribute to the project with an "opt-out" subscription plan (say for $20/year) to help support the project without giving away personal data. The author correctly points out that these forks are dependent on Firefox's continued upstream development; however, having this option would provide people with the choice to support the project without giving up personal data, and Firefox and its forks could continue to be sustainably developed.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#50

Post by slindsey »

For years I've thought of creating a "paid" Firefox fork that is _just_ Firefox rebranded, but otherwise the exact codebase. The money brought in would be used to pay an open source developer to work strictly on things intended to be sent upstream to the Mozilla Firefox. If nothing else, it would prove whether or not people are willing to pay for Firefox.

The problem with Firefox currently is the organizational structure; the way that they need to monetize; the fact that you can't pay for Firefox development. The problem with forks is that they are all "Firefox plus this" or "Firefox without that".

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