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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#131
post #97
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting people to pay for something that has always been free is a tall ask. Most people are barely aware of what a browser is. They just think it’s part of the OS.

People pay for youtube and random youtubers now. They are fine paying for things.

Content is something that is traditionally paid.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#132
> The Floorp project is a much newer entrant.... According to its donations page, donors who contribute at the $100 level may submit ads to feature in the new tab page

So if I get it right, people can 'donate' money to floorp project in exchange for service (advertisement).

Like when I go to the grocery shop and I make a donation, in exchange I get back home with a pack of beer.

I didn't know I was donating so much, my dumb ass thought I was just buying stuff. Got to put that on my Tax sheet.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone was building "Arc but for Firefox" I'd gladly pay for that. Firefox is, because of its position in the market, incapable of doing anything broadly interesting that's not "Be as Chrome-like as possible." They sneak in features that are nice, but I simply don't think we'll ever see Mozilla put out something that does anything that really sets Firefox apart. We'll only ever just get marginally better privacy…

I would rather see Orion on Firefox.

What would that entail?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does break many sites. Especially if you disable WebGL. You do get used to it but that's a tall task for most users. It has been complained/asked about to have the ability to enable webgl on whitelisted sites but the devs have a fetish with all or nothing privacy. Unfortunately if I'm using a site that, say, distributes 3D models then I'm likely going to need it enabled, privacy aside. The time zone thing causes c…

You are free to enable WebGl in the settings and install a Plugin that allows for blocking/allowing WebGl. The default should be privacy if you install a browser that focuses on privacy.

Would you expect a "privacy focused" browser to offer you networking disabled by default but the ability to enable completely unrestricted networking in the settings (you can install a plugin for CORS and the like if you want) or to natively provide the privacy controls you need to actually use the browser? If the latter, why is it different depending which attack surface you ask about? If the former, why not just make that plugin part of the browser itself?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#138
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 remember being thrown off by this.

A user.js entry may help. user.js runs on startup of Firefox/Librewolf, so keep this in mind for your usage application.

the setting is: "privacy.resistFingerprinting", as in: user_pref("privacy.resistFingerprinting", true);

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#139

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 struc…

It could be interesting to do this and raise money in the same way that Mozilla does -- by selling the default search engine. The difference being that all of the money would go to improving Firefox instead of all the random not-Firefox things Mozilla currently does with it.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#140

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 struc…

I continue to be puzzled by this idea of direct donations being a panacea. Firefox already has orders of magnitude more revenue than would come in from such a venture. And that already mobilizes development resources toward the core browser, which are already more substantial than what would be raised by direct donations. Just to use some back of the envelope math right now the revenue is something on the order of $5…

Thunderbird received close to $10 million in donations in 2023. And I’m willing to bet far more people use Firefox. If funding development directly, that’s not too shabby.
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