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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#151

Post by anonym29 »

don-code wrote: post #106
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've run into this (it's in Librewolf, but is more obnoxious in Mull/IronFox on Android where I actually use this), where the privacy protections prevent the Jackbox games like Drawful from sending the contents of a drawing to Jackbox's servers. Both browsers don't fail - they just upload a rainbow pattern every time. I use IronFox and LibreWolf as my daily drivers, but I keep Firefox installed alongside them for the…

For graphical stuff like this, try enabling WebGL, just understand that you break a lot of anti-fingerprinting efforts if you do this.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#152

Post by [deleted] »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #68
slindsey wrote: post #50

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 don’t know that this idea would work for literally just Firefox, but I strongly believe that people would be willing to pay for a Firefox fork that has a laser focus on fit and finish and poweruser features. Think a “Firefox Pro” of sorts. Why do I think this? Three reasons: - It elevates the browser into a higher category of tool, where currently Firefox inhabits the same space as OS-bundled calculators and text e…

[deleted]

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#153

Post by notpushkin »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #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,…

> 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.

It’s not tax deductible, though (and even if you didn’t get anything in return, I don’t think Floorp is a registred charity anyway).

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#154

Post by anonym29 »

pndy wrote: post #89
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).

Amazon equivalent in Poland - Allegro was notoriously blocking me in Librewolf; I was served puzzle captcha or blocked from browsing at all due to "suspicious activity" 98% of the time.

Try a spoofed user-agent, if disabling ETP and RFP doesn't help.

Also, fuck companies that do this. I just start permanently deleting accounts whenever services do this.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#155

Post by anonym29 »

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…

What's the alternative? Threatening Gecko developers or contributors into quitting their work on Gecko and demanding they work on Blink or WebKit instead?

Some of us passionately hate Google and Apple for their unethical business practices and would rather cease OSS contributions altogether than contribute to these tyrants.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#156

Post by anonym29 »

bad_user wrote: post #57
rrgok wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think that people should look at what happened recently and realize that absolute nothing noteworthy happened. And Firefox is still the only browser engine with support for uBlock Origin, on Android too.

Whoa, slow down there. You can't just go around asking people to read first-party sources and think critically on their own about an issue without getting their opinion from their feed or influencer of choice. That's an unreasonable and insane expectation! /s

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#157

Post by xnx »

Propelloni wrote: post #108
xnx wrote: post #4

Microsoft, 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?

Why did Google in 2008 chose to built its own browser instead of helping to improve Firefox, which was around since 2002?

You can read the comic that explains some of the reasoning here: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html

IIRC one of the biggest reasons was a single misbehaving tab in Firefox being able to take down the whole browser.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#158

Post by mmooss »

pjerem wrote: post #93
mmooss wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take enough users from Firefox, who will do the expensive, hard work of updating and maintaining a browser engine?

If you take so much users from Firefox but they are paid users then you basically have the money to do the expensive hard work.

It costs over $200M per year. That's a lot of paying users.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#159

Post by lolinder »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #148
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that this idea would work for literally just Firefox, but I strongly believe that people would be willing to pay for a Firefox fork that has a laser focus on fit and finish and poweruser features. Think a “Firefox Pro” of sorts. Why do I think this? Three reasons: - It elevates the browser into a higher category of tool, where currently Firefox inhabits the same space as OS-bundled calculators and text e…

then why not modzilla themselves offering their pro version

That is the question I ask myself every time this comes up, and the only answer I've been able to come up with is "because Google pays them not to".

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#160

Post by rewgs »

bastawhiz wrote: post #76
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that this idea would work for literally just Firefox, but I strongly believe that people would be willing to pay for a Firefox fork that has a laser focus on fit and finish and poweruser features. Think a “Firefox Pro” of sorts. Why do I think this? Three reasons: - It elevates the browser into a higher category of tool, where currently Firefox inhabits the same space as OS-bundled calculators and text e…

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…

“Arc but for Firefox” is called Zen and it’s been my daily driver for months. Fantastic browser.
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