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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#171

Post by mimasama »

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,…

Yeah "donations" is not the right word, it's more like "sponsorship"... It does work though, I haven't heard of CubeSoft before I used Floorp and I have one of its PDF tools installed now. This is how advertising should work, not the tracking ads Mozilla (and idc if they're trying to make it "privacy-preserving" or the data aggregated, it's still tracking), Google, and co. want

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#172

Post by mimasama »

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).

Besides, it will just end up being an xkcd 927, lol.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#173

Post by spookie »

sandreas wrote: post #168
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 also ran into this, but it was manageable (after a bit of research of course). Would love to see a "startup"-Dialog, where they explain these features in a bit of detail with a choice of three modes... Finger printing and privacy protection: - [x] Full - best for privacy (default) - [ ] Moderate - most features work, but may break some websites - [ ] Off - just behave like normal Firefox The last option would be fo…

You can have a whitelist. Just go to cookie settings and set the exceptions.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#174

Post by mimasama »

charcircuit wrote: post #130
sedatk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsored ads and donations are different revenue models. Mozilla has always been collecting donations and nobody had a problem with it.

>Mozilla has always been collecting donations and nobody had a problem with it. There are a ton of people who complain about Mozilla taking donations. It shows up in most HN threads about the mismanagement of Firefox.

I think the issue is that the donations Mozilla receive don't go to Firefox's development. This is not the case with Floorp, Ladybird and Pale Moon where donations and sponsorship money (PM used to accept sponsors but they don't now) do go to development.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#175

Post by mimasama »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #61

> The Floorp project is a much newer entrant. It is developed by a community of Japanese students called Ablaze. Development is hosted on GitHub, and the project solicits donations via GitHub donations. According to its donations page, donors who contribute at the $100 level may submit ads to feature in the new tab page—but the ads, which are displayed as shortcuts with a "sponsored" label, can be turned off in the s…

It's not the exact same revenue model. Floorp doesn't use tracking whatsoever for sponsored ads in the home page. And donations to Floorp directly goes to development, unlike in Mozilla.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#176

Post by mimasama »

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

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

That's not the problem people have with Firefox. One of the issues right now is that there are people who have intentionally opted-in to sharing "technical data" to Mozilla for the sole purpose of improving the browser, when in fact, it's not just for that but also for improving ad-tech which was never an intent those power users had in mind: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2025/03/12/mozilla-has-been-s...

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#177

Post by rswail »

dv_dt wrote: post #141
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,…

A more insidious aspect of grocery shoppings is that companies can pay for better placement on the store shelves & floor.

Our local grocery duopoly (Australia) not only charge for placement, but are now demanding that suppliers pay for transport between the supermarkets central and regional distribution warehouses, but will only take delivery centrally.

That's on top of some products (eg bread) being actually stocked on the shelves by the supplier.

Basically supermarkets are just local distribution warehouses with everything else either paid for by the supplier or the purchaser (eg shelf picking/checkout).

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#178

Post by emaro »

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…

TBF, I like the browser doesn't change that much. I install it for / recommend it to friends/family/etc and big changes would only increase the support I have to do. I think forks are much better suited to try out new concepts, which eventually might end up in the browser (I enabled the vertical tabs in 136 and I love them).

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#179

Post by broadsidepicnic »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #126

> Waterfox is a browser that began in 2011 as an independent project by Alex Kontos while he was a student. It was acquired and then un-acquired by Internet-advertising company System1. Its site does not, at least at the moment, have enough specifics about the browser's differences and features to compel me to take it for a test drive. Are the others that much more descriptive in their features on their website? IMO…

well, a browser owned (and de-owned) by an internet advertising company is enough for me not to ever touch that. We already have a chrome, which is one of the reasons we're in this mess to start with.

And yea, I did use waterfox like a decade ago.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#180

Post by ksynwa »

The problem with Firefox forks I have: - you don't know when they are gonna keel over and die. - non-existent support from distro package repositories. Void Linux for example has an understandable policy of not providing Firefox and Chromium forks. I really don't wanna install them from appimages or fatpak.

I have found using firefox provided by my distro with something like arkenfox to be a decent medium but it sucks that this is required in the first place. I wonder if distro repository maintainers try to package Firefox with better defaults but I don't know how to look for that.

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