Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A look at Firefox forks

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 390 posts

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#321

Post by stefan_ »

infinitifall wrote: post #305
lolinder wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Foundation owns the Corporation, so technically the Corporation answers to the Foundation, but because the Foundation is a non-profit it can't actually transfer resources to its for-profit arm, only the other way around. Usually the theory with this kind of setup is that the Corporation is profitable and forwards funds to the Foundation so that the foundation can accomplish its work. But putting Firefox in the Fo…

Let me get this straight, NOT A SINGLE DOLLAR of donations are used to fund development for Firefox!? How many are under the false impression of "helping Firefox" when in reality their donations are used to fund advocacy campaigns [0] and managerial bloat [1]? [0] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/help/#frequently-as... [1] https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

Wait until you hear how many Wikipedia editors and servers are paid from the many millions of donations they aggressively beg for every year..

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#322

Post by chupasaurus »

Semaphor wrote: post #308
curun1r wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I manipulate URLs every day, both for work and private usage Zen/Arc are actually much better for this use case, albeit after an adjustment period for people who’ve become accustomed to the way Firefox/Chrome do it. The idea is that URLs are out of your way when you don’t need them and front-and-center when you do. Instead of simply focusing on the URL bar when you CMD+L or CMD+T, it brings up a modal dialog in the…

> it brings up a modal dialog in the center of the screen Incredibly tiny modal dialog. I just tried checked one, and it fit 65 characters. Compared to firefox right now, after 112 characters the URL bar is slightly over halfway filled.

Fits 212 characters on mine.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#323

Post by ksynwa »

criddell wrote: post #285
ksynwa wrote: post #180

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 suck…

> you don't know when they are gonna keel over and die Would it really matter? Browsers are pretty much a commodity item. Of all the big pieces of software in your life, I can't imagine one easier to replace than a browser.

You have to then go through the trouble of redoing persistent logins, transferring bookmarks, history, plugins, etc. That's a nontrivial amount of effort right there.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#324

Post by Narishma »

guy234 wrote: post #170
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…

why wouldn't those people just donate to Mozilla?

AFAICT donations to Mozilla aren't used to fund Firefox development.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#326

Post by rocketvole »

jaggs wrote: post #193

I used LibreWolf for a long time, and Waterfox before that. Had to leave LibreWolf though because the audio quality was so awful (videos etc).

huh, I haven't noticed this, although I wasn't actually listening for poor audio quality. What is your OS?

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#327

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#328

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ta8645 wrote: post #233
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…

The fact that the Mozilla CEO makes over $6,000,000.00 per year is a complete betrayal of what Firefox was. How could anyone justify donating to Firefox knowing that so much of their money would be going to this one person?

> fact that the Mozilla CEO makes over $6,000,000.00 per year is a complete betrayal of what Firefox was

Mozilla’s donations are roughly equal to their CEO’s compensation [1][2].

(I’ve donated to Mozilla before and recently brought in friends who gave 6+ figures. I’ve been encouraging them to, and they’ve been successful so far in, charging back for those donations.)

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/a... ”$7.8M in donations from the public, grants from foundations, and government funding” in 2023

[2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990... $6.9mm in 2022, page 7

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#329

Post by jaggs »

rocketvole wrote: post #326
jaggs wrote: post #193

I used LibreWolf for a long time, and Waterfox before that. Had to leave LibreWolf though because the audio quality was so awful (videos etc).

huh, I haven't noticed this, although I wasn't actually listening for poor audio quality. What is your OS?

Windows 10. I didn't notice it until I had to switch mid-way through a YouTube video to Chrome, and suddenly the audio was significantly louder and clearer. Shocked me.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#330

Post by jug »

The ecosystem of forks is currently healthy but what concerns me is a lack of Firefox browser support leading to lagging in standards support over time as the browser goes out of fashion for ideological or marketing reasons that this article touches upon.

All forks depend on a strong Firefox base and no fork seems to do heavy lifting in terms of web standards, or as a prioritized feature. Instead, they focus on enhancing UX or adhering to open source ideals, but this does little to improve the core browser. :-/

It remains to be seen if we’ll have a new Phoenix moment out of Firefox…? Or does that future belong to Ladybird?

Post reply on HN