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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#371

Post by jug »

dmurray wrote: post #340
jug wrote: post #330

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 enhan…

Firefox seems to be good enough - is there anyone who wants to fork Firefox out of a frustration over how it handles some web standard and a feeling that they could do it better? Hard forking a browser and implementing all future features on your own is daunting enough that even Microsoft - a company with more engineering resources than all but a handful of others, and for whom having a branded browser is existential…

Hmm, yes. My point was that there’s no pressing need for this in forks because Firefox is (still) pretty alive and well and they strongly depend on the important standards work being done there.

But in a future where a critical mass of people moved to forks because they were dissatisfied with Firefox? I think the community is too small and fragmented across forks for that.

Maybe Ladybird indeed then…

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#372

Post by st3fan »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #328
ta8645 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/annua…

Donation go to the foundation, not to Mozilla Corporation which does all the browser engineering work. If you donate you give money to the team that does open web advocacy and related programs.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#373

Post by MavropaliasG »

smjburton wrote: post #49

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…

More money is not the problem, Firefox receives 600+ million USD per year. Is how they waste the money and going back on their pledges and what Mozilla stood for

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#374

Post by rekabis »

adhamsalama wrote: post #199
PufPufPuf wrote: post #188

Zen looks like Arc Browser, but Firefox-based and open-source. Exactly what I'm looking for! The UX pattern for tabs in Arc is amazing. No, it's not just "vertical tabs". It's an innovative blend of the concepts of bookmarks and open tabs. Sort of like files: they can be open or closed, and live in a folder hierarchy. But the development of Arc stopped half a year ago (except security Chromium updates), with a well-w…

Try Sidebery extension. It has nested tabs, workspaces and much much more.

Tab Mix Plus is the OG GOAT of tab management. Its claim to fame is that it’s still the only add-in that gives you multiple tab rows.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#375

Post by mixermachine »

tmtvl wrote: post #39

There's an article about insecurities in Firefox ( https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht... >), which is a few years old now, but it made me curious as to whether it actually is better to run a Firefox fork, like Librewolf; Firefox itself; or a Chromium fork like Ungoogled Chromium. Unfortunately I don't really understand the implications about the security issues and I don't know whether any o…

Would be great if the article would be updated from time to time. It is a good read but some of the presented problems are already fixed.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#376

Post by jhasse »

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?

They didn't build it from the ground up but used WebKit.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#377

Post by jhasse »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #12
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?

Linux users should just switch to Windows too.

Windows isn't FOSS. Chromium is.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#378

Post by mediumsmart »

eudhxhdhsb32 wrote: post #220
mediumsmart wrote: post #218

Gnu IceCat for me with Privacy Badger and libreJS. I would pay 10$ every month for Gnu IceCat, the ONLY firefox fork with no telemetry. the ONLY webkit based zero telemetry browser is Kagis Orion

> Gnu IceCat, the ONLY firefox fork with no telemetry. Why would you think that? Plenty of other forks like LibreWolf and IronFox have removed all telemetry.

You are right. I misread somewhere and declared without really checking. Not the first time either. My apologies.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#379

Post by mixermachine »

zamadatix wrote: post #316
mixermachine wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have left WebGl disabled and do not miss anything so far (maybe in the future?). Just not my use case. Network disabled is a straw man argument. If somebody already has made the effort of creating an extension and maintaining it, why not use that?

If WebGL is a straw man to browsing the web why is the feature still included in the browser itself at all then? You certainly don't have to utilize every feature of the browser yourself but it is part of that browser nonetheless, it's just not a natively securable part.

Seems like the majority thinks it is like that. Otherwise LibreWolf would not have many users.

Please pick a different browser if it is not for you. Waterfox has less restrictions and might be a better fit.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#380

Post by dblohm7 »

lolinder wrote: post #249
dblohm7 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is no criticism of the Firefox team, just the reality that my priorities are not their priorities. I am a former Mozilla Corporation employee, so I am more willing to criticize the current state of MoCo culture as a whole... > They don't necessarily have the bandwidth or interest in accepting other people's/teams' vision or contribution. I would say it really depends on the nature of the patches being contribu…

When you left, do you have a sense for how many developers were actually working on Firefox full-time? I'm curious because people always say that Firefox would be impossible to fund, pointing to Mozilla's expenses, but I've never seen someone actually put forward the math for what portion of those expenses are actually Firefox.

Oh geez, it's been long enough that I don't really remember the specifics. In the hundreds, for sure.
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