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A look at Firefox forks

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Re: A look at Firefox forks

#381

Post by flas9sd »

dblohm7 wrote: post #125
matheist wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> intended to be sent upstream to the Mozilla Firefox This part is difficult if you actually want those changes to be accepted. I recently had a patch accepted into Firefox. More than three months from submission to merge, including one round of code review which I turned around the same day. It was not a large patch. This is no criticism of the Firefox team, just the reality that my priorities are not their prioriti…

> 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…

had a positive experience recently on an issue and getting it fixed, people were helpful and instructive. For drive-by newbies there's an initial penalty to dig into Mozilla tooling. Lowering the threshold there will attract more contributors.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#382

Post by devit »

glenstein wrote: post #278
devit wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use for donations could be for a single person whose job is to check the upstream code for any antifeatures (telemetry, ads, product placements, online service defaults, Google as paid default search engine, etc.) not in the user's interest and revert them, as well as bundling any useful extension like uBlock Origin and verifying them. That needs minimal effort compared to building a browser, because it doesn't i…

Do I understand correctly that you believe Mozilla doesn't currently have the resources necessary to do that from their $500MM in annual revenue? It sounds like you are talking about an ombudsman or something, which highlights my point here, which is that these are philosophical criticisms disguised as commentary on raising revenue. Also the mission you are describing sounds like something that you might expect from…

They could, but they don't want to do that because they get paid by Google to not do it or because those actions get them money in some other way (from advertisers or whatever), or because they think only power users like some features.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#383

Post by glenstein »

devit wrote: post #382
glenstein wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I understand correctly that you believe Mozilla doesn't currently have the resources necessary to do that from their $500MM in annual revenue? It sounds like you are talking about an ombudsman or something, which highlights my point here, which is that these are philosophical criticisms disguised as commentary on raising revenue. Also the mission you are describing sounds like something that you might expect from…

They could, but they don't want to do that because they get paid by Google to not do it or because those actions get them money in some other way (from advertisers or whatever), or because they think only power users like some features.

Firefox publishes their 990 form which discloses all their sources of revenue and Google does not pay Firefox for any of the things you described. Also, it feels kind of nonsensical to suggest that it would have a development strategy of building out their ad tech and simultaneously reverting it, and I don't see how explanations about them wanting or not wanting to do it make that proposed approach for any more sense.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#384

Post by devit »

glenstein wrote: post #383
devit wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could, but they don't want to do that because they get paid by Google to not do it or because those actions get them money in some other way (from advertisers or whatever), or because they think only power users like some features.

Firefox publishes their 990 form which discloses all their sources of revenue and Google does not pay Firefox for any of the things you described. Also, it feels kind of nonsensical to suggest that it would have a development strategy of building out their ad tech and simultaneously reverting it, and I don't see how explanations about them wanting or not wanting to do it make that proposed approach for any more sense…

They pay them for making Google the default search engine, and it is hypothesized that the payment may also influence them to not provide ad-blocking by default and possibly other things that are not beneficial for Google's business.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#385

Post by samtheDamned »

ksynwa wrote: post #323
criddell wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

At least with firefox based browsers I believe the actual user profile folder is pretty compatible across browsers, copying that should copy every aspect of what makes your browser yours, though it might contain extras that won't be utilized by vanilla firefox.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#386

Post by glenstein »

devit wrote: post #384
glenstein wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox publishes their 990 form which discloses all their sources of revenue and Google does not pay Firefox for any of the things you described. Also, it feels kind of nonsensical to suggest that it would have a development strategy of building out their ad tech and simultaneously reverting it, and I don't see how explanations about them wanting or not wanting to do it make that proposed approach for any more sense…

They pay them for making Google the default search engine, and it is hypothesized that the payment may also influence them to not provide ad-blocking by default and possibly other things that are not beneficial for Google's business.

>and it is hypothesized

By whom and on what basis? Those are non-optional questions that should have strong answers as preconditions to you posting about it, if the objective is to offer something more than simple bullshitting (in the Harvey Frankfurt sense of indifference to truth).

This also doesn't answer like 90% of my concerns from my previous comments. Who has ever intentionally had a software development approach of having one team develop features and another person revert those features, working in tandem? And why would they need donations that are 0.20% of what they already get in revenue to finance it? I feel like you're just improv riffing here.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#387

Post by samtheDamned »

fsfsd43535 wrote: post #349

Interesting discussion! It's true that many Firefox forks focus on UX and privacy, but as some have pointed out, they still rely on Mozilla for core web standard updates. It would be cool to see a fork that really pushes the boundaries of web tech, maybe incorporating some Rust-based engine components for better performance and security. Has anyone experimented with Servo in a fork? Also, the mention of the Tor brows…

I believe that would be mullvad. Tor browser without the tor.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#388

Post by PufPufPuf »

zamalek wrote: post #267
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…

Honestly, Zen should be upstreamed. It would be a great way to introduce FOMO.

Actually, some of the Zen features are lesser-known native features of Firefox: including the collapsible vertical tabs.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#389

Post by devit »

glenstein wrote: post #386
devit wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay them for making Google the default search engine, and it is hypothesized that the payment may also influence them to not provide ad-blocking by default and possibly other things that are not beneficial for Google's business.

>and it is hypothesized By whom and on what basis? Those are non-optional questions that should have strong answers as preconditions to you posting about it, if the objective is to offer something more than simple bullshitting (in the Harvey Frankfurt sense of indifference to truth). This also doesn't answer like 90% of my concerns from my previous comments. Who has ever intentionally had a software development appro…

The donations would go directly to the individual doing this with no relationship with Mozilla (e.g. with Patreon or similar), not to Mozilla itself.

Re: A look at Firefox forks

#390

Post by lxn »

KetoManx64 wrote: post #82
lxn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm that. I switched to using LibreWolf as a work-dedicated browser parallel to Firefox Developer Edition. In two weeks of using it, I got annoyed by the following: - no automatic dark-mode (against fingerprinting, some websites don't have a setting to switch it on - not sure if you can turn it off) - timezone is always UTC (can be worked-around with an extension, messed up my time tracking app and some log…

Are you not using librewold-overrides.cfg to disable/enable features that you want/need? All of the things you mentioned are just flags you can set in the file to turn them on or off. https://librewolf.net/docs/settings/

Thanks for pointing this out. I wasn't aware of this feature.

I enabled Firefox sync and lost all my history. It was a user error: I should have disabled configuration sync (clear history when you close the browser).

After this incident, I decided I had enough, so I uninstalled LibreWolf. I recovered my lost history from different instances, but I don't want to spend my time making this browser work.

LibreWolf is a decent browser with annoying default settings, which made me lose more time than I wanted to make it work.

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