Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
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Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
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Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#2(2008)
The post popular answer includes: History of the browser user-agent string related discussions:
2022 (87 points, 20 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31246438
2019 (62 points, 22 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21085388
2018 (558 points, 168 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16525559
2013 (100 points, 32 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6674812
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#3Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#4Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.
Backwards compatibility at all costs
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#5Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.
Probably because now if you come with a different User-Agent you might get blocked by a WAF or a load balancer. Too much history to just forget overnight.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#6Mozilla should start charging a licensing fee for starting your user agent with Mozilla/ Money problems solved!
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#7Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.
They did in the new UA api https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#8Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.
To avoid breaking stuff basically, easier to have ugly UA strings than persuade every site that does weird UA parsing to fix themselves.
The main exception to this was Opera back when it had its own engine, which did use Opera at the start of its fairly clean default UA string. Then when they reached version 10 they had to make the primary version 9 with a second real version later in the string as sites couldn’t cope with two digit version numbers…
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#9[deleted]
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#10In a similar way: Why was there no Windows 9? [1]
[1]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435584/why-windows-10-isnt-n...