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Hang on to Your Firefox

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Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#361

Post by 999900000999 »

stephen_g wrote: post #303
999900000999 wrote: post #293

The issue is building a browser is not profitable by itself. You’d need to sell an annual subscription of 150$ to like 10 million people to get a browser that’s actually developed for users and not in some bizarre exploitive fashion.

The current spend on Firefox development is only about $290 million per year, not the $1.5bn you're talking about... But at the end of the day, it's not the amount of money that matters, it's the goals of the people running it.

If you sell it on Steam or the Mac App Store we’re talking about a minimum of 30% gone off top.

Marketing costs money. Taxes, etc. Not everyone is going to pay the full 150$. Various discount programs would probably exist.

Anyway, even if my numbers are off not enough people will pay for a browser for this to be a viable business.

If you disagree you can start today and I’ll gladly subscribe. Not a fork, no build a new browser from scratch with feature parity to chrome

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#362

Post by nine_k »

kraken_cult wrote: post #290
culi wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that. I think there's plenty of people who shit on Firefox to justify to their own ethical standards their preference for some Chromium-based browser.

I'm failing to parse the "own ethical standards" as it relates to chromium-based browsers and this conversation about firefox..can you maybe explain, does removing the ability for users to block adds seem more ethical than not?

Is this being done for the benefit of the users? The question applies to many decisions in Chrome. It's the ethical side of the maker.

Is letting Firefox slip into irrelevance (by not using it) in the interest of the users, writ large? What developments should we expect if this happens? This is the ethical side of the user.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#363

Post by dev1ycan »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #245
happytoexplain wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These both look within the realm of reason. Not that you must agree with them, only that they are not some kind of hideous evil.

The dismissal of gendered language as politics is arguably “defensible” in a “I wrote this in a way that allows me to hide behind it” sort of way. It was wrong and needlessly dismissive in a way that clearly communicates he disagrees to anyone who understands typical internet discourse tactics. If he really did not want “political drama” or whatever there are far more effective ways to handle it that don't allow you…

If I was dealing with the same type of "person" that's only "contribution" to every github repo is to just go and ask for language policing I would intentionally be as prickly as possibly to them while telling them no.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#364

Post by cyberax »

adamrt wrote: post #308
cyberax wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I checked the source code, it was filled with horrible unsafe C++. They also re-implement everything whether it is needed or not.

> It was filled with horrible unsafe C++ Are you saying their code was horrible and unsafe, or just that its a byproduct of using C++. They've been rewriting parts in rust: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/8f0a1b19114... . > They also re-implement everything whether it is needed or not. No they don't. SerenityOS did, and that was the goal of the project. But Ladybird has plenty of third party librarie…

> Are you saying their code was horrible and unsafe, or just that its a byproduct of using C++.

Yes.

It's both terrible because it's C++, and it's terrible because they're not following the modern C++ safe coding practices.

> They've been rewriting parts in rust: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/8f0a1b19114....

And it's not going to amount to anything major. Rewriting in Rust properly requires architecting things from the beginning.

> No they don't.

For a long time, their policy had been "no third-party code". Eventually it became untenable, so they started using third-party libraries. But they still ended up reinventing the wheel at least several times.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#365

Post by glenstein »

autoexec wrote: post #307
Barrin92 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It isn't bots complaining about Firefox here, it's power users who are frustrated by what Firefox is turning into The problem isn't that they're frustrated it's that they don't have the theory of mind to distinguish between what they care about and what the average user cares about. They don't just complain for themselves, they think this is the causal explanation for Firefox declining market share. Which it isn't b…

> they don't have the theory of mind to distinguish between what they care about and what the average user cares about. The average user doesn't really understand what a browser is, or how it works, and will never bother to look for an alternative to whatever default browser shipped with their OS. If Firefox plans on surviving by appealing to that audience they're doomed to fail. Firefox got what success it's had by…

This is complete revisionist history. Mozilla actually did the dang thing with project Quantum which was a massive overhaul of performance and stability when the browser was arguably at its lowest point in terms of a performance gap with Google Chrome

They completely revitalized the browser and... kept losing market share. Because it's 99% about distribution and Chrome was distributed by the world's most visited website and the pre installed default on over a billion devices.

In fact, we have a perfect natural experiment for what it looks like to execute on features perfectly, listen to core user concerns, getting first to market on mobile devices, and outcompeting on customizability and features as well as experiment with every imaginable fundraising model you could imagine. Opera was that company, and to this day I maintain that nobody has a better browser engine than Presto at its peak, I still think even now, in terms of features, innovation, customizability. Opera was the best browser company that ever existed. If being a perfect browser company was rewarded with market share we would all be using Presto right now. But browser economics just don't work that way.

Also, there's a history of curbing browser monopoly dominance by giving users choice (antitrust case against Microsoft in the '90s), and Mozilla's market share issues would be solved overnight if Android users had to choose from a list of browsers. The narrative that market share change has anything to do with feature development is a hallucination born in the backwaters of internet comment sections and completely ignores the actual drivers, which are the flexing of monopoly power and pre-installed defaults.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#366

Post by negura »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #189
autoexec wrote: post #53

> Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises...Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition. It's exactly because Firefox is so important that you'll see people here complaining when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox…

At this point I will gladly take an announcement where CloudFlare buys them out and frees the Fox from annoying corporate interests, they just give everyone a decent free browser, bring back the oxidation effort and overhaul Firefox to be all our Rust as Quantum was aiming towards. Someone needs to take Firefox from Mozilla itself and provide it better funding under the understanding no more shennanigans.

Cloudflare is a vile company, who has destroyed large parts of the web and is almost certainly involved with intelligence agencies. Buying Firefox would push away what users they have left (many of which are due to Torbrowser)

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#367

Post by theamk »

culi wrote: post #259
DrewADesign wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Firefox doesn’t have to be Chrome to be unacceptable, and Chrome isn’t the only alternative. I reject the idea that Firefox can transgress as much as they want as long as Chrome has gotten worse. And fuck then for buying and killing fakespot.

Chrome is the only alternative unless you have access to Safari. Brave, Opera, Edge, etc are all Chromium and will all deprecate Manifest V2 eventually. The V2 mess is just one example of how Google can continue to stangle the web even if you're not using Chrome itself.

Chrome != Chromium engine

Most of the Chromium-based browsers remove Google's telemetry and integrations, so if someone has a problem with Chrome "looking over my shoulder", then they have many more alternatives.

And sure, Manifest V2 will disappear in all those forks, but many browsers have built-in adblocker instead, for example both Opera and Brave claim to. And other than adblockers, what else is lost in Manifest V2?

Mind you, I am still using Firefox, but saying "the only alternatives are Chrome and Firefox" is completely incorrect.

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#368

Post by [deleted] »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #349
autoexec wrote: post #53

> Meanwhile, the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises...Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition. It's exactly because Firefox is so important that you'll see people here complaining when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company, collecting data on users, and using firefox…

How does Mozilla fund Firefox right now? I'm genuinely curious for a free product, how can they generate revenue without doing shady ad and data collection stuff?

[deleted]

Re: Hang on to Your Firefox

#369

Post by happytoexplain »

nickthegreek wrote: post #355
leephillips wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an expression of frustration at being expected to supply evidence after accusing someone of racism.

Here at HN, we regularly expect evidence of lesser known claims. It’s actually a pretty cool way to form understanding based on reality. My original post was openminded, and stated that I tried to learn more about what your post on my own to not waste your time. When I could bot find discourse or articles about your statement, I asked for a source. That is a natural and valid thing to have happen. If there is basical…

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