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Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

theguardian.com

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Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#121

Post by nfriedly »

notduncansmith wrote: post #106
nfriedly wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple allowed Firefox on iOS - real Firefox with the rendering engine and extensions and everything, just like Android - I probably would have switched already. As it stands, I stay on Android mostly for Firefox.

Just curious, why does using “real Firefox” hold so much weight for you? Also, what steps have you taken to secure your device? One reason I haven’t switched from iPhone is that I’m not confident in my ability to secure an Android, and I’d rather trust Apple than Google.

A big part of it is extensions, I have a handful of extensions that I use on a regular basis, and Firefox is the only mobile browser that actually supports extensions.

Another part of it is that I just trust Mozilla more. Both in terms of conflicts of interest, and just plain fixing bugs. For example, Safari on iPod touch has been unable to access the microphone for years, even though Safari on iPhones can.

I will concede your point about security. I think that iPhones are probably more secure than Androids. But, I feel that the security of my Android phone is sufficient for my needs.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#122

Post by tannhaeuser »

phatfish wrote: post #10
ppfrc wrote: post #2

Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web, severely cramped by their complete economic dependency on Google and their inability to allocate their funds intelligently

But they get shouted down whenever they try to monetise independently, can't have it both ways. Either more users start donating $5-10 a month (seems worth it to me given the time I spend with their product) or they take the Google money and deal with the conflict of interest best they can. A Shuttelworth style billionaire benefactor would work as well, but I doubt one will come from the tech community as Firefox is…

Someone else said it already some time ago, but if Mozilla had just put the money they get from Google into a fund, they'd be able to develop browsers till the end of time. But they try to "innovate" and "re-invent the web" with WASM and also other completely unrelated ventures such as Rust, as nice as it may be (Rust not WASM that is).

Another aspect of the Mozilla Foundation is that they're basically acting as a fig leaf for the monopolist web Google has created in this decade, with Google financing them to prevent anti-trust investigations, and Mozilla also playing along with Google-financed WHATWG to white-wash "web standards" and prevent real and obvious innovations such as third-party script blocking, serving only Google's interests.

FF indeed does work against anti-privacy, and I'm applauding them for that, but OTOH FF also enables ad blockers. I've used uBlock just like most of you here, but ad blocking is also a factor turning the web into a privacy minefield. Eg. if you're indiscriminately block all ads whether targetted or not, there is no possible way to finance web content production; yet people also don't want to pay for content. So what people get is polarizing click-bait, propaganda, and low-quality content while content creators (other than some high-profile YouTubers maybe) can't earn a living.

We really should stop with "fighting for the future of the web" articles when the reality is that the web locks people into addictive behaviour, fake social interaction, and crap web frontends for oligopolist cloud-hosted services (completely antithetical to personal computing and site autonomy principles), and results into cultural loss due to the expectation that everything must always be available for free, all the time, a model only creating monopolies.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#123

Post by nine_k »

neiman wrote: post #104

I see a problem, though I have no alternative to offer, with the current model of organizations. It seems you are either for-profit, and then you have no ethics and do everything you can to centralize the world around you with no concern for users or their benefits. Or you're a not-for-profit foundation or the Internet Archive, where you do good things but are destined to be "poor". Are there are any "shades" between…

If you don't plan to be poor, then you need many paying customers.

For a browser, the customers could be either end users, corporations with many end users, or marketers who want to sell to the end users.

The latter case is Chrome, which works through a long chain of Google services.

The corporate case used to be IE, geared towards deep windows integration.

The case of the paying end users used to be the original Netscape. It did not work well for a number of reasons. Paying for a product when free-as-beer alternatives are available takes understanding, which is sorely lacking outside some segments of tech circles.

I personally buy Mozilla a figurative pizza by a yearly donation. I do it because I understand their importance and feel grateful for their products. If more people did that it would help, but most people who are to benefit from Mozilla's efforts are not technical.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#124

Post by mistrial9 »

neiman wrote: post #104

I see a problem, though I have no alternative to offer, with the current model of organizations. It seems you are either for-profit, and then you have no ethics and do everything you can to centralize the world around you with no concern for users or their benefits. Or you're a not-for-profit foundation or the Internet Archive, where you do good things but are destined to be "poor". Are there are any "shades" between…

this -- but, the categories lack detail.. a real systems diagram would quickly show a hundred influences and variables affecting both models. Without enumerating and advocating the position, rather skip to the important results .. there must be ENFORCEMENT on the Corporate, and SUSTINANCE for the not-for-Profit, to hope for any balanced future.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#125

Post by oefrha »

neiman wrote: post #104

I see a problem, though I have no alternative to offer, with the current model of organizations. It seems you are either for-profit, and then you have no ethics and do everything you can to centralize the world around you with no concern for users or their benefits. Or you're a not-for-profit foundation or the Internet Archive, where you do good things but are destined to be "poor". Are there are any "shades" between…

> Or you're a not-for-profit foundation or the Internet Archive, where you do good things but are destined to be "poor".

Not necessarily. Wikipedia is actually pretty damn rich with a large war chest.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#126

Post by jraph »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #81
johnsea wrote: post #7

The article once more reiterates the fact that Apple doesn't allow other browser engines. You cannot even fight, there is no future ;-) on iOS.

Yes, however, even as a Firefox advocate, I think in this case it's actually a good thing, since the majority of people would probably switch to Chrome then, contributing to the Blink monoculture.

It's not a good thing, only a bad thing with a good side effect ;-)

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#127

Post by andrewl-hn »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #120
sebazzz wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically I think you are free to build have other browser engines on iOS. However, JIT or other dynamically compiled code is not allowed because that's a security risk. You can't have a browser in 2019 with interpreted javascript.

But why is JavaScript JIT compilation tied to the rendering engine?

Yep. technically, Apple doesn't force Firefox to use WebKit. They could still use their Gecko WebRenderer and use Apple's JavaScriptCore to run page scripts. Same goes to Chrome: Blink + JSC instead of Blink + V8.

In practice in seems like both Chrome and Firefox have their renderers and JavaScript runtimes so tightly integrated that it's very hard to replace the later.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#128

Post by Jonnax »

The_rationalist wrote: post #45
Jonnax wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of opensource is to follow along with the leader?

It is to make synergies through code sharing. Let's fork the Linux kernel into a redundant implementation and take half kernel developers in order to slow down progress by a factor of two.

That's a bad comparison.

They're not forks. Firefox's is a separate implementation. The equivalent would be asking BSD to merge with Linux.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#129

Post by jeena »

notduncansmith wrote: post #106
nfriedly wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple allowed Firefox on iOS - real Firefox with the rendering engine and extensions and everything, just like Android - I probably would have switched already. As it stands, I stay on Android mostly for Firefox.

Just curious, why does using “real Firefox” hold so much weight for you? Also, what steps have you taken to secure your device? One reason I haven’t switched from iPhone is that I’m not confident in my ability to secure an Android, and I’d rather trust Apple than Google.

Sync of passwords, tabs, history, bookmarks, etc. as far as I know Firefox is the only browser which allows me to run my own sync server.

Re: Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

#130

Post by mapgrep »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #114
mapgrep wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Google would cut off Mozilla to advance Chrome seems to me at least rooted in a deep misunderstanding of how Google makes money. Something like 75% or more of their revenue comes from AdWords - ads run against search. This is one of the most attractive streams for advertisers ever built. You have a prospect ready to buy (often) who is literally telling you in written software processable words what they…

That money means that Firefox and Safari won't ship ad blocking by default because as soon as they do it, their users are worthless to Google, and Google will stop paying. It also means that their tracking prevention doesn't affect usage of first party cookies on other sites, increasing Google's and Facebook's advertising dominance.

Blocking AdWords — sponsored search results — is very different from blocking display ads. I would be surprised if most users found that sort of blocking desirable in the first place. Some might, and I would not be surprised if it were an option, but also very surprised if proportion of Firefox users blocking AdWords ever approached even 50%. Anyone who doesn’t block is still valuable to Google.
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