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What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

neilzone.co.uk

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Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#131

Post by clearleaf »

canadiantim wrote: post #103
DrinkyBird wrote: post #15

I decided to just stay with Firefox and disable any rubbish that Mozilla adds as it comes. I tried Librewolf, but the unstable RPM repository was very annoying, because zypper disallows system updates if even one repository fails to refresh. I also had some weird issues keeping it pinned to my desktop environment's dock. It also didn't want to save its window geometry (very annoying for me), and the only way to trans…

Brave browser seems like the best choice moving forward

That's just chromium with a weird cryptocurrency racket on top.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#132

Post by Valodim »

hypeatei wrote: post #63
roenxi wrote: post #18

I'm not sold that avoiding Chromium is any sort of win. It seems to be BSD licensed. The code comes from a long and storied OSS tradition. It is unclear why that having multiple different browser engines is strategically important. As far as I know we've long left behind the world where a hobbyist project could reasonably expect to implement modern JavaScript. Brave's existence and success suggests that competitors b…

> As far as I know we've long left behind the world where a hobbyist project could reasonably expect to implement modern JavaScript. You should look into Ladybird[0] then. Their JavaScript engine ("LibJS") scores very well in conformance test suite test262[1]. [0]: https://ladybird.org/ [1]: https://test262.fyi/

People like to point at ladybird, but really the way to go before this can become a daily driver is probably in the hundreds of person years of development

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#133

Post by immibis »

maccard wrote: post #48
foxrider wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't, people just keep saying that out of habit

What is then? I have my gripes with Mozilla, but they’re far better than Google.

Firefox forks, such as Librewolf and Waterfox.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#134

Post by canadiantim »

clearleaf wrote: post #131
canadiantim wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave browser seems like the best choice moving forward

That's just chromium with a weird cryptocurrency racket on top.

Unfortunate but still the best of the options for privacy focused individuals. Especially now that Mozilla is no longer an option

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#135

Post by wtallis »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #118
woodrowbarlow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GOOG dropped the slogan "Don't Be Evil" -- I cordially invite all relaxing frogs to speculate about future increases to the water temperature. the problem is that mozilla also seems to be boiling the frog right now.

I worry less about 2.63 % of the marketshare using some aggregate browsing data than I do about GOOG dominance (60-90%) in the commercial surveillance industry.

> I worry less about 2.63 % of the marketshare using some aggregate browsing data

Mozilla's not using that data. They're selling it. They wouldn't be in this kind of hot water if they were keeping the data to themselves.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#136

Post by dustyharddrive »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #130
philippta wrote: post #107

Any thoughts on Mullvad Browser? https://mullvad.net/en/browser

It appears to be a closed-source variant of the Tor Browser, itself based on Firefox. If I were going to use a Firefox variant, I'd probably go with LibreWolf.

It's FOSS and maintained by Tor Project team members: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-brows...

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#137

Post by MaxBarraclough »

dustyharddrive wrote: post #136
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to be a closed-source variant of the Tor Browser, itself based on Firefox. If I were going to use a Firefox variant, I'd probably go with LibreWolf.

It's FOSS and maintained by Tor Project team members: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-brows...

My mistake, thanks.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#138

Post by canadiantim »

sumeno wrote: post #115
canadiantim wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave browser seems like the best choice moving forward

Yeah, the browser that has had multiple huge incidents where they've been caught doing sketchy stuff is definitely who we should turn to...

What sketchy stuff or huge incidents are you referring to?

My understanding is they are, by far, the best privacy focused browser, especially now that Mozilla has committed seppuku

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#139

Post by saghm »

Valodim wrote: post #98
saghm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, "marketing tarpit" seems like a pretty accurate description of Mozilla's stewardship of Firefox as well, so if I'm going to get sucked one, I'd rather it be the one that's taking a maybe untenable stand for something that I agree than the one that's trying to gaslight me about whether "disseminating user data to a third party for valuable consideration" is what most people would consider "selling user…

That is an unreal standard to hold anyone to while using Microsoft or Google products, because this wouldn't even register compared to what these companies do on a regular basis. People are just less dependent on Mozilla so moral outage doesn't feel as pointless.

I'm not sure I understand your criticism. Are you arguing that I'm holding Mozilla to an unfair standard, or other users? I don't pretend to have any moral high ground about what I use versus other people; I just don't personally find the argument that using a fork of Firefox right now is a "marketing tarpit" to be compelling enough to convince me to change my mind about it.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#140

Post by roenxi »

kalaksi wrote: post #85
roenxi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever. Whatever. OSS is a system for finding the most capable entity in the world at developing a software capability and letting them get on with it. It'll find someone to pick up the slack if Google starts doing a terrible job. In this world of 8 billion humans and however many thousands of companies, there'll be one who knows how to put a web browser together. If I were going to guess today it'd be brave.com, bu…

I think that's a tad idealistic, though. You'd need the resources to keep fighting against the constant changes and ever diverging codebase the more Google goes it's own way. And already has been doing it slowly. Also, Mozilla and Apple have been important for keeping privacy relevant every time Google have tried to push for some privacy eroding web standards. Edit: I agree with the sentiment though but I just trust…

> You'd need the resources to keep fighting against the constant changes and ever diverging codebase

Assuming that Google is making Chromium better, sure. If they are making it worse then not keeping up with the changes is an advantage of the fork.

If Google starts making changes that reduce the value of the codebase, then a hard fork immediately becomes viable. If they are good custodians even a totally separate codebase isn't enough, it'll end up in the same position as Firefox - marginalised.

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