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F-Droid Dropping Firefox

f-droid.org

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Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#21

Post by gcb0 »

pserwylo wrote: post #14
icebraining wrote: post #4

They aren't really dropping Firefox, they are just dropping the official build for a custom one: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.mozilla.fenn... It's no different that Debian with Iceweasel.

Edit: What makes people think Firefox has been removed? Correct. I've been using Fennec (the custom build) ever since the team managed to get it to build, and have had zero complaints. As far as I'm aware, that is the last upstream binary in the official F-Droid repository. Keep in mind, anyone is free to make their own F-Droid repository using the fdroidserver software. The server supports either building apks from…

> Edit: What makes people think Firefox has been removed?

good question. this is the 1st time i've heard. never saw a discussion about it on the forums or gitlab.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#22

Post by gcb0 »

pki wrote: post #12
kkmickos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, some things at Mozilla seem a bit odd. A few weeks ago Nightly ended up having "Pocket" integrated, and rumour said it would replace Mozilla's own open source Sync plus the integrated Reader. Addons will soon no longer be able to be installed unless approved by Mozilla. (Another walled garden. Sigh...)

This is very good, I hate having to constantly remove malware plugins off friends'/family stuff, hijacking new tab, hijacking search providers...

So, pay apple and use the one browser. You already have that offering.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#23

Post by gcb0 »

__david__ wrote: post #5
alrs wrote: post #3

Mozilla chose to become spyware, so they're booted out of F-Droid. This makes sense.

When and in what way did Mozilla decide to become spyware?

not necessarily spyware, but moving away from the community focus.

   1. UI copying chrome
   2. telefonica servers for video chat
   3. Ads on your new-tab-page
   4. Yahoo search deal
   5. Adobe binary blob DRM installed and enabled by default. this is flash security holes all over again.
   6. google binary blob DRM on android.
mozilla have long gone from being a incubator the firefox project to try to be a startup coming up with the next big thing, for who knows why. like their sync thing that they keep annoying me to use every time. it's like ubuntu trying hard with ubuntu one. but ubuntu at least was started to make money.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#24

Post by anon3_ »

I boycotted firefox after the Brendan Eich affair.

Mozilla is supposed to be a symbol of the hacker ethic.

When they bent to the whims of social media lynch mobs - they betrayed the one who literally built the foundation of their existence.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#25

Post by icebraining »

gcb0 wrote: post #23
__david__ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When and in what way did Mozilla decide to become spyware?

not necessarily spyware, but moving away from the community focus. 1. UI copying chrome 2. telefonica servers for video chat 3. Ads on your new-tab-page 4. Yahoo search deal 5. Adobe binary blob DRM installed and enabled by default. this is flash security holes all over again. 6. google binary blob DRM on android. mozilla have long gone from being a incubator the firefox project to try to be a startup coming up with…

How is the Yahoo search deal any different than the search deal with Google that they've had for years and years?

And the EME module, good or bad, is not a security hole like Flash. The CDM modules are heavily sandboxed, preventing them from doing anything in the system besides talking to the browser. On Linux, it uses seccomp: https://lwn.net/Articles/332974/

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#26

Post by ubernostrum »

pserwylo wrote: post #16
azinman2 wrote: post #2

Seems petty. Mozilla is one of the most pure open source projects out there in mission, ethos, and product. Addons are user choices, and trying to limit that choice is self defeating in free speech.

> Addons are user choices, and trying to limit that choice is self defeating in free speech. I believe you are talking about the big red boxes that mention it has "Non Free Addons". This is what is known as an "AntiFeature" in F-Droid [0]. It is not a reason to exclude a project from the main repository. Rather, it is purely a piece of metadata that is shown on the website and in the client to let people know that it…

While I appreciate that there are people who do this, I also end up wondering where it'll end up. Debian, for example, has had to go round and round on whether the GNU FDL is actually sufficiently Free for Debian's guidelines. As I understand it, the current status is the FDL is considered non-DFSG-compatible by default, and exceptions are only available when it can be demonstrated that the FDL is used in a way that doesn't bring certain clauses into play.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#27

Post by ubernostrum »

pmontra wrote: post #17
icebraining wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't actually send any of your data to anywhere; it runs locally in your browser, using history data it already has.

The picture in the Techcrunch post is pretty clear. The browser talks with an adserver (step 5). And how could it get ads if it didn't do that, pick them from a static list compiled into the browser binary? Soon out of date and hardly interesting for advertisers. GETs to the adserver combined with the in-browser selection algorithm leak details on the browsing history of the user (if he's got this ad he could be that…

The picture in the Techcrunch post is pretty clear. The browser talks with an adserver (step 5). And how could it get ads if it didn't do that, pick them from a static list compiled into the browser binary? Soon out of date and hardly interesting for advertisers.

Based on what I've read in the actual implementation discussion in Bugzilla, the process actually consists of:

1. A Mozilla-controlled server hosts bundles of tiles, which are periodically updated.

2. The browser periodically downloads updated bundles of tiles from that server.

3. Using metadata in the bundles, the browser decides which ones to display.

A lot of discussion seems to have centered on ensuring the bundles and their metadata have enough overlap to ensure that even Mozilla's servers can't determine which sites in the browser history caused a particular tile to display.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#28

Post by pluma »

anon3_ wrote: post #24

I boycotted firefox after the Brendan Eich affair. Mozilla is supposed to be a symbol of the hacker ethic. When they bent to the whims of social media lynch mobs - they betrayed the one who literally built the foundation of their existence.

They didn't bend to social media. They made it very clear they were surprised by the internal reactions and that's why he stepped back down. Besides, social media or not, the primary reason the issue blew up at all was a lack of transparency in their organizational politics. This isn't about Gamergate.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#29

Post by toni »

Currently these Mozilla domains are blocked in our internal networks. Not all of them are data-collecting services, but it's better to be safe than sorry:

    self-repair.mozilla.* 
    tiles.services.mozilla.* 
    tiles.*.services.mozilla.* 
    pfs.mozilla.* 
    snippets.mozilla.* 
    fxfeeds.mozilla.* 
    services.addons.mozilla.* 
    crash-stats.mozilla.* 
    *.data.mozilla.* 
    versioncheck-bg.addons.mozilla.* 
    fhr.cdn.mozilla.* 
    sendto.mozilla.* 
    push.services.mozilla.*
The amount of stuff you must block to have a decent browser experience nowadays is simply mind boggling. Of course, Chrome or Opera are no more better.

Re: F-Droid Dropping Firefox

#30

Post by jakobdabo »

toni wrote: post #29

Currently these Mozilla domains are blocked in our internal networks. Not all of them are data-collecting services, but it's better to be safe than sorry: self-repair.mozilla.* tiles.services.mozilla.* tiles.*.services.mozilla.* pfs.mozilla.* snippets.mozilla.* fxfeeds.mozilla.* services.addons.mozilla.* crash-stats.mozilla.* *.data.mozilla.* versioncheck-bg.addons.mozilla.* fhr.cdn.mozilla.* sendto.mozilla.* push.se…

Check the about:networking page and prefs.js in your profile directory regularly for finding more domains to block.
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