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Comment by shock | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, I'm not a web developer and I don't think I should be forced to use the Developer Edition just so I can remain in charge of what I install in my browser. Now that I'm writing this it occurs to me that after this change it's not really my browser anymore, is it?

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I hear you on the control thing. You mention you are a power user above so my two cents is that likely puts you outside of the user base Mozilla covets. In the last couple years, the words "Firefox" and "power user" went hand-and-hand but I'd wager Mozilla would trade customer bases with Google in a heartbeat.

FWIW, the Developer Edition feels pretty lean and mean. I haven't tried since I am a web developer, but it looks like you can remove most or all of the parts that make it web developer-y if you are so inclined.

I've ran Nightly and Aurora (which is now Developer Edition) for a while but extensions/themes broke more often than I'd have liked because there was too little time for extension devs to update their extensions in case incompatible changes were introduced.

"You mention you are a power user above so my two cents is that likely puts you outside of the user base Mozilla covets."

Mozilla's business model needs users who can't figure out how to turn off Yahoo search. That pays for their new Firefox offices on the waterfront in San Francisco.[1]

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7895991,-122.3883498,3a,36y,...

Use Iceweasel or GNU Icecat?

Thanks for the suggestion! That's what I'll prolly end up doing although neither of them are in the Ubuntu repos.

you don't need the developer edition, you can use the unbranded version which is the same as the regular version except without the branding.

There will also be special builds of Beta and Release without this limitation - you won't need to use Developer or Nightly.

Does this mean that the FTP server will now offer a choice of:

1) Firefox without DRM, without lockdown

2) Firefox without DRM, with lockdown

3) Firefox with DRM, without lockdown

4) Firefox with DRM, with lockdown

...for every language?

I don't know if they'll offer each permutation of all those possibilities. I don't see why not though, it's just a little more build time.

In any case, if the specific combination of features you want is missing, the option to build from source is always there. (At least on Linux, building Firefox is also pretty easy.)

AFAIK, yes, that is the plan.

However, "without lockdown" is going to be an "unbranded browser."

So likely you will see two folders, something like this:

/browser/release/

1) Browser with DRM (no lockdown)

2) Browser without DRM (no lockdown)

/firefox/release/

1) Firefox without DRM

2) Firefox with DRM

That doesn't sound like an option that will fork for my use-case - I manage a bunch of Windows machines; if we upgrade Firefox to "Noname Browser" with a different icon, the users will be confused and unable to find it.

They said previously the unbranded non-lockdown beta/stable releases would be enUS only.

Are you sure you are a 'power user', then?

I'm not sure what you mean, but are you suggesting that if I'm a savvy driver I should just drive prototype cars?

Are you suggesting that the developer edition is merely a prototype and not a production browser?

Indeed, I am :)

According to a comment lower down, Developer Edition is on the alpha branch, so yes, it is a prototype.

I don't think prototype is fair. A prototype is a proof of concept. Just because something is in beta or even alpha shape doesn't make it that.

i tried running firefox developer for a while and since it's based on the alpha code, it broke all my extensions on each update. so yeah, i'm a power user (i run 3 custom extensions that i wrote, pentadactyl and dotjs) but it's not feasible for me to keep running developer.

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