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Comment by butz | Hacker News Reader

There should be a "Firefoxium" version of Firefox with all base functionality, but without any commercial additions, like Pocket or upcoming VPN. Would there be a way to sponsor such Firefox development directly with monthly subscription like OpenCollective or Patreon? Would EU be interested to sponsor development of free browser to keep browser market competitive?

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I like Firefox but the forced bloatware of Pocket, and the inability to remove it turns me off of Firefox. I don't see why Pocket isn't installed as a standard extension that could be easily removed.

Just in case: you can turn it off by setting "extensions.pocket.enabled" to "false" in about:config.

GNU IceCat, for desktop and Android

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gnu.icecat/

Thank you for reminding that there exists a browser that is based a Firefox, without the "services" from Mozilla.

As a Firefox user, I will give it a try on desktop and android. But can anybody maybe tell what are the limitations in daily real world use, if any?

I think it's an interesting point to discuss whether state funding is possible for FOSS software like firefox that creates market competition within a certain segment. It would certainly work well with a more pure view of capitalism, to prevent the monopoly that is the chromium browser (engine). And I also think the EU would be a great candidate for the size/importance of an alternative-to like firefox.

I wrote a more extensive post on my blog, fwiw: https://whatshouldyoueat.com/2020/08/15/mozilla-ideals/

With the ubiquity of Web browsers today, it would be very disappointing and dangerous for a single corporation, and one whose business model is to exploit people's identities and online activity, to have that much control. Whether government or whatever, we really need to find a way to rescue Firefox in particular and have a healthier funding of FOSS in general.

The funny thing about this comment is that if Firefox had the market share of Chrome, then it makes perfect sense. And as other comments have noted, there are several forks of Firefox, which is great.

But the reality of 2020 is that Firefox might not exist in the near future because so few people actually use it. Splitting the user base further into a Mozilla-free version accomplishes almost nothing except helping ensure that that Chrome-only future comes to pass.

If having Pocket and VPN features bundled with Firefox helps keep Firefox around for the long term, that's a concession I wish we were all willing to make.

Pale Moon[0] used to loosely fit that brief but these days it’s diverged a bit more from Firefox.

There is also Seamonkey[1].

[0] https://www.palemoon.org/

[1] https://www.seamonkey-project.org/

You did not mention Waterfox. It seems to have better compatibility with modern web sites than Pale Moon. Not sure what is going on with Seamonkey these days. I may have to give that a try. The problem I have with Firefox is that it is now way too similar to Chrome to bother with it. Maybe Seamonkey has retained its own identity.

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