Switching to Firefox should be a no-brainer for people who care about the future of the web.
If every browser is based on Chromium then you're not really offering an alternative to Google Chrome because Google still own the supply chain. Not only in terms of your new browser's rendering engine but also in terms of website owners being vindicated in targeting Chrome.
The only way to offer a legitimate counterargument to Chrome is not to use Blink.
Whereas Blink gets that work for free from Google.
If you want to offer a legitimate counter argument to Chrome by using Gecko then you have to find some way to bring in the hundreds of millions of dollars of necessary funding to bring Gecko up to Blink's quality.
If you want to create a counter argument to Chrome using Blink, then you have everything you need already.
For now.
My bet is they are already planning how to boil the frog.
The bigger issue for me isn't the maintenance of Gecko; I just can't see how extending Blinks market share really hurts Google in any way. Ultimately Blink-based browsers are still tied into Google's supply chain so even if you did displace Chrome with a Blink-based competitor, Google still win.
unilaterally implementing unstable APIs and telling people on web.dev that "it's safe you can use it it's totally production ready" isn't exactly quality, but you do you.
They work beautifully for me but I don't dare to use them on machines that I type customer data, work credentials or use internet banking on.
Not because I doubt the mainteners but because Internet is an extremely hostile space - technically.
One missing patch and one exploit that snuck through one ad network and you can be compromised.
That said I'm happy to donate to see someone starting a soft fork of latest Firefox.
A good starting point could be to make a rudimentary fix for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447
I'm happy with Firefox (and Mozilla) personally but I'll be sure to recommend these if/when I hear people asking for an alternative to Google and Mozilla in the future.
Thanks for sharing.
No thanks.
But you’re still missing the point, this should be compiled into Firefox core, if it’s a licensing thing badge it as Firefox-non free. Not everybody cares about altruistic goals, I just want a browser that works so I can do my job, securely.
Edit: but if you don’t already see a future where ultimately open source cannot be trusted unless it comes from a trusted repo (yum, apt) then you should start preparing for that.