Genuine questions. Aren't such forks harming the actual Firefox developers by decreasing the Firefox user base? Doesn't it help the Google monopoly on the web?
Is the claim that it is economically impossible to create a browser without turning it in to surveillance malware?
To the extent that's true, it is the best argument yet for shutting down the web.
Except if you go full-on Neo-Amish/Luddite and use
[->] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
or the remaining stuff which stays accessible via simple
browsers like [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf ,
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo ,
or textmode stuff like Lynx, (E)Links(2), W3M, and similar.
In case it is, really, shut down the web? What would that look like? Why would we do it? How? How can “browsers are expensive” possibly be worth doing something that extreme?
Fancy UIs are made to slow people down in their tasks and draw attention to things that don't matter to what they want to do.
Web developers and creative people like to think the web is their playground but really the most important role of the web should be delivering informations and services efficiently, and get the hell out the way.
(honest question) Why is this necessary then: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
>Searches: Firefox sends Mozilla what you type into the search bar and Mozilla may share that data with its partners.
>Sites you visit: For the Suggestions you click, Firefox sends Mozilla the website URL, and Mozilla may share that data with its partners.
Interesting that turning off "suggestions" is not located in the "privacy" section.
And those “home calls” are nothing more than calls like whether you are on the public internet, whether a new update is available and other mundane things.
As a categorical statement, this is false. "Not all telemetry is surveillance" is true.
Telemetry is exfiltrated data the user did not ask to send. The line between telemetry and surveillance depends on the use and intent of the data recipient, not (necessarily) the data itself, and that use is opaque to the person whose actions generated the data.
It is interesting to note that telemetry can become surveillance after it is collected. Perhaps a new manager has a different plan, perhaps the cops show up with a subpoena.
When Firefox is first launched, it opens the Privacy Notice page https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/, which is totally up-front about data being collected. Nothing surreptitious about it. Data is not "exfiltrated", it's simply "sent". But that doesn't sound nearly as evil, does it?
No sane company pours money into unprofitable anything. They pour money into those moats precisely because it pays dividends.
Mozilla doesn't have an ecosystem like Google, Microsoft and Apple do. If they want to stay afloat they have to be profitable with the browser alone. So trying to directly compare that to the "free candy" approach which the others can get away with is unrealistic.
It's like asking why Target and Best Buy can't match the prices of Amazon retail, which has a money fountain named AWS in their backyard that can subsidize their other activities for "ecosystem growth". If Amazon retail had been a separate standalone business which had to succeed on its own for the past decade, it probably would have been run differently.
Though that may be regional, as I speak from Germany.
Get your facts right.
Mozilla Corporate receives 400mil a year from Google, for google search to be the default search engine. The engineering costs of Mozilla in 2020 were about 300mil. [0]
So in actual fact you could maintain the not-for-profit status, fire all the corporate staff and still sit on a trove of cash every year.
The google money will not dry out because it is the only CYA situation that Google has against an anti-trust case on Chrome.
There is absolutely no reason Mozilla could not maintain the not-for-profit status and tick along, like other foundations such as Linux, Gnome, Apache, etc.
[0] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600206/mozilla-report...
However, seeing how these forks are just "cosmetic", they still use the same rendering engine, which doesn't increase Google's relative user base. As far as this monopoly is concerned, all these forks are still Firefox.
Not in the website statistics I guess, unless the forks present themselves as Firefox, which I doubt.
`User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0`
Note that I am on Linux, so your line of thinking has some validity.
mozilla is not the kind of entity I'd want to have control over the web either, considering the shit they feel comfortable doing even as an underdog with 3% market share.
Can't answer your other question, but this fork has a chance of helping those who don't want to use Mozilla Firefox avoid switching to Chromium browsers by offering a choice.
Mozilla has continuously and repeatedly fucked up when it comes to defaulting to grab telemetry and shady deals with Google, to asking for money while spending way too much salaries for its execs for a supposed non-profit corporation (that is exempt from Federal income taxation).
Although I'm a Firefox user, it pains me to say that I can't wait for the day where Mozilla and Firefox dies. At least it'll hasten the rise of a new effort. And I'd take anything other than Chrome or the Edges of the world.
I'm still hoping Brave will wake up and properly fork Firefox and give Mozilla the big FUCK YOU.
Edit: a special ps to down voters: Fuck Mozilla and its CEO.
I don't think Mozilla is intentionally helping Google, but they are bleeding a ton of money with community events etc, laying off people while giving this horrible execs increased salaries. Like seriously WTH?
Mozilla need to kill the current leadership, get lean on spenting and most importantly cater to their audience. They don't have much general users. A huge portion are hardcore fans, OpenSource folks, people who value privacy or anti-chrome. Pushing ads to this audience, is only going to accelerate the downfall.
Focus on pleasing power users and devs. Market on shit that matters to power users, sys admins, devs and privacy folks, journalists! Like containers, and dev tools (some of which are already cool). Then these folks will whole heartedly embrace it in their workplaces, recommend to friends and family. Devs will write things more for FF. And don't break extensions again! This is how you got us before. Do it again. Then the general audiences will come.
Currently all these power users an others are themselves not sure about Firefox. They are stuck with it cos neither can they donate directly to Firefox development, nor are they happy with the leadership decisions. They are just waiting till the last day of FF's existence so that they can be a lil more private until they have to move to Chrome based browsers.
When their heart was at the right place their tech sucked. Their tech is better now, but their heart is not in the right place.
I will start using Firefox when it leaves Mozilla and I'd pay a subscription for it. For me, the ideal situation is a lean team (hopefully only the devs, because I'm not paying any useless middle or high level managers a penny) start developing it for a fee. Just the browser will do, no password managers, no vpns, no nonsense. I already pay for subscriptions for those.
I've seen many here on hacker news expressing willingness to pay and the only reason that they don't is because they don't want to pay for other Mozilla nonsense but Mozilla doesn't want to open a direct channel for the community to support the Firefox team. I find this outrageous. Clearly, they are using Firefox, its very talented devs and the image of their noble fight for a private internet to fill the pockets of executives who don't know shit about engineering or the ethos of opensource software.
I agree with you on almost everything except Vivaldi. They are closed source and Firefox is 100% much more capable of supporting privacy than Vivaldi.
I have my own problems with Firefox but don't intend to stop using Firefox. They are still great. I will have to see this through I feel. lol.
Also, when you use a browser based on Blink engine (Vivaldi, Opera, Brave, Edge, Chromium) you are giving more leverage to Google at W3C. This makes FLoC kind of stuff more probable from Google.
"You need to change the browser engine as well, NOT JUST THE BROWSER." ;)
Always choose Gecko or Gecko based (like Librewolf) :)
"grab telemetery" - that data is really, really useful in making development decisions, and we are hyperparanoid about what we collect. From an armchair, it may seem like you can make the right guess about how to eg adjust garbage collection scheduling priorities, but actual data always surprises you in one way or another. It can make the difference between spending a month on a tough project that ends up making no difference for the vast majority of users, and having a month to spend on something more impactful.
I really don't like to speculate on executive pay, but I'm pretty baffled why this is seen as such a big deal. Your argument sounds valid to me. So does the argument that we're talking about the CEO of a tech company that is competing directly with multiple Big Tech competitors, and perhaps paying comparatively bargain basement prices is not the smartest idea. Which is not to say that I'm happy about the layoffs.
Mozilla has messed up on a number of things, multiple times, including at least one time when it ended up (as in, made a deal to and carried it out) sending a bunch of data to a third party. (It was more nuanced than is generally appreciated, but I won't go there.)
I sincerely apologize that Mozilla isn't up to the pristine standards of the big technology companies. /s
I'm not going to explain the MoCo/MoFo structure here. I'll just say that MoCo most definitely pays taxes, MoFo asks for donations because it's a nonprofit with its own initiatives and direction, and you can get tons of information about the finances involving both because of MoFo's nonprofit status and the resulting annual report. (MoCo = Mozilla Corporation, MoFo = Mozilla Foundation, MoFo owns MoCo.)
The Google deal is, like, how MoCo makes money and is able to exist. What's shady about it? I'd certainly like the funding to be more independent. Maybe Mozilla can try drilling for oil on the land it doesn't own or start selling off the user data it doesn't collect?
We understand that, and we're saying no. You can do whatever you want. I will use LibreWolf.
The problem is not the exec getting paid this much. It is about getting paid this much when to me and many long time users like me see a sinking ship with ever decreasing user base... while on the brink of no more pay from Google... Trying to push ads to us. < THIS IS WHERE EXEC PAY COMES INTO PLAY >
The context is important. It's like when your house is on fire and you are casually using the fire to light up a cigar.
> I sincerely apologize that Mozilla isn't up to the pristine standards of the big technology companies. /s
In all seriousness, we just need the heart of the old MoCo (Pre quantum) and the tech of the current MoCo. ;)
Firefox users are ideologically invested in the browser. I do feel like Mozilla is trying to push things like you are this big corp (In a way MoCo is.). While I am absolutely happy with the technical progress and direction Firefox taking, MoFo/MoCo should understand the ideological element here. This is why you see more outcry against "how things should be run" against Mozilla and not Google.
No one is arguing that telemetry can be helpful but forcing users into it while acting holier than though is not just shady, but very much scammy.
The whole structuring difference between the foundation and the corporation sounds a lot like a tactic to push for some things under the non profit front and others under the company front, aka scammy.
All this turns on alarms in people’s heads… in a way I don’t find it weird that you guys still don’t see it, this is a sinking ship, and you’re going to think everything is going well until the last breath.
They lay off 250+ people - many of whom are the very people needed to make the technical improvements many users desire - while the executives get pay raises. You wonder why it's a 'big deal'?