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Comment by infotainment | Hacker News Reader

If only Mozilla (the parent organization) wasn’t horrible.

Can’t a non-crazy nonprofit make a browser?

What's so horrible about it? I don't like how they're pampering to the ad industry now but other than that I think they're pretty decent.

If I donate to your project I hope the money goes towards your project. If you spend it on beer or buy Jacuzzi I'm happy too. If you chose to spend it on other projects ill be excited to learn what they are.

https://future.mozilla.org/projects/

Do you use any of that? Is there anything there I should be using? (honest question) It seems premature to donate to things I don't know.

> Solo helps entrepreneurs expand their web presence with a suite of AI-backed tools for building websites, optimizing for SEO, and showcasing your best work.

> Solo will instantly create a beautiful website so you can grow your business.

> Improve brand visibility: SEO keywords are automatically added to help drive search traffic. View statistics by connecting a Google Analytics account.

I'm very biased no doubt, it reads like I donate to progress the commercial web, more canned template websites, product SEO and to promote the use of google analytics. I'm sure it is awesome to some people, to me it is the opposite, I'm sure it is a project that should exist some place but I don't want to pay for it.

The web browser can still be infinitely improved.

Clicked the future projects link. Thought the DidThis project sounded interesting. Aaaannnddd it's already a dead project as of 2 months ago.

I mean Llamafile is great and is built on fantastic tech, but no I definitely want my Mozilla money to go to Firefox, not what Thing is currently in vogue by Mozilla execs.

> If I donate to your project I hope the money goes towards your project.

Firefox is not a project of the Mozilla Foundation, but the Mozilla Corporation, so you just can't donate to Firefox at all; in fact, the money flows the opposite direction between them. I know it's frustrating but this argument is misleading yet keeps showing up in every thread.

Fascinating, thanks for the explanation/correction, it makes it even worse than I thought.

I don't know about their other expenses, but SEO/advertising is probably one of their better uses of money even if we don't like it. It's hard to gain market share against a browser that is pitched each time you do a Google search no matter how good the product is.

They also fired a whole bunch of software engineers (including everyone working on Servo), and then massively boosted their executives' salaries, so that was certainly something.

As a criticism that applies equally to Google.

Google lays off engineers: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/11/24034124/google-layoffs-e...

Google boosts their executive's compensation: https://www.businessinsider.com/alphabet-google-executive-pa...

IMO it’s a matter of principle. Mozilla is supposed to be a non-profit that exists to support the development of a FOSS browser and its related projects. Over the years it seems like they’ve strayed from this mission, behaving more and more like the big corporations they claim not to be like

> IMO it’s a matter of principle.

Eh? So Chrome should be used because Google has no principles?

Here's the Mozilla Manifesto:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

They explicitly state that they want the internet to benefit the public good as well as commercial use.

Principle number 9 is: "Commercial involvement in the development of the internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical."

Mozilla clearly strikes that balance better than Google does.

No, I never said anywhere that chrome should be used. As a matter of fact, I use Firefox myself. My original observation was that Mozilla presents itself as a benevolent non-profit yet behaves like soulless for-profit tech company, abandoning valuable FOSS initiatives and carelessly laying off employees, all while increasing executive pay

> Can’t a non-crazy nonprofit make a browser?

Here’s to hoping LadyBird remains non crazy and can be relevant by the time of their planned alpha release in 2026.

To be honest it needs a different name if it’s going to hit critical mass adoption with the average consumer.

What's wrong with ladybird?

Netscape, Edge, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, All have a pop appeal to them (the names)

"Ladybug" makes a reference to a bug. And not a thrilling one.

It's bird though, not bug.

Ladybird is the UK term for what Americans call Ladybugs

Then it is going to be adopted everywhere fine except the UK.

I don't see why it wouldn't. Ladybird Books has been around for 157 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_Books

huh? of all the bugs in the world, ladybugs are among the most popular, the majority of them are harmless and prey on agricultural pests. at least where i come from the association with "ladybug" is "cute".

Ladyfeature

>What's wrong with ladybird?

Honestly all of these x/y names just imply that they are knockoffs of firefox. Which is fine if you want your browser to just be firefox±some feature firefox doesn't include, but not so great if you're wanting to stand on your own branding wise.

Plus ladybird is the less popular name of the ladybug and if you aren't aware of that, it just seems like some weird needlessly gendered name, which doesn't make sense for a browser to have. Plus a bunch of ladybug type branding with red and black dots and such seems cringey.

Just a complete all around fail to consider branding.

With the average English-speaking consumer. You forgot the other 7 billion people, which isn't your fault as it happens here all the time.

You might want to read back through the history of its creator

I have, and it's honestly none of my business and of no consequence to me [0].

[0] e.g. https://text.tchncs.de/latenightblog/ladybird-browser-and-dr...

> If only Mozilla (the parent organization) wasn’t horrible.

Well, they're not getting any of my money, and they're not selling my eyeballs to any advertisers. For a while I used a filesystem written by a convicted murderer. I'm not sure at what point I'm supposed to avoid software because of who wrote it.

Mozilla can't be worse than google (or brave/opera etc)

I think you need to be a little bit crazy to enter the browser space. It's not for the feint of heart.

*faint of heart

What are your qualms with Brave Browser?

I'm not convinced that it's much more than a Chrome skin with an integrated crypto scam.

You don't have to use the crypto features.

when the defense of a project is that you can turn off the bad features, you aren't really making a chase better than say chrome or anything else.

A product built on trust, shouldn't involve having to go turn off untrustworthy elements.

The crypto part isn’t something you turn off. It’s buried in a menu somewhere. For all intents and purposes, it’s a pretty elegant UX.

You don't need to "turn off the bad features" because they are opt-in to begin with.

I shouldn't need to opt into or out of features that shouldn't exist in the first place, much less in a browser.

You're scraping the paint off with how far you're dragging the goalposts.

Brave has a weird crypto thing, it's on not by default, it's not pushed on you, I don't even know how to turn it on.

Firefox right now today has ads in the URL bar. I'm using Waterfox to avoid all Mozilla's garbage but Brave is up near the top of least shitty.

Up near the top? It literally had a controversies section on Wikipedia due to all these shady things it did, with cryptocurrency and others, I am not sure how worse it can get [0]. I'll take URL ads any day of the week compared to the kinds of things Brave pulled over the years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brave_(web_browse...

The list for Firefox over the years would warrant a whole page on Wikipedia. Browser choices are a who's who of who's debased themselves the fewest number of times trying to squeeze money out of a free product. The current state of Brave is better than the current state of Firefox right now.

I simply don't understand how you could think that about Brave yet in the same breath say that Firefox is worse, what exactly is worse about Firefox than hiding a literally cryptocurrency scam token in the browser itself?

Brave today: Here's a free browser with no ads, built-in adblock and user-respecting defaults. If you want there's also this crypto thing you can try. No pressure, most people don't. We also have an ad supported search engine as our default.

Firefox today: Here's a free browser with ads on the new tab page, ads in the url bar, ads in Pocket, ads for our VPN service, and we let advertisers collect your data same as Chrome with "privacy preservation ad measurement" and you have to turn all of that off. We have an ad supported search engine by default. We also redirect your DNS queries to a third party "for your privacy."

I think people want Firefox to be better than it is in practice because of the historical good will they've built up over the years. I wish they were better too.

Personally I'd much rather have a non-Chromium browser with some unintrusive ads than one with cryptocurrency, perhaps that is where our differences lie. And anyway, with Chromium being upstream with Manifest v3, who knows how long Brave can keep up its adblocking capabilities?

You don't need to turn off "bad features". Just don't use them. Just like the rest of the browser features you don't use, which there are many of.

> when the defense of a project is that you can turn off the bad features, you aren't really making a chase better than say chrome or anything else.

> A product built on trust, shouldn't involve having to go turn off untrustworthy elements.

This is very misleading! You don't "turn off" bad features in Brave. You have to explicitly turn them on. By default it's off.

Just like how you don't have to visit dodgy sites in Chrome; you have to take action to visit dodgy sites.

Same with Brave - you don't have to do any crypto stuff; you have to put in extra work and effort to do the crypto stuff.

I've used Brave for years. Never used any of the crypto features. It is just a solid, privacy-based, chromium-based browser.

At the very least, I do not trust a browser that was putting affiliate links to unsuspecting users' urls [0]. Plus I tbh I am really sick of everything tending to be chromium-derivatives nowadays and I think it is good to have greater diversity, to exactly avoid situation susch as the one here.

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/10134

If you research all the controversies around Brave, I think they pretty much amount to nothing. Just some people holding grudges.

But the complaint that it's a reskinned Chrome and will be forced to eventually adopt most of Chrome's user-hostile changes is a real concern.

Mozilla let's me use ublock origin, Google doesn't.

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