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Comment by layer8 | Hacker News Reader

Linux is majorly being developed and maintained by paid company employees. What interest would companies have in maintaining Firefox? They don’t seem to be very interested in contributing to Firefox development today. Another data point is that Microsoft gave up on their original Edge browser engine because using Chromium was ultimately easier than chasing Chrome compatibility. Who will defend Firefox’s interests in WHATWG? In the best case, it would result in something akin to today’s Mozilla Foundation.

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A “maintenance and security only” trajectory for Firefox would be most interesting to me. Microsoft couldn’t keep up with Chrome, but that’s because they are a company that needs to be seen doing flashy things.

Firefox developed by the community could reject frivolous new features and move a lot slower than Chrome. The web is heading in a shitty direction anyway, so moving slower is better.

There are Firefox derivatives, listed in the article, whose goals are roughly that. But I don’t think they can be successful long-term, meaning other than for a 0.1% niche, if they don’t keep up with web standards. And currently Mozilla is doing the heavy lifting for that.

> The web is heading in a shitty direction anyway, so moving slower is better.

I completely agree, though what I believe would happen if Firefox went to maintenance mode is that fewer and fewer websites would work on it. It's already the case that I sometimes need to switch to Chromium to do some things because those shitty websites only work on Chromium.

They could partner with Apple. As long as the courts don’t force Apple to allow Chromium on iOS, those shitty web sites will work on safari. Firefox tends to be ahead of safari in new features.

As an iOS user, I am happy that I cannot install alternative browsers. If I could, those shitty websites would force me to install Chrome. I currently have zero google branded apps on my phone. (Some third party apps that I need bundle google tracking crap…)

Edit: I guess I should add that I prefer Firefox to Safari, but I’ve watched devs try to only support Safari and Chrome. Once they do that, they almost always accidentally support Firefox too.

The main problem with Chrome is that anything you do in it goes into Google’s surveillance network (or at least you can’t prove that it doesn’t). If some sites require Chrome, we can use Chrome just for those sites (and vote with our feet, not very many websites are really necessary). A web browser sitting on the disk not running most of the time probably isn’t a huge problem.

A lot of the internet doesn’t even need JavaScript enabled. I think we over-state the compatibility nightmare. I mean it depends on your use patterns of course…

I can live without many of those bad websites (or rather "webapps").

But what's annoying me right now is that it happens more and more that passkeys work with Chromium but not Firefox. And I want passkeys (well, I want to log in with my Yubikeys).

A Firefox that doesn't keep up with new features gradually becomes more and more useless as websites use the new features.

You may want the web to stay the same but it isn't going to

New features are not cost-free. They translate to increased code size, increased browser build time and decreased performance. At some point the maintenance burden becomes too high, even for Google. I don't think they have an interest in endlessly adding new features.

That hasn't stopped anyone yet, and even if it did, it will apply to all browsers.

It has stopped everyone except for Google and arguably Apple (I mean Apple is a bit of a weird case because they only have to support their platform really, and everyone kind of expects Safari on iOS to be a little restricted anyway).

Yeah, this is a worry. Google or someone will just come up with some not needed but slightly better (from a mere feature perspective, not from a privacy one) thing, that websites will use. Lets say a new codec or protocol for something like ... VR in the browser! or similar stuff. That thing will be somehow easier to use with Chrome and they will call it a "standard". Then people will try to use those websites using it and ... Oh? You use FF? Too bad! It doesn't work there! But you could use this "modern" and "secure" browser, _made by Google_! (and half-informed people online will claim FF doesn't implement the "standard") ... and tada, the badly informed user switches away. Not to forget, when they install Chrome, they probably are asked to make it their default browser.

It is all quite dystopian and depressing to think about.

It's not only about big thingys. It's any small difference in behavior where some developer tests only on the browser with 90% usage* and ignores the small niche of Firefox users, leaving them accidentally with a broken site. Some CSS property, some JS API whatever.

*) The stats are somewhat wrong, I guess there are more Firefox users with different privacy blockers than Chrome, thus hiding from Google analytics and similar, which people use for stats in higher percentage

If you're fine only being able to browse existing and past websites, sure. Don't forget to donate to the Internet Archive or make your own local copies, though, or that'll become infeasible relatively quickly too.

When will this start happening?

It isn’t an exact match to what you have claimed, but if it was going to start happening I’d expect it to have started by now. But for example, my favorite sites works fine in Lynx, let alone old versions of Firefox.

I really don’t get it. It isn’t obvious to me if people are really experiencing compatibility issues, or if it is just a boogeyman…

In many cases, you are not experiencing compatibility issues precisely because Firefox is still being actively maintained.

For new web technologies, the consequences of Firefox not supporting them is obvious. But even for existing sites, Mozilla is maintaining a long list of "Web Compatibility" patches that can be updated outside of regular browser updates (which is important for long-term support versions and managed environments): https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/firefox-68-bigints-contras...

That's exactly the type of thankless but essential work that I fear people are always underestimating when talking about "just developing a new web engine". It's probably difficult but still feasible to become "standards complete"; becoming and remaining compatible with HTML/JS as it's actually written in the real world seems much harder.

CA/Browser Forum or ISRG.

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