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Comment by callc | Hacker News Reader

Us nerds *really* need to come together in creating a publicly owned browser (non chromium)

Surely among us devs, as we realize app stores increasingly hostile, that the open web is worth fighting for, and that we have the numbers to build solutions?

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Uh… we are. Servo and Ladybird. It’s a shit tonne of work.

> It’s a shit tonne of work.

[Sam didn't like that.]

Firefox should be on that list. It's clearly a lot closer in functionality to Chrome/Chromium than Servo or Ladybird, so it's easier to switch to it. I like that Servo and Ladybird exist and are developing well, but there's no need to pretend that they're the only available alternatives.

If you knew how the Mozilla corporation was governed, then you would not think that Firefox should be on the list.

How is it governed?

Funded to the tune of a half billion dollars a year by Google to pretend there's no monopoly, and multiple announcements of them trying to reimagine themselves as an ad-company. They're the best of a bad bunch but they are definitely still part of a bad bunch

Your second point, as well as their so much criticised, especially on HN, attempts at diversification, are trying to fight your first point.

Because they're so reliable on Google funding, they're trying to do whatever they can to find alternative revenue streams. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, especially for the HN crowd.

"Fighting" it in this way completely misses the point which the first point is a problem.

And also, it's very feasible to contribute to Firefox. And through it, to Zen Browser, Librewolf, etc. as well.

Majority of users are on mobile now, and Firefox mobile sucks ass. I cannot bring myself to use it. Simple things like clicking the home button should take you to homepage, but Firefox opens a new tab. It's so stupid.

I use Firefox Mobile Nightly on Android and appreciate it for the dark mode extension and ad blocking. There are some issues but the benefits outweigh them for me.

I don't even have a Home button that I can see, I must have turned it off in settings? I describe my tab count using scientific notation, though, so I'd be a "new tab" guy, anyway. But I'd also be a proponent of it being configurable.

i think it's great and syncs well with my computer's firefox. i think there should be a setting to choose how to open homepage but i don't mind the extra tabs really.

Firefox enables Google's "safe browsing" aka global internet censorship list by default.

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