F-Droid Dropping Firefox
f-droid.org
f-droid.org
It's no different that Debian with Iceweasel.
debian's Iceweasel is a little squabble about the logo not being licensed correctly. they only divert official version to add the -debianXXX when they backport security patches on the stable branch. They never removed anything. apart from branding. They even upstreamed the branding agnostic flags so they don't have to change even that!
FDroid's fork is now a move against binary blobs. And copious tracking. They are taking back firefox (pun intended). From the announce: "It removes the proprietary binaries out of the official builds." [emphasis mine]
There was already discussion on the community when mozilla decided to make the, then optional by effort of contributors, google play api on the android build... just so a really small portion of users could share youtube videos to chrome cast (like anyone uses firefox to watch videos they care so much they want to see on the TV...). Everyone reaching the IRC on how to build without the proprietary google dependency was ignored. But some soldiered on. There was even a PaleMoon build on the play store just for that! (palemoon were mostly to avoid the new australis UI, which breaks lots of OS usability/accessibility features just to copy chrome).
Now, on top of the google play api (which now is not just for chrome cast, but also for tracking. ha! didn't see that coming did you?) they added adobe DRM, which will probably reach android soon.
I sure do hope that incite the rest of the community as it incites me. I've been running fennec build laboriously myself on my phones for a while. And i hope i now have the time to stop that nonsense and contribute to fdroid's effort somehow. Even if just by bitching... err promoting on forums.
You seem to be implying that Debian's Iceweasel package contains binary blobs. That shouldn't be the case, could you clarify that please? It's true though that Debian doesn't have policies about software using non-free network services and user tracking.
What's the nearest thing for general Linux? I'm guessing Tor Browser without Tor?
I didn't see anything specific in Arch/AUR repositories.
Correct. I've been using Fennec (the custom build) ever since the team managed to get it to build, and have had zero complaints.
As far as I'm aware, that is the last upstream binary in the official F-Droid repository.
Keep in mind, anyone is free to make their own F-Droid repository using the fdroidserver software. The server supports either building apks from source, or adding binary apks (ala Firefox). There is nothing special about the repository at f-droid.org/repo other than it being preconfigured in the client. But hey, if you really wanted, you could build the client yourself with different default repositories, because that is also open source :
good question. this is the 1st time i've heard. never saw a discussion about it on the forums or gitlab.
self-repair.mozilla.*
tiles.services.mozilla.*
tiles.*.services.mozilla.*
pfs.mozilla.*
snippets.mozilla.*
fxfeeds.mozilla.*
services.addons.mozilla.*
crash-stats.mozilla.*
*.data.mozilla.*
versioncheck-bg.addons.mozilla.*
fhr.cdn.mozilla.*
sendto.mozilla.*
push.services.mozilla.*
I'm not sure what most people do will have any relevance to the point I was trying to make.
- This page doesn't explain that it is being dropped [0,1].
- there is no signals from the F-Droid team that I can see that it is dropping firefox [e.g. on #fdroid at freenode].
- The metadata for the F-Droid build server still includes Firefox [2]
[0] - https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.mozilla.fire...
[1] - https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.firefox
[2] - https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/metadata/or...
A few weeks ago Nightly ended up having "Pocket" integrated, and rumour said it would replace Mozilla's own open source Sync plus the integrated Reader.
Addons will soon no longer be able to be installed unless approved by Mozilla. (Another walled garden. Sigh...)
Bullshit. The add-on signing requirement will be able to be easily disabled. It's just as much of a "walled garden" as Debian's repos are (ie. nothing like a walled garden).
I believe you are talking about the big red boxes that mention it has "Non Free Addons". This is what is known as an "AntiFeature" in F-Droid [0]. It is not a reason to exclude a project from the main repository. Rather, it is purely a piece of metadata that is shown on the website and in the client to let people know that it is a thing.
The goal is to provide as much information as possible to users, so that they can make educated choices about which software they choose to install on their device.
[0] - https://f-droid.org/manual/html_node/AntiFeatures.html
you still can install ALL the same addons on fennec as you can on official firefox.
can you people, please, stop talking before reading anything official? the very own page for the new build warn about unsafe addons! https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=firefox&fdid...
now, here is the official list of what is removed [with my comments]:
Removed: Tests [not sure about that]
Removed: Crashreporter [tracking]
Removed: Healthreporter (UI?)
Removed: Mediastreaming (requires non-free library: play-services) [google's binary blobs]
Removed: Updater [tracking]
Removed: EME/DRM [adobe's binary blob]
Added: MultiLocales [tracking. what is some 100kb of text when you now don't have to tell play store your locale?]I understand removing EME and DRM support, but they are removing a feature simply because it only works when a certain closed source library is installed. Is graceful degradation somehow "below" them?
That's like banning packages that use .NET (when it was non-free) on NuGet. You can create open source code that supports proprietary libraries without having to compromise your morals, with the sane choice of graceful degradation when you absolutely need the library.
This seems like a very petty reason to completely remove video streaming support from their distribution of Firefox.
1. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.mozilla.fenn...
And honestly if you want the full featured software and don't care about ideals, just download it from Play.
Removed: Tests [not sure about that]
Removed: Crashreporter [tracking]
Removed: Healthreporter (UI?)
Removed: Mediastreaming (requires non-free library: play-services) [google's binary blobs]
Removed: Updater [tracking]
Removed: EME/DRM [adobe's binary blob]
The fight against DRM shouldn't happen inside the browser but in the users mindset and towards the service providers. The EME/DRM solution was created as a compromise, give the users what they want while trying the best solution to protect them. Let FSF and other FOSS entitites audit the EME/DRM sandbox. Let researchers try to pick personal data and fingerprints from the machine. Match that against the other solution which is non auditable. If all the effort and action placed into the hate machine against EME/DRM was instead directed at educating users and teaching about non-DRM services then EME/DRM would not be needed.
And that brings us to the topic of action. Mozilla is the only large player in the browser ecosystem that has all its code open, its roadmaps published, its processess available for public perusal and collaboration. You can't influence or be a part of Safari, Opera, IE, Edge and Chrome development. You can't verify, audit, help steer, be a part of what the companies behind those products want for the the web.
THE WEB IS THE ONLY MASS COMMUNICATION MEDIA WHERE EVERYONE HAS A VOICE
The Mozilla Webmaker project helps teaching the web through workshops. Instead of spreading FUD and attacking people online, you can direct your energy into positive actions such as educating users on how to make the web their own and how to make their opinion count such as when talking about the DRM situation. The webmaker initiative goes beyond that with workshops and activities to teach about privacy, online rights, net neutrality, information credibility, programming. All that is open and in need of help. Educating users do more about the web than removing EME/DRM API hooks and sandbox.
Firefox is the only browser that has its source code completely open and where you can help steer the project. You can be a part of Mozilla and then join the thousands that are trying to steer the web towards the users. If you don't agree with some practice, then, instead of shouting on Twitter and Hacker News, join the mailing lists and discussions. Be a part of the process. Help.
Firefox OS is the only mobile operating system developed in the open and based on web technologies that are not controlled by a single entity. You can help us create a wonderful mobile system that brings the benefits of the open web in the hands of everybody. Instead of rooting and fighting about isolated closed proprietary islands, you can help steer our little web boat. Our low-cost (and low-specs :-P ) devices are bringing internet access to lots of people in emerging countries, with that there is information sharing, education, and other life transforming opportunities that bring positive social change.
Mozilla is what we make it be. As volunteers, employees, fans and users we can make it more than it ever was. Mozilla is also a project, an idea, that making a good quality software and solutions as a foundation/community we can rival companies and make the ideal of values over profit prevail on the web.
I see a lot of hate for all the decisions Mozilla makes. Apparently it is the fashionable trendy thing on the web to spread FUD instead of taking positive action and helping. The whole situation with Brendan Eich is one of those cases. Brendan is a normal human being like all of us. We all have our flaws, prejudices, qualities, dreams, and bad decisions. Everyone here has some opinion and action taken about such opinion that goes against something that is deeply important to some group. We're humans, we make mistakes. We're products of the zeitgeist of our formative years. We learn and change through time but yet we all make mistakes at the eyes of others and sometimes even to our own. Unlike many here, I've been around Brendan Eich couple times and he was always pleasant, supportive and energetic about the web. That is his passion and fight. A strong problem with the web is the echo chamber. Someone makes a mistake or something we all disagree and consider bad and that person is forever bound to suffer our hate. That kind of action leads us nowhere. Whats helps is education, empathy, showing "the other" why we thing our opinion is important and why we would think another course of action was correct. Dialog and comprehension makes the world a better place, pitchforks don't.
You all here, may you be FUDing/fear mongering or not, can help Mozilla, the Web, Brendan and everyone. You can join the cause of an open web though dialog and positive actions. You can help Mozilla better its code and actions. You can help teach people about the web and let them multiply their opportunities. You can help audit code, translate content, make us see the correct path when we're in the dark. You can help Mozilla fight for a web made of people and not of incompatible features and companies.
Thats what I am asking. Instead of flamewars and fighting Mozilla, join us, help us work, teach and learn with us and we'll all make a much better and interesting web.
Let me pose a simple honest question, if not Mozilla, then who? Which major browser vendor you see going in the direction you want? If no one is going there, then, what entity you think could create a succesful browser with the values you want?
1. UI copying chrome
2. telefonica servers for video chat
3. Ads on your new-tab-page
4. Yahoo search deal
5. Adobe binary blob DRM installed and enabled by default. this is flash security holes all over again.
6. google binary blob DRM on android.
And the EME module, good or bad, is not a security hole like Flash. The CDM modules are heavily sandboxed, preventing them from doing anything in the system besides talking to the browser. On Linux, it uses seccomp: https://lwn.net/Articles/332974/
* or DuckDuckGo (inferior but privacy conscious), but good luck with them funding Mozilla
2. The servers are only use to find clients, the data is transiting directly between the computers with WebRTC.
3. The ad tiles are there until the screen is full (which happens very fast). In practice, almost half of the ads are for Mozilla itself (Firefox for Android, Marketplace ...).
4. And so ? What's the problem by having Yahoo instead of Google in some countries ? It provides some diversity and competition in the search market which really needs it.
5. I agree on this but it's not like Mozilla had a choice, they tried to resist up to the last minute. And their implementation unlike Chrome's one (if I remember) is going to be strictly sandboxed. So they tried to do what they could. This is really Chrome's fault here.
6. I think they did not have a choice either on this one, unlike what Google is advertising, Android is much less open than they say. A lot of proprietary binaries are needed to run the OS and the stock Android is just the bare minimum. Maybe in the future they could provide an open-source replacement to it but I think they did not have enough resources.
https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-...
GETs to the adserver combined with the in-browser selection algorithm leak details on the browsing history of the user (if he's got this ad he could be that kind of person and been there and there). Maybe not the worst of the spywares but about as concerning as any ad in a web page.
Based on what I've read in the actual implementation discussion in Bugzilla, the process actually consists of:
1. A Mozilla-controlled server hosts bundles of tiles, which are periodically updated.
2. The browser periodically downloads updated bundles of tiles from that server.
3. Using metadata in the bundles, the browser decides which ones to display.
A lot of discussion seems to have centered on ensuring the bundles and their metadata have enough overlap to ensure that even Mozilla's servers can't determine which sites in the browser history caused a particular tile to display.
Mozilla is supposed to be a symbol of the hacker ethic.
When they bent to the whims of social media lynch mobs - they betrayed the one who literally built the foundation of their existence.
https://www.google.com/search?q=eich+mozilla+ceo
> They made it very clear they were surprised by the internal reactions and that's why he stepped back down. Besides, social media or not, the primary reason the issue blew up at all was a lack of transparency in their organizational politics.
Eich wouldn't have been canned if not due to external political forces.
The core of Mozilla is gone, the organization's ongoing denial of it further sinks the brand off the deep end.
Create a wound. Deny it happened. When in history did that ever work?
It gives me the impression "mozilla are liars, they just don't care." Why do organizations continue to go along with lie as if repeating it rewrites history to washes away treachery like that?
Ah, the old good FUD. Anything done on Mozilla's scale has political agenda as complex problems include multiple stakeholders and conflicting interests.
Perhaps you'll be able to shed some light on the negative externalities of Mozilla's agenda?
And could you name the people who know what they are doing?
The organization is reactive to the whims of external political / social pressures, namely that of social media, and they cave to them. They're not engaging in self-introspection, responding based upon core values we would expect, namely, the hacker ethic.
The hacker ethic is about merit. It's about protecting ideas and valuing curiosity, wit and cleverness to spur innovation. Ideas and opinions, especially if unpopular, would be tolerated - which is in essence is diversity. On twitter, Eich's out of work donation for a political cause, in the eyes of mobs, was juicy bait for professional agitators.
Are we to just let every organization get bullied into submission until all expression, down to how you want to raise your family, puts great engineers homeless and on the street?
If they could do it to Eich - they could do it to everyone.
>the hacker ethic. You are trying to impose your own, personal values, a subset of vaguely defined hacker ethic, on Mozilla. However, Mozilla's stated "mission is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web."
>The hacker ethic is about merit. It's about protecting ideas and valuing curiosity, wit and cleverness to spur innovation. Ideas and opinions, especially if unpopular, would be tolerated - which is in essence is diversity.
This is your personal interpretation. Let's compare your interpretation with the opinion of a person who is an epitome of hackers.
Richard Stallman describes:
"The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had—that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted."
"...Some hackers care about ethics—I do, for instance—but that is not part of being a hacker, it is a separate trait... "
You don't get to define hacker ethic and attack Mozilla from your personal ideological platform.
>...down to how you want to raise your family...
The whole controversy originated from the fact that Eich donated funds to the campaign designed to reduce freedom of expression(marriage) of particular group of people(LGBT). No-one challenged his opinions on raising his family.
>puts great engineers homeless and on the street? If they could do it to Eich - they could do it to everyone.
Really? Homeless and on the street? Nice fear mongering you've got there. Who is an agitator now?
EDIT. Damn, it seems that I've fed a troll.
Or this Eric Raymond? "I believe, but cannot prove, that global “AIDS” is a whole cluster of unrelated diseases all of which have been swept under a single rug for essentially political reasons".[1]
Or this one,. Eric Raymond? "You picked an extremely bad example there; Turing was atypical in a way that damages your case. If you examine the actual circumstances of Turing’s exposure, you’ll discover that he was remarkably and willfully self-destructive about it. Outed himself, under circumstances where he could easily have covered and (as I read it) the cop was trying to look the other way. Still, I’m not “pro” Turing’s suicide, just refusing to blame anyone else for it. He made his choice and died. End of story."[2]
Such hacker ethic, so much aspiration for meritocracy.
[0]http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 [1]http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=184 [2]http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1046&cpage=1#comment-236592
Excellent propaganda technique.
I hope fetchmail makes its choice too and dies. End of story.
The cherry on top. As far as I understand these are true Eric Raymond's beliefs:
"It is relevant here that I am a third-degree Wiccan, which means that I’m pretty experienced at designing rituals that invoke god-forms for specified purposes."[0]
...
Some people are eccentric. Some people get validation from saying shocking things and getting a reaction.
Gay men do both of the above, at least as much if not more than straight men. Most gays I know are the most thick skinned, provocative people. They don't want Special treatment or pity and in fact learned to get amused by people who gawk at them. Case in point, Folsom street fair in sf.
My point is, so maybe he thinks he is redpill. maybe he's being an idiot and speaking aloud. Maybe he has a lesson to learn, but he's still a hacker.
He'd have difficulty running for political office. But I'm not about to censor his thoughts.
But then, there are a lot of Republican CEO's for publicly traded stock companies. Frankly there are also one's that attend campaign dinners and go to yacht clubs. I highly doubt that prevents people from working for them. In America, workers are focused on the task at hand, CEO's don't have any care (to judge against) the private lives of their own talent.
If you are reading this and are this or that - don't be dissuaded from working for a corporation just because the CEO's political beliefs. People are blowing this totally out of proportion.
Unless you're directly in contact with the CEO and he's spewing hate (rare) you are ok.
(I upvoted you.)