Every time Mozilla steps on a rake regarding privacy or security, people come rushing out telling everyone to switch to Firefox forks. And I always feel bad about it, because if your main concern is privacy or security, there is no scenario where you would be better off on a Firefox fork
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Jason Lefkowitz
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz • • •"Explain." OK.
1) No Firefox fork is doing large-scale engineering work on the browser. They're all small teams whose main contribution is things like different configuration settings. If Mozilla dies, these forks will all die too.
2) Some forks consider it a feature that they keep old, insecure APIs Firefox itself abandoned because they could not be secured (NPAPI, XUL, etc.) Mozilla could not secure these APIs; forks aren't going to be able to. Most don't bother trying.
3) You're still running on Mozilla code, so your trust model still includes Mozilla. Now it just also includes a third party. Do you trust them? Why?
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Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz • • •Follow-up points, to answer frequently asked questions:
"Are you saying I should switch to Chrome?" No. I hate Chrome. I'm just saying no current Firefox fork is the silver bullet many people seem to think it is.
"Are Firefox forks inherently doomed?" No. I could imagine a Firefox fork that was a credible alternative. It would just require a lot more resources than any existing fork has.
"What's your suggestion then?" I don't have one. The options all come with a long train of drawbacks. You have to choose which drawbacks you can live with.
"That sucks!" Yeah man. Everything sucks these days. I don't know what to tell you
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Wolf480pl
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz • • •ok, but consider the following:
If every time Mozila steps on a rake, we will stick to Firefox, because that's still the least bad option, what will Mozilla learn?
That there are no negative consequences from stepping on rakes.
Conversely, if every time Mozilla steps on a rake, we take a destructive action that hurts both us and Mozilla, then hopefully Mozilla will stop stepping on rakes.
Now the question is, what is the best way to make Mozilla suffer?
alcinnz
in reply to Wolf480pl • • •@wolf480pl Personally I think we need a more radical answer!
We need a better web where we don't up begging Mozilla (or whoever takes their place) to stop stepping on those rakes!
Wolf480pl
in reply to alcinnz • • •@alcinnz a better web...
Now instead of begging Mozilla, you're begging 1000s of companies to please use our subset of web standards.
Wolf480pl
in reply to Wolf480pl • • •@alcinnz
Unless we can defund Chrome, so that they cannot keep developing the web standarda we don't like.
I think that'd take a court order but would be interesting to see.
Wolf480pl
in reply to Wolf480pl • • •@alcinnz to be clear: I'm not saying we shouldn't have a subset of web standards, and foster a subswt of websites that stick to that subset of standards, and browsers that can display that subset.
But that doesn't solve the problem of still having to use a mainstream browser for interacting with the mainstream web.
alcinnz
in reply to Wolf480pl • • •@wolf480pl My answer for the mainstream web *would've* been alternate frontends like Invidious, but seeing YouTube fight those... After all there's relatively few of them!
Sigh, "mainstream"...
alcinnz
in reply to alcinnz • • •@wolf480pl Also I'll remark: I think softpower would go a lot further than hard power here.
With governments exemplifying good web design. At which point I can express how much I appreciate the UK's efforts!
(which I don't think I can credit to their politicians...)
Wolf480pl
in reply to alcinnz • • •josemanuel
in reply to alcinnz • • •@alcinnz I'm all for that as long as we stop talking about it and start working on it, even if it eventually leads us nowhere.
@wolf480pl @jalefkowit
alcinnz
in reply to josemanuel • • •Yes, I should get back to it...
Thankfully I'm not the only one doing something about it!
@wolf480pl @jalefkowit
Lorraine Lee
in reply to josemanuel • • •#Gemini is the alternative to the bloated #WebStandards that we all deserve. It's an even smaller slice of the audience pie than Firefox, though. I think the goal is not to make Mozilla suffer, but to make sure the 0.01% who want to operate noncommercially on the Internet are not edged out entirely. The question is whether commercial and noncommercial can "share the road" on the so-called information duperhighway. I call it the information duperhighway because it has the economic climate of a carny show.
If what you need is an agent to do your online banking, there will never be an open source way to interface with that until the banking monopoly is busted. (Note, I'm not a Christian, this is one of those stopped clock things) Keep that chromium browser, or handset mfr supplied Spamdroid phone, on hand for unavoidable "number of the beast" type transactions, while minimizing your involvement in elective NOTB stuff such as main$tream $ocial media, while putting out feelers for community in non-web Internet resources such as Gemini, or the Fediverse accessed via open source non-browser utilities such as Tuba, Relatica, etc.
Wolf480pl
in reply to Lorraine Lee • • •@lori @alcinnz @josemanuel
> Gemini is the alternative to the bloated WebStandards that we all deserve
but not the alternative we need
Lorraine Lee
in reply to Wolf480pl • • •alcinnz
in reply to Lorraine Lee • • •@lori @wolf480pl @josemanuel Personally I'm sticking with HTML+CSS because:
1) I love writing inline links & emphasis, though I understand why others wouldn't.
2) There's *lots* of existing pages which at least mostly restrict themselves to this subset, which deserve preserving.
3) I don't consider HTML+optional-CSS unwarranted complexity.
Kicou
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz • • •@alda
Not disagreeing with you, and I think most people understand that using a fork has some implications when it comes to vulnerability patching coming from upstream code (especially when the forked project is led by a small team)
However, the recent PR debacle is not about a technical aspect of the software, nor is it about the code licence, but about the new Terms of Use that were poorly worded and were subject to interpretation. They have since been revised and somewhat clarified, but the negative sentiment will take a while to subside, if ever
I would also like to point out that forks are a good thing in my opinion. It means that the source project is considered healthy enough to be used as a base for new projects who want to add their own spin and features that either can eventually be back ported, or simply reinforce an ecosystem
Blink's current overwhelming market dominance is partly due to so many new browser projects being spawned from Chromium, so instead of throwing shade on new Gecko browsers, we should celebrate them (and yes, I wish there were more core browser engines, but as you pointed out it is no small technical feat to build one)
Some of these forks are mere tweaks, but others take it further to create a new experience. Zen browser comes to mind, for instance
mcc
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz • • •Hi, I see your point, but here is the problem. The new Firefox Terms of Use, the one with unacceptable IP terms, contains this line:
"These Terms only apply to the Executable Code version of Firefox, not the Firefox source code."
Therefore, I must use a fork of Firefox (or at least an alternate build/distribution, such as Debian's) or I must switch to Chrome. Those are my only options. I am unable to take your thread as anything except an argument to switch to Chrome.
Jason Lefkowitz
in reply to mcc • • •@mcc My argument isn't specific to the current ToS changes.
I agree that the current options suck. I don't like them any more than you do. I just don't see any existing Firefox forks that offer a compelling reason to believe they are a long term solution.
Preston Maness ☭
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz • • •mcc
in reply to Preston Maness ☭ • • •Mattias Eriksson 🦀🚵♂️
in reply to mcc • • •Maybe the data harvesting protection clauses should be moved from the EULA to the software license. That way it isn't something you can change on a whim.