this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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Firefox

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Also from Jamie Zawinski yesterday: Mozilla's Original Sin

Some will tell you that Mozilla's worst decision was to accept funding from Google, and that may have been the first domino, but I hold that implementing DRM is what doomed them, as it led to their culture of capitulation. It demonstrated that their decisions were the decisions of a company shipping products, not those of a non-profit devoted to preserving the open web.

Those are different things and are very much in conflict. They picked one. They picked the wrong one.

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[–] verdigris@lemmy.ml 161 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Still the best browser to support, still the best hope of defending open web standards from Google. Call me when they implement the ads in an onerous way.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 115 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Fucking finally. So many reactionary nerds here. Yes, it may turn to shit. It may not. The result is unknown. What I do know is Firefox has been my browser of choice for two whole decades. Chromium actively is killing adblockers. Firefox right now is not.

If something happens I'll make a switch. Right now, nothing has.

[–] mke@lemmy.world 29 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

I try my best to keep calm and judge things fairly and rationally but, truth is, you get kinda tired of seeing so many iffy-maybe-alright news about Mozilla.

Inline edit: not even a week later, Teixeira v. Moz. Why, Mozilla? Liking you shouldn't be this complicated.

My fear is that by the time "something happens" to Firefox, it'll be something that was entirely avoidable if only we had acted sooner. I'm always wondering if I'm at the point I should be acting.

  • I'm still salty about their previous CEO, Mitchell Baker, I believe, getting bigger bonuses while Firefox market share fell (and layoffs happened, but we lack details to understand those properly).
  • I'm unconvinced that, in a world where the percentage of people using an adblocker is rising, they'll find a way to change people's minds and look at ads, even if they are perfectly, technomagically privacy preserving.
  • I'm unconvinced that owning Firefox, which puts uBlock as a front-and-center extension, and Anonym, an adtech company, will not create a conflict of interest—just like what happened to Google.

For the record, this is my first time commenting on this and I'm also deeply bothered by "reactionary nerds" (everyone switch to librewolf!!), but I understand the sentiment. Hope that added some perspective.

[–] verdigris@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I definitely think it's not ideal and there's room for improvement and social pressure for Mozilla to change its priorities, but I also don't think it's any reason to abandon the project. The reality is that a modern web browser is too massive of a project for a non-commercial entity to reasonably develop and keep updated, and Mozilla is the only such entity that's even remotely got its heart in the right place.

[–] mke@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, we're fully in agreement. I'm not arguing in favor of abandoning Firefox or Mozilla at all. I'm just saying frustration and anxiety are to be expected sometimes. Note that I'm not excusing rudeness or the like.

Re: the burden of developing a modern browser, I wonder what librewolf evangelists think would happen to the project, if Firefox development by Mozilla were to fall due to any reason. To my view, the forks only exist because Firefox still does. After all, if managing an entire browser was possible with their resources, they wouldn't need to fork one.

[–] leopold@lemmy.kde.social 5 points 4 months ago

At best, another Pale Moon is what would happen. They've been maintaining their own hard fork of Gecko by themselves since 2016. They clearly have people capable of maintaining a browser engine, though perhaps not quite enough of them. If Firefox were to die, perhaps joining up with Goanna would be the smart move.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

if only we had acted sooner

Doing what, exactly? Create a fork? Done. Fill their feedback queue with endless screeching about how everything is dooooooom? Done, 10x over. Use another browser instead, say, Chrome? That's what virtually everyone did, yes.=

Plus shouldn't this on paper be positive news? Mozilla can, if they run Anonym well enough, be independent of other ad networks. Run their own. Which in turn means they can control the data and where it's stored, an important issue with third-party ad networks.

[–] mke@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Didn't think I had to say it explicitly. As far as influencing Mozilla's course, I don't believe those to be very helpful methods. A fork may be helpful, but it highly depends on the developer(s). I argue against the second one all the time. Third is laughably counterproductive.

Mozilla is capable of responding to (esp. proper) feedback. For example, regardless of what you think about the subject, the community sent a pretty clear message when they started accepting cryptocurrency donations, which I'm sure they're still keeping in mind to this day.

Point being, engaging with them is one thing that helps and I can do just fine. No need for "endless doom screeching."

Re: positive news. Yes, on paper it can. We'll see how it turns out in reality. I've explained why I'm not immediately into it, though your comment seems to ignore that part of mine. I do want it to work out though, if for no other reason than because what's done is done and ultimately, I just want Firefox to thrive.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago

I think Mozilla needs some fresh faces. They lack a vision and are just flailing around.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, everything kinda bad Firefox does, everything else seems to do worse. So I'm staying with it until that changes.

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[–] tomalley8342@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

If something happens I'll make a switch.

To what?

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

part of the reason I haven't done anything right there. what is there to switch to? Chromium? Where they are actively killing adblockers?

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[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago

The web dying (i mean web browsers, html, javascript, etc) wouldn't be such a bad thing imo.

Look at what's happened to nearly every static content site in the past few years, they've become nearly unusable.

News companies can try to convince ppl to use their apps, but everyone else will continue to use social media apps to get most of their news like they already do anyway. Ppl wanting static content can use the minimal protocols like gemini, gopher, or even a simple markdown web browser, which are already better than most news sites.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Just use a soft fork. The engine is unlikely to get compromised

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 5 points 4 months ago

Speaking of the engine, if Mozilla ever decides to stop developing gecko, it’s going to force the community to continue that work on their own. If that ever happens, it would have a big impact on all the forks too.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 58 points 4 months ago (1 children)

people complain when they were dependent on google and now they complain when they push an alternative to google that is a privacy friendly advertising firm.

like it or not most sites depend on advertising; offering an alternative to google is exactly what the foundation should be doing.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago

THANK YOU

They gotta survive somehow and people would complain regardless.

[–] MrSoup@lemmy.zip 45 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Why having DRM behind a "do you want to install DRM to play media" button is seen as a bad thing? Otherwise everyone would have to use chromium.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 54 points 4 months ago (2 children)

No one can tell you here beyond "DRM bad". Which it is, and I hate it, but you're exactly right. All it would do if Firefox refused to implement would drive most users to chrome because there DRM works.

We are not the majority. The majority (and by that I mean roughly 96% of users) want their browser just to work. Taking a moral stand doesn't resonate with them, they just see a broken browser and move on.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Which it is, and I hate it, but you’re exactly right.

And beyond that, this is also not Mozilla's decision. A browser-making company is not the one to ask to fix digital media copyright and its enforcement. Talk to you elected personel if you want to fix that, and/or get into politics yourself and fix it.

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[–] potentiallynotfelix@lemdro.id 34 points 4 months ago

Best option though. Chromium browsers are all subject to google's wrath, and there are plenty of Firefox forks to go around. If you don't like vanilla Firefox, try Abrowser, available on Trisquel GNU/Linux, a fully libre GNU/Linux Distribution as well as from the Arch GNU/Linux User Repository.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 19 points 4 months ago (6 children)

DRM is opt-in. For sure it is kind of in favor of Netflix and Co. But they could just forced people to use Chrome, couldnt they?

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[–] ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That website raped my eyes

[–] lud@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago

Yeah, it fucking sucks [blah, blah, blah], it's green text on black.

[–] Nighed@feddit.uk 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Do Firefox forks support the same Firefox addon ecosystem, or do they have smaller selections/manual steps?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I couldn’t say as I can’t speak to every fork in existence, but I think most of them support all Firefox extensions. AFAIK LibreWolf does.

[–] dkxkee@mas.to 5 points 4 months ago

@davel @Nighed Have been using LibreWolf for a few weeks now, and have had no problems adding Firefox extensions.

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[–] Templa@beehaw.org 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wish the time he spend complaining was developing an alternative. But he rather support the Apple ecosystem.

He's so petulant online with people that I can only imagine how awful it must be to have him as a boss.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 months ago

Librewolf is a good option

[–] c0smokram3r@midwest.social 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Thoughts on Mullvad browser?

[–] ItsComplicated@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago

They do not support dark mode on web pages if this is important to you. Reason given is easy to fingerprint.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I’m not a security expert, but I think it’s roughly on-par with LibreWolf. I think they both come without Encrypted Media Extensions.

https://mullvad.net/en/browser/hard-facts

And here's a listing of the compile options:

[…]

  • --disable-eme (Encrypted Media Extensions, for other DRMs)
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[–] HouseWolf@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

I'm gonna keep using and recommending LibreWolf for the foreseeable future.

But I wonder what other alternative web engines do we have with both Chromium and Gecko being run by advertisers now?

I know Palemoon runs a fork of a really old version of a Gecko and I used it for a bit back when Firefox 58 broke most add-ons. But I'm a bit iffy of it's security these days.

[–] leopold@lemmy.kde.social 3 points 4 months ago

At the moment, we have Blink (Chrome), Gecko (Firefox), Webkit (Safari), Servo, Ladybird and Goanna (Pale Moon).

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