cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/20260243
Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled
Google Chrome is now encouraging uBlock Origin users who have updated to the latest version to switch to other ad blockers before Manifest v2 extensions are disabled.
I see many people say to just use forks of Firefox. I use Librewolf myself. However, are such forks not very dependent on upstream Firefox not being completely enshittified? Will it be possible to keep the forks free of all new bullshit, or does that at any point become a too difficult/comprehensive task for the maintainers?
At that point the forks will become its own thing and depart from Firefox.
Which is ironically and exactly how Firefox came to be.
Netscape fucked up Navigator, some folks forked Navigator and created Phoenix - which then was renamed to Firebird, then Firefox. And somewhere in that timeline the Mozilla foundation ditched Navigator in favor of the fork.
But is it viable? I know very little of browser development, but my impression is that it is a lot of work to develop and keep the browsers secure. If Librewolf separated completely from upstream Firefox, would they be able to keep the browser secure without significantly expanding their team?
I ask in earnest, as I said I know very little about this.
For Firefox forks, it’s viable since the forks aren’t doing all that much in the grand scheme of things. That isn’t to say what they’re doing is in any way bad, it’s just that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
Firefox is a secure browser and already has 99% of the work done. Most changes which forks make can be done just by changing the config. Some unfortunately have to be made seperately, and that does require extensive testing. Some can even be lifted from other open-source projects.
Separating from source just isn’t viable. Something nuclear would need to happen for any fork to decide to seperate from Firefox. If we just look at the Chromium side of things, Microsoft found it easier to switch to Chromium than to keep making IE/Edge from scratch, and Microsoft surely has a lot of resources to burn.
Firefox is a secure browser and already has 99% of the work done. Most changes which forks make can be done just by changing the config. Some unfortunately have to be made seperately, and that does require extensive testing. Some can even be lifted from other open-source projects
This is also true for Google’s Chrome
I really wish there was a GPL-licensed rendering engine and browser, accepting community funding, with some momentum behind it.
I feel Ladybird have correctly identified the problem - that all major browsers and engines (including Firefox) get their primary source of funding from Google, and thus ads. And the donations and attention they’ve received show that there is real demand for an alternative.
But I think the permissive license they have chosen means history will repeat itself. KHTML being licensed under the LGPL made it easy for Google to co-opt, since it was so much easier to incorporate into a proprietary (or more permissively licensed) codebase.
There is Netsurf, but the rendering engine understandably and unfortunately lags behind the major ones. I just wish it was possible to gather support and momentum behind it to the same extent that Ladybird has achieved.
GPL is not good enough, a new browser meant to thwart Google should have a strict anti-corporate anti-commercial license, even if it doesn’t fall under the umbrella of open source.
If you don’t believe me, please consult proprietary vendor android distributions.
I’m probably wrong, but isn’t the Mozilla License non-permissive? It’s likely more complicated than that. Non-permissive*
Agreed, it’s licensed under the MPL, a “weak copyleft” license. Each file that is MPL must remain MPL, but other files in the same project can be permissive or even proprietary.
While I definitely think it’s better than a fully permissive license, it seems more permissive than the LGPL, which is the main license of WebKit and Blink. So I don’t feel it’s strong enough to stop it being co-opted.
I think people come down a lot harder on Firefox than they should. It’s a great browser, and they do a lot for the freedom of the community and as an open source ambassador.
I feel like people generally feel that, given their prominence, they could do a lot more. This is certainly true. Their weird corporate structure, their half-baked experiments like Pocket or VPN, their Google ad money, these are all valid issues.
But do you know what else is supported by Google ad money? Chromium and every browser built on it. Do you know what has a far more corporate culture? Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc. Do you know who else had weird little money making experiments? Every other browser (Brave’s Basic Attention Tokens, DDG’s Privacy Pro, etc.).
Firefox makes a bigger target because of their relative popularity and long history.
When Chrome came out it was heavily promoted by everyone I knew (apart from my best friend) I tried it, didn’t like the UI (still don’t) and didn’t see the point of it.
People talked abour how fast it was, and I felt that Firefox was fast enough, and Firefox just worked as I wanted it to, why change?
I kept stedfast with Firefox, apart from when the horrible Australis UI was launched, then I switched to a fork called Pale Moon, which I used for several years untill the current UI was launched.
I have very strong doubts about the security of Palemoon
Honestly it’s more that Lemmy as a whole is just a big group of curmudgeons. Most discussions on here veer strongly negative, not limited to Firefox.
Firefox stands as the lesser of two evils.
The problem is that for the past 8 months, Mozilla has been accelerating making Firefox more evil, and if it continues at this trajectory, it might catch up to Google.
Mozilla == Democrats
Google == Republicans
{qt,gtk}webkit, netsurf, ladybird, textmode browsers == The actual way forwards
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk on US Politics
FUCK U.S. politics creeping in every non-US politics thread.
based, why are you a .world user then
Elaborate.
lemmy.world is full of former redditors that are largely responsible with bringing US political spam to lemmy as a result of the reddit API change exodus. Before (allegedly, I joined sdf some time after the exodus) lemmy largely consisted (and is developed by) leftists. Opening
Allon lemmy.world basically feels like you’re on the front page of reddit, with all the same cancerous pro-DNC propaganda spam.Ugh man, that’s true. Would you say that sdf.org offers a better experience content-wise?
We have unixsurrealism! Fox news (news for foxes), Bun alert system and cool stuff about retro hardware. Any politics involved are often behind rhetoric and never seen as spam.
Is GNOME Web that good? I’m actually asking because I have yet to use it.
The experience varies depending what you are browsing, but for me, it is plenty good. I can use my misskey account, github/gitlab account, can watch YouTube and few other streaming services as well (although how well or if they run at all depends on what streamingservice you use). Webkit GTK has few issues with touch screen devices, like backspace key of on-screen keyboard not working properly or stylus not working properly etc. Also, the PDF view feels a bit janky.
Got it. I’ll take that into consideration once I try it out. Especially since I view PDF files on my browser a lot.
Maybe Ladybird can step in but I am still pissed that they do all communications overe proprietary services (Discord & Microsoft GitHub) which hurts the openness of the project.
Firefox’s desktop market share is the lowest it has ever been, and its mobile share is zero-point-smithereens. not to be a party pooper but google and chromium’s monopolistic hold is only growing stronger.
It’s a good opportunity for any Chrome users in the crowd to switch to Librewolf. It may be a small project but it’s been around for a while and they haven’t made any mistakes that I’ve heard about. Google has its various off-brand browsers using the engine, why shouldn’t Mozilla get some? It comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled, and has none of the telemetry and ads of Firefox.
I don’t care about telemetry that reports what features I use and sends crashes, only actual marketing telemetry. Is Fennec a good choice for me? Stuff like Pocket is annoying but you can sort of disable it in
about:config. Basically, I hate stuff like Pocket but don’t mind stuff like syncing or non-ad based telemetry.Yeah IMO there is nothing in vanilla Firefox to complain about that you can’t disable easily from the settings. You only need librewolf or the arkenfox user.js if you’re a privacy nut.
“Privacy nut” might be a little harsh, as it’s a valid concern.
Firefox has a lot of issues
I dunno… I mean, what are your expectations?
Ultimately I have actual problems in my life, my browser choice is an absolutely marginal decision I make when the actual goal is to visit a website that in itself is usually just a tiny component of something else - say ordering something, checking on a piece of information, etc etc.
It’s kinda weird to even think so much about browsers - excluding when you are actively developing for/with them - that you recognize issues beyond a single big one like “Has no support for an adblocker”. I can get behind that being big enough to matter in regards to which browser is usable or not.
But again, if you develop for Firefox or an addon for it, I can see why details matter and you’d probably have a long laundry list of issues, sure.
usually just a tiny component of something else - say ordering something
Funnily enough, when I go to a restaurant and they have receipts with QR codes (I think it’s Clover), it just doesn’t work in Firefox.
I dunno… I mean, what are your expectations?
Honestly, some sites just don’t want to work properly. Firefox is my main browser. For some reason, Dicks Sporting Goods has like a 50% success rate on whether the page wants to load correctly. I fire up Brave when I’m looking at their website.
