Trust in Firefox and Mozilla Is Gone – Let's Talk Alternatives

https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-gone/

by ekianjo • 1 year ago

280 235 1 year ago

layer86• 1 year ago

I’ll repeat my comment from yesterday on another Firefox thread:

In terms of open source there are really only Chromium- and Firefox-derived browsers (I’m disregarding projects like the still pre-alpha Ladybird here). With Chromium browsers, you’re still subject to Google’s whims in the long term, such as removal of V3 extension support. (I.e. a conceivable fork with V3 compatibility will inevitably become too difficult to keep up to date with the mainline.) If Mozilla dies, Firefox and derivatives will in all likelihood wither away as well. IMO there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, and also keeping them accountable and criticizing them where criticism is due. They are still roughly the good guys, even if sometimes misguided.

The topic of Firefox and ads is nothing new:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28783381

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36351322

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-adverti...

One alternative recommended by the present article, Brave, is dabbling in ads as well: https://brave.com/brave-ads/

drpossum2• 1 year ago

Firefox and derivatives will in all likelihood wither away as well

No, they won't. The community will pick them up and maintain them sensibly because there will be a need. The best thing that could happen to Firefox would be Mozilla dying.

If you disagree, you can look at decades of Linux being successful despite endless bellowing about how it couldn't survive until it did. It did because it fit a sorely needed open source operating system niche. BSD failed to meet that exactly because it was controlled at the time by selfish garbage organizations.

layer86• 1 year ago

Linux is majorly being developed and maintained by paid company employees. What interest would companies have in maintaining Firefox? They don’t seem to be very interested in contributing to Firefox development today. Another data point is that Microsoft gave up on their original Edge browser engine because using Chromium was ultimately easier than chasing Chrome compatibility. Who will defend Firefox’s interests in WHATWG? In the best case, it would result in something akin to today’s Mozilla Foundation.

wslh• 1 year ago

Which are the selfish BSD organizations you are referring to?

linguae• 1 year ago

At the time of early Linux, BSD was still a UC Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group project, though the CSRG would disband after 4.4BSD was released sometime in 1994-1995. BSD had a user base even in the days when using BSD required an AT&T Unix license. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was an effort to replace the AT&T bits with open source bits. This reached a breakthrough in 1991 when all that was remaining was six kernel files, which 386BSD was able to fill in that gap. 1991 was the year Linux 0.01 was released.

Unfortunately, BSD’s growth was stunted due to the lawsuit between AT&T (USL) and BSDi, where there were allegations over the open source code:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_In....

By the time the lawsuit was settled, Linux had already captured the attention of those wanting a FOSS Unix-like operating system. However, it’s quite remarkable how FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD found niches in the 1990s and are still around today. They may lack Linux’s market share, and admittedly they don’t have the same levels of driver and application support as Linux, but they are excellent operating systems that serve their niches well.

slightwinder2• 1 year ago

The community will pick them up and maintain them sensibly because there will be a need.

The community can't offer the resources and competence necessary for maintaining a Browser on the same high level as Mozilla is doing now. The community would likely also not be able to influence, or even just follow, the workgroups for web-standards. Ultimately, they would be left out and have to play a game of catch.

Of course, how much of that would be necessary is a different question, but long term, in a world without Mozilla, any Firefox-fork would become slowly useless, or even fast if Google decides to abandon the free web and go down a different route. If you want to see how useful this will end, look at all the other browser out there which are not Blink-based, a Firefox-fork or Safari. They do exist, and they all are pretty awful for general usage.

blueflow• 1 year ago

Things like this have been happening ever other year. I'm evaluating returning to an offline life.

sciens3_3• 1 year ago

Yes, like:

- Leaving my smartphone in the car in case I must MFA for work or have for safety... I’d love to use a flip phone or minimal smartphone that only had camera, FaceTime, maps and an authenticator; I could just delete apps, but I don’t want to be able to install anything that wastes my life.

- If others are watching streaming video, could go somewhere else to read.

But, I may not have adequate willpower, and I struggle to read.

kmlx2• 1 year ago

In terms of open source there are really only Chromium- and Firefox-derived browsers (I’m disregarding projects like the still pre-alpha Ladybird here).

isn’t webkit open source?

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit

or maybe are you referring to something else?

layer86• 1 year ago

WebKit is a browser engine, not a browser. There is no open-source browser based on it that you could use as an alternative to Firefox.

hedora4• 1 year ago

I was under the impression Apple forked it and didn’t contribute upstream, but the text on that landing page suggests otherwise.

Is it roughly comparable to safari, functionality-wise?

Also, is there a non-gnome version? Gtk’s fine; containerized gnome, not so much.

escape_velocity• 1 year ago

I believe the GNOME Web Browser (previously known as Epiphany) is built from the WebKit source.

laweijfmvo• 1 year ago

Kagi’s browser is based on WebKit, but currently macOS only and non-opensource. I’m perfectly willing to pay for a browser but not sure if closed source is viable no matter how much you trust the company today.

MaKey• 1 year ago

Nitpick: Chrome removed V2 Manifest support, not V3. Firefox still supports it.

josh-sematic2• 1 year ago

I can’t wait until Servo has spun up sufficiently. https://servo.org/

xeonmc• 1 year ago

Turns out Mozilla’s abandonment was a blessing in disguise.

jpc06• 1 year ago

In the latest Ladybird update the graphs show servo is quite a bit behind Flow and Ladybird itself.

Right now ladybird is the closest to getting past the mark and has the most momentum by a long shot.

As great as having another option would be, Servo is not a browser, if people were going to build a browser on a different engine then webkit is perfectly viable right now, but people don't.

demosthanos2• 1 year ago

IMO there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, and also keeping them accountable and criticizing them where criticism is due.

If there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, how do we keep them accountable? If they know that they're the only hope for a cross-platform browser that isn't developed by Google, then they know that any outrage is a bluff that can't have teeth because they're indispensable.

They are still roughly the good guys, even if sometimes misguided.

There aren't any good guys here, there are just people doing people things.

Mozilla is more than sometimes misguided, they've been essentially permanently distracted from Firefox as the core mission for more than ten years now. Their organization is designed in a way that makes funding Firefox directly impossible, and they haven't made any moves to fix it. Instead they set up failed side project after failed side project and repeatedly alienate their core with ads, while insisting that donations couldn't possibly work in spite of the fact that Thunderbird clearly shows that they can—as long as the project is unshackled from the mess that is Mozilla.

It might well be that the best thing that could happen for Firefox would be for it to get evicted from Mozilla like Thunderbird was.

aquova• 1 year ago

If there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, how do we keep them accountable? If they know that they're the only hope for a cross-platform browser that isn't developed by Google, then they know that any outrage is a bluff that can't have teeth because they're indispensable.

Except they're not indispensable. They're now the fourth place browser in terms of market share on a good day, and dwindling. They need all the good will they can get, and this sort of discussion amongst their most hardcore audience is exactly what keeps them accountable.

homebrewer2• 1 year ago

Do note that Thunderbird can afford to keep a relatively tiny team (compared to Firefox) because it stands on the shoulder of giants (Firefox) for its UI and HTML renderer. That Thunderbird is able to cover its expenses with donations really doesn't prove that Firefox will also be able to do so, but that doesn't excuse Mozilla from not even trying.

failed side project after failed side project

Rust and MDN have been huge successes. Their mobile OS is still alive and kicking, although other people are making money from that now. They also put in a ton of resources into decreasing FF memory footprint as part of the failed mobile OS effort, which benefits all of us.

layer86• 1 year ago

You keep them accountable by calling them out in public, as with the recent ToS change, where it made them clarify and improve the new wording. Keep calling them out on stuff that isn’t acceptable.

ensignavenger• 1 year ago

Longer term, I think our best hope is the Servo project, and I would encourage anyone who is able to support Servo development.

sciens3_3• 1 year ago

One alternative recommended by the present article, Brave, is dabbling in ads as well

It blocks ads by default. It also doesn’t indicate it would sell my data. So, I’m using Brave or anything that doesn’t sell my data until Ladybird is available.

haswell2• 1 year ago

If you’re philosophically opposed to what Firefox is doing, Firefox forks like LibreWolf, Floorp, etc. seem like a better place to turn.

Moving to Brave is just supporting a Chrome monoculture in the long run, and the problems with Chrome are far worse than the problems with Firefox.

Szpadel• 1 year ago

maybe unpopular opinion, but I would be happy to pay small yearly subscription so they could focus on development instead of harvesting money from my data

makeitdouble• 1 year ago

That's what most of us want but can't: your only option is to donate to Mozilla, which will then do whatever it wants with your money.

Mozilla could allow for donation/services exclusively bound to develop Firefox, but at this point they have absolutely no incentive to do so and unsurprisingly have always refused to do it.

011000112• 1 year ago

What about Opera?

tannhaeuser• 1 year ago

Repeating my earlier comment as well:

FWIW, webkit's github [1] links directly to the "Epiphany Technology Preview" at gnome.org as a supported project. I have no idea if that leads to a full-featured modern browser for Linux, but I'm pretty sure if it doesn't, there should be a fork that does or creating one might be worth considering, and should be even fun and relatively easy to get kicked off. Also, since Webkit is based on KHTML, there might be re-integrations into KDE worth exploring. Ages ago there used to be Safari builds for Windows Apple created to get Safari into the hand of web developers that weren't using Macs, but it doesn't look like there's anything left to pickup.

[1] https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit

marcthe12• 1 year ago

Epiphany is a webkit browser for linux and due webkit architecture, gtkwebkit uses alot of gnome components such as libsoup and gstreamer. The biggest flaw is the webrtc support is missing so not online meetings.

JumpCrisscross17• 1 year ago

IMO there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla

If open source is your ride or die, sure. My unfortunate takeaway is non profit, open source and free isn’t a good fit for browser development.

Kagi’s Orion [1] is a solid WebKit browser and to where I’m shifting my support. (I’ve been a medium-sized fundraiser for Mozilla. They’re going to see seven-figure chargebacks from a variety of directions over the coming weeks.)

One alternative recommended by the present article, Brave, is dabbling in ads as well

And crypto. Hard pass.

[1] https://kagi.com/orion/

PokemonNoGo2• 1 year ago

I’ve been a medium-sized fundraiser for Mozilla. They’re going to see seven-figure chargebacks from a variety of directions over the coming weeks.

You donated a seven-figure sum to Mozilla that you are going to chargeback? Sorry i didn't understand this part.

lxgr8• 1 year ago

Have you considered outright donating to Apple instead? Seems like a more direct way to put your money and support behind Kagi's upstream rendering engine developers.

And seriously, threatening chargebacks, which can and often do cost the recipient money beyond just the loss of an original payment/donation, against a nonprofit over an (all things considered) minor change in direction is pretty despicable.

I could get behind it if this was actual non-profit fraud, but none of these points of criticisms against Mozilla seem new. You knew what you were donating to.

isodev3• 1 year ago

I don't understand articles discussing “trust” and throwing in Brave. Are you unclear what trust means?

A proper trustworthy Chromium-based alternative would be Vivaldi. Even more, as a company based mainly in the EU, they've managed to create a fantastic browser while also following all consumer protection mechanisms typical for the region.

potsandpans• 1 year ago

Could you expand on the trust bit? I recently switched to Brave due to it being the best as blocking adds and fingerprinting.

What am I missing that I should be considering?

lukastyrychtr• 1 year ago

I definitely agree. Much more if you need support for screen readers, then you can't use the slowly emerging alternatives even for a test drive, because either the a1y stack is not a priority, or the supporting libraries are not featureful enough.

andrepd• 1 year ago

Brave, is dabbling in ads as well

It's not "dabbling", their whole model is ad-funded and crypto-funded.

weinzierl2• 1 year ago

"If Mozilla dies, Firefox and derivatives will in all likelihood wither away [..]"

There once was a company with the second most popular browser but it could not survive against the monopoly. People got together and their browser rose as open source like phoenix from the ashes.

Initially they even called it Phoenix but switched to Firebird, for reasons I don't remember. Since this was also the name of a database they changed the name again this time to Firefox.

Don't you think history could repeat?

wtallis2• 1 year ago

Microsoft was a major contributor to IE's downfall, through their incompetence. Google is doing a much better job of not shooting themselves in the foot with Chrome.

caycep• 1 year ago

debian and the linux kernel survive but somehow manage not to sell ads...

stodor89• 1 year ago

At this point, if they make it inconvenient to browse the web, I'll just browse less.

Mozilla just can't stop f**ing up, and half of the websites I use don't work well with Brave.

TwoNineFive• 1 year ago

They are still roughly the good guys

They are not. They are the bad guys. This is just telling people to go back to their abusers. Shame on your morals. Shame on your lack of vision.

econ2• 1 year ago

Besides crypto mining there seem to be no new ideas that made it onto this page.

Brave couldn't find time to maintain IPFS the rest of the browsers are stuck in a kind of "no one owns a fax machine" vision.

TOR also seems fun out of the box.

Are there other newer things in the works or that would look good on a browser?

hedora4• 1 year ago

I miss bbs’s, gopher and nntp.

I’m serious: They were much more user-respecting than the web.

econ2• 1 year ago

It's strange isn't it? In other areas there are so many projects no one can keep up.

Now that html has grown into an application platform I would like to see some new document types. Say, turn readability into its own document type. Headings, text images and video. Give it a sticky hamburger menu with links in it. A spec for how the user should be able to style the doc. A protocol to check for new versions. Then freeze it forever.

Similarly there could be standard forms the way the paper world has them.

Or something else that bags a bunch of obvious permissions into one easy to use thing.

cphoover• 1 year ago

Isn’t that patch just converting inline strings to localized/internationalized strings?

wtallis2• 1 year ago

No, it's not changing anything from an internationalization perspective. It's introducing a change to the content, gated by a 'firefox-tou' feature flag, and tagging the old text with an expiration date of 25-04-2025. The effect is that bits like "and we don’t sell your personal data" will be going away.

darthrupert• 1 year ago

Right now: Librewolf.

Perhaps later: Ladybird.

javajosh• 1 year ago

There are two big error modes that we need to look out for when reacting in anger. First is to not jump from the frying pan into the fire by adopting a browser that makes nice sounding claims but really has no way to back them up. Installing a blob from a random website is never a good idea, especially when it's a browser. Personally, I think Librewolf is worth the risk but time may proved me wrong. The second error is a bit more subtle in that we need to think more deeply about how to fund browser development such that protects user interest. Clearly there are very powerful and pervasive market forces that Will attempt to warp any browser project into selling user data. That's true for all ubiquitous platform software, but the browser is particularly vulnerable because it exists at a high level of abstraction and therefore high level of utility. So I will make a prediction that the next successful privacy focused browser is going to be something like Cursor, a fork of a well-known browser engine with built-in local AI in service of the user only. This project will have to be a loss leader for another money making entity that requires a truly secure and private platform.

bee_rider5• 1 year ago

One of the browsers listed in GNU IceCat. They are one of the few organizations that can probably be trusted not to join the ad blob. So, that could be an interesting option.

SkiFire133• 1 year ago

GNU IceCat is still based on Firefox. Sure, it may remove tracking and some other sketchy stuff, but ultimately it's not a replacement for Firefox because if Firefox dies then GNU IceCat does as well.

TZubiri3• 1 year ago

Remind me, what was wrong with chromium?

gkbrk2• 1 year ago

Built and controlled by the largest ad company in the world, and recently removed crucial ad blocking APIs?

hedora4• 1 year ago

Also, oh my god, the enshittifcation!

I had to install it for some work thing, and booting a clean copy reminds me of a peak pre-loaded-software windows box.

All they need to add to reach full feature parity is a Candy Crush captcha that gates the “login to enhance google tracking” and “switch search engines” dialogs.

I honestly don’t understand how people put up with the boiled frog crap from Google. The last time I ran a test query, the ads pushed 100% of the search results off the front page.

TZubiri3• 1 year ago

so you want software you don't pay for but you also don't want ads in your gratis software.

and I imagine also that you are a software dev and you want to get paid for your efforts yourself.

Got it.

ciupicri4• 1 year ago

I personally don't like its interface, I just like Firefox more.

thomassmith652• 1 year ago

'Ladybird' browser has so much buzz this year, and seems close to a proper release.

This is the best week ever for the SerenityOS guy. He must be over the moon.

moooo99• 1 year ago

The Ladybird project is targeting an alpha release in 2026. they do make a lot of progress, but they are nowehere near a „proper release“.

thomassmith652• 1 year ago

My wording was poor.

What I meant was: a release that doesn't require building from source.

Also 'close' may have come across like 'days away' which is not what I meant.

jpc06• 1 year ago

Last I heard they are targeting an alpha this year all things going well.

https://youtu.be/xuf1mcYuCaI?si=-RGFmUkrNLTz-7GR

Steven420• 1 year ago

Why isn't everyone calling for the board of Mozilla to step down? They haven't had the best interests of there users in mind for a long time.

JumpCrisscross17• 1 year ago

They haven't had the best interests of there users in mind for a long time

Mozilla are a non-profit. They don’t work for their users. I’m honestly convinced a non-profit open-source model isn’t a good fit for browser development.

Kagi’s Orion [1] has the right idea. If the users pay you’re accountable to them.

[1] https://kagi.com/orion/

AstralStorm7• 1 year ago

Really? How many requested features have they implemented? Do you vote with the amount of money you pay to them?

protimewaster3• 1 year ago

If the users pay you’re accountable to them.

Except, apparently, the paying users that don't use Apple hardware.

MaxBarraclough• 1 year ago

I’m honestly convinced a non-profit open-source model isn’t a good fit for browser development.

You think the freedoms granted by Free and Open Source licenses are a problem? How's that?

I see little value in the 'Kagi' browser, it looks like just another WebKit distribution. It promises to be free of telemetry, but refusing to even release your source is a death-knell for a privacy-oriented browser.

solardev6• 1 year ago

Right idea, but it doesn't really seem usable right now. It crashed six times on me in an hour, including twice when I was trying to submit a bug report about the crashes. Multiple other users are reporting similar issues.

Growing pains, I hope, but it doesn't bode well...

ajb• 1 year ago

Although I think they have the right incentives, a browser is too big an investment for each of these privacy-focused companies to make their own. I suspect what needs to happen is that Kagi, Mullvad, Proton etc should to start a common org in which they sit on the board. That way they can each hold the others to account, but there would still be one pool of money funding browser development, with some chance of getting big enough to take over from mozilla.

solardev6• 1 year ago

Most non-profits are accountable to somebody, usually whoever grants them money. In this case Google just pays Mozilla oodles of cash every year as cheap insurance against monopoly regulations and doesn't really care what they do. The worse Firefox is, the better it is for Chrome.

So the board and the org are accountable to nobody (else) and can do whatever they want. As long as they keep getting millions from Google, there's no real incentive for them to change. And there's a very real disincentive... if they actually do anything significant, they risk alienating their primary funder and the entire org goes bankrupt the next day.

It's an inherent conflict of interest.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos• 1 year ago

I don't want the board to step down I want the whole organization shuttered.

tambre• 1 year ago

Side note: the site has an IPv4-mapped IPv6 address as its AAAA record. Surprisingly this actually works. Unfortunately there's no way to contact them over email to let them know that it's wrong/useless.

ElectronBadger• 1 year ago

I've already switched to Vivaldi some time ago, no regrets.

https://vivaldi.com/desktop/

https://vivaldi.com/for-a-better-web/

https://vivaldi.com/we-respect-your-privacy/

SkiFire133• 1 year ago

Vivaldi is still chromium based.

voidee• 1 year ago

Yes, but one of the best alternatives until Ladybird is ready.

Librewolf, Vivaldi, Orion (iOS and macOS only) are all solid options.

isodev3• 1 year ago

Agreed, this should've been the Chromium mention instead of Brave (crypto, ads, that CEO...)

ciupicri4• 1 year ago

What's wrong with Brave's CEO?

ciupicri4• 1 year ago

Why would I switch to a proprietary browser?

the__alchemist• 1 year ago

This is rough: There are many types of popular software that aren't that big of a deal to re-implement. You could look at examples of popular software and think "This blows, I'll re-invent it". With care, dedication, and careful management, you could do it. This doesn't mean people will switch from the popular established software, but you could do it.

Web browsers are not one of these. Way too complicated, largely due to the complicated and changing DOM and JS specs.

augustk2• 1 year ago

I think it would be a good idea to define a subset of the current web technologies and make all important sites like banks, tax office etc. to adhere to this standard basic functionality. It also needs a logo which can be used on these sites.

kuhaku22• 1 year ago

We used to have such a thing: it was called HTML. Sites were supposed to have their content in the HTML, and if JS wasn't enabled, you'd still get the semantic hypertext. A vast majority of web pages are text and images, and don't actually require fancy CSS/JS. But the ship of progressive enhancement has long sailed,[0] and tons of static sites have JS, and all the hundreds of APIs that entails, baked into their functionality. Hell, there are many sites nowadays that will use JS to stream the HTML to your device for some reason.

[0]: JQuery/AJAX were probably the beginning of the end. But even without those, you had developers doing things like putting main images in CSS using the background property, overloading text with icon fonts, loading videos using "blob:" crap, or other abuse of semantics. Once it became possible to push more state to the browser instead of the server, the floodgates opened. I remember in the dial-up days, you could take a browser offline, and webpages would function perfectly, yet now, even hitting the back button can be a gamble. Now, hitting File > Save fails 95% of the time for me.

lxgr8• 1 year ago

Ah yes, the long-term viable strategy of replacing Firefox with a Firefox fork, that will somehow still receive upstream updates from... somewhere.

swed420• 1 year ago

Doesn't need to be long-term viable. Forks like LibreWolf are sufficient to fill the gap until true alternatives like Ladybird are ready.

bmacho• 1 year ago

What about

    - upstream firefox
    - volunteers
    - paid developers

beej71• 1 year ago

I'd pay $100 per year to support Firefox, no problem. Most people probably wouldn't be willing to go more than $20.

But I do wonder how many of us there are who would pay, and what kind of dev team that would support.

throwaway81523• 1 year ago

The problem is the complexity of the web itself, and that complexity was to some extent created and amplified by Firefox. IDK if there is any escape other than to treat the existing web as a modern day AOL that sensible users ignore in favor of a clean niche alternative. Sort of like GNU/Linux users in the ocean of Windows.

dmos62• 1 year ago

I wonder if I'm in the minority in not caring about Firefox's privacy subtleties, as long as I get good extension support. I just want a different browser vendor than my ad and video vendor (Google).

solardev6• 1 year ago

I don't even want that. I just want Chrome with adblock :( If Google would just let me pay for Chrome and Search without ads, the way YouTube does, I'd happily pay for both. They can still have my data as long as they don't show me ads.

tim333• 1 year ago

Chrome with adblock still seems a thing? It's what I'm typing this on and apparently ublock lite works fine with v3.

degrees573• 1 year ago

I'd like to ask if there is a bookmark sync function and plugin sync function in any of these alternatives.

It does seem to me that Mozilla corporation management has become corrupted, and will only get worse; so I'd like to move off Mozilla Firefox and onto something else.

But I really like that when I wipe a machine and install a new OS, first I install the Bitwarden plugin, then that lets me log in to the Mozilla account, and then that syncs down all my plugins and bookmarks into Firefox. I really like my Temporary Containers plugin in Firefox, for example, in addition to uBlock Origin. But all of them, really: the GNU Terry Pratchet plugin is fun.

The Mozilla Firefox solution does also work both on Linux and Windows.

If there is some other form of sync for plugins and bookmarks, then I'd leap at Librewolf or Waterfox or Icecat. But I am unaware of a sync solution that would work.

Anyone have something they like? I can self-host if that is an option.

homebrewer2• 1 year ago

Brave has sync which does not rely on a centralized server — it's peer to peer between your machines only. I encourage you to do your own research on it because the hivemind's opinion was solidified long ago and results in repeating lots of nonsense that has little connection to reality.

(I don't use it except for web development, but I also despise FUD.)

JumpCrisscross17• 1 year ago

the hivemind's opinion was solidified long ago

I have vetoed it at several organisations on the basis of its crypto tie in. Has that changed?

degrees573• 1 year ago

Thank you; I didn't know that Brave has a peer-to-peer sync.

weikju• 1 year ago

Brave has sync which does not rely on a centralized server

Didn't they change that to some more centralized solution in the past couple of years, citing difficulties with peer-to-peer syncing?

Sync v1 was a completely custom sync system, built as part of the old “Muon” browser. Sync v1 stored all data into an encrypted log on S3. New browsers joining the sync chain had to download all the logs and re-assemble the events in order. The browsers were also responsible for cleaning up out of date data records.
Sync v2 was rebuilt to be more directly compatible with the Chromium sync system (Chromium is the same open source base of Google’s Chrome and Brave). Brave built a sync server that more directly followed Chromium’s sync protocol, but defaulting instead to use encrypted data records. Sync v2 more easily supports more sync data types, while still keeping the client side data encrypted, so only you can see your data.

https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047642371-Syn...

mdaniel• 1 year ago

Depending on how far those Firefox forks have deviated, self-hosting the Firefox sync services has been a thing for quite a long time: https://github.com/mozilla/fxa and https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run...

degrees573• 1 year ago

Thank you. I was unaware of this.

42772827• 1 year ago

The only chance of an another browser engine being successful at this point is if a nation state funds it

haswell2• 1 year ago

If you’re looking for alternate browsers, at least consider a Firefox fork (LibreWolf, Floorp, etc.) Moving to a Chromium derivative seems completely counterproductive in the big picture and feeds the Chrome beast.

While I am no fan of Mozilla’s moves here, I think people are transferring their anger and distrust at the worst offenders in the market to Mozilla, and I worry that the end result will be much worse if we just abandon Mozilla.

jillesvangurp2• 1 year ago

A bunch of Firefox and Chromium derivatives are not a long term solution. The good news is that both Chromium and Firefox are open source. The bad news is that Google is funding these (and Safari too) via advertisement revenue. So, Google holds a lot of power here. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The core of the issue is that Google pays directly or indirectly for the salaries of most of those working on Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, and Safari. Their money is funding the whole thing.

Alternatives like Ladybird that lack this funding and commercial backing don't stand much of a chance to catch up technically. Unless they nail a sustainable funding model that isn't Google bribing them into submission.

Both Chromium and Firefox are fixable and there's plenty left to salvage. Firefox has loads of regular contributors. Mozilla employs many of them of course but not all. Aside from the drama at Mozilla, it's a pretty well run and healthy open source project. Same with Chromium probably. Though most developers are likely Google employed currently.

The solution isn't moving the problem to some new project but actually addressing the core issue. Which would be funding them properly.

solardev6• 1 year ago

Google funds Safari too?

Edit: Yeah, about $20 billion to be the default search: https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933206/google-apple-se...

jillesvangurp2• 1 year ago

Glad you clarified that. 20 billion is not nothing. Even for Apple.

seventh12• 1 year ago

Well that is likely to end soon I would wager :)

ciupicri4• 1 year ago

Will Mozilla use the money to improve the browser (engine) or will it use it for left politics stuff (and big salaries for executives)?

corny• 1 year ago

There's no mention yet of Kagi's Orion browser. What are people's thoughts on that?

011000112• 1 year ago

Looks like it is Mac/iOS only.

AstralStorm7• 1 year ago

It's WebKit. The number of browser UIs is less relevant than the engines.

binary132• 1 year ago

Free computing can’t really exist in an ecosystem where only multimillion dollar projects can survive and be adequately secure. We need to drastically reduce the complexity of computing if we want it on our terms and without total dependency on megacorporations and capital. Expecting the state to fund it is also unrealistic.

bergie2• 1 year ago

I've deleted all Mozilla software on my devices. Used to run Firefox everywhere. For now trying to live with the mixture of Safari (iOS, MacOS) and the DDG browser (Android).

No replacement for Pocket so far, but also not sure if I really need one.

AstralStorm7• 1 year ago

Hate to break it to you, but DDG browser is either WebView, WebView2 or WebKit dependent on the platform.

Note how two of those are still Chromium.

transpaniel2• 1 year ago

They do add a lot of extra privacy protections, which includes disabling some of the engine functionality. And btw many of the bad Google stuff is in chrome, but not in chromium. So having chromium is not necessarily that bad by itself. Brave is also chromium under the hood.

dartharva2• 1 year ago

No replacement for Pocket so far, but also not sure if I really need one.

I just use a single-member (self) Whatsapp group.

bergie2• 1 year ago

You're suggesting to give the content to Facebook instead of Mozilla?

anotherevan• 1 year ago

Instapaper[1] and Wallabag[2] would be the two main alternatives to Pocket, I think. Wallabag is self-hosting although I believe there are hosted services around as well.

Cannot get either of them to integrate with my Kobo ereader like Pocket does, though. :-(

[1] https://www.instapaper.com/

[2] https://wallabag.org/

motohagiography2• 1 year ago

why do we still need general purpose browsers anyway. a custom X client, an HN client, an OpenAI client are likely sufficient for most purposes.

mainstream news sites are landfills of terrible banner ad tech. Once we can use AI for efficient scraping into e-paper interfaces, the smart people will migrate to a quieter luxury experience, probably something more modular than a browser.

qwerpy• 1 year ago

Not every organization can make decent clients/apps. And those that can will embed unblockable ads and dark patterns into them.

For example Amazon.com is usable with an adblocker but the Amazon app is a horrific mess of ads. Facebook.com can be made barely usable using a dedicated browser extension but their app is similarly 95% ads and “suggested content” and 5% actual content from your friends.

AstralStorm7• 1 year ago

They are not. Most of the apps embed a browser.

HN client would use what, RSS? HN does not have an API to get at the posts now?

X is dead and buried. Pipewire is almost ready instead for the purpose, but the UI needs to be made. And remote input handling.

OpenAI is a proprietary system, it can crash and burn at you at any time. Go run Sonnet or Claude or something.

hnthrowaway4633• 1 year ago

GPT-4.5 hallucinates over 1/3 of its answers in benchmarks, so I don't think an OpenAI client will be able to replace browsers for knowledge acquisition anytime soon.

freehorse3• 1 year ago

And then wait until the AI starts serving you ads, in which case you will be much worse off than with browsers as you will have zero say in your experience navigating the digital world. And some local/open source AI wont be a solution either, because scraping access to websites will be tailored to specific companies, similar to how last years a lot of platforms have closed their apis and essentially rendered useless most third-party clients.

dooglius• 1 year ago

How exactly would an HN client, in which one would presumably be able to view any linked page, differ from a general purpose browser?

motohagiography2• 1 year ago

a separate hn client for comments and identity, and then optional local clients for external content.

booting a cloud container to pull and process web content in an ai intermediate web client might provide some privacy and distance as well.

i just think browsers are the artefact of decades old ideas a out how we use tech.

ahartmetz• 1 year ago

No, it isn't, and no, let's not do that.

johntitorjr• 1 year ago

Is there a good alternative to thunderbird on desktop?

Edit - Windows options?

For web access I use RoundCube. FairEmail on Android.

pmlnr2• 1 year ago

Gnome Evolution works for me. There's Geary, but that never won me over.

AstralStorm7• 1 year ago

Kmail also still exists.

lyu072822• 1 year ago

Thunderbird isn't Mozilla, they are a small independent team

solardev6• 1 year ago

Does anyone have an estimate how much work it is to make a Webkit-based browser like Kagi's Orion, but open-source?

Not the rendering engine, but the browser around it? Is it something a small team could conceivably do if you placed reasonable constraints on it: one platform at first, no cloud sync, minimal feature set, etc.? Or are we talking years and years of work and dozens of devs?

CharlesW• 1 year ago

Is it something a small team could conceivably do if you placed reasonable constraints on it: one platform at first, no cloud sync, minimal feature set, etc.?

I believe so, yes.

There's a `webkitdev` Docker image which includes the required software to build WebKit on Windows¹, and you can use Playwright to run WebKit (including Web Inspector) on Windows very easily². If you wanted to start with Linux, WebKitGTK would presumably be extremely helpful.³ (Tauru uses WebKit on Linux through through `webkit2gtk`, for example.)

¹ https://github.com/WebKitForWindows/docker-webkit-dev ² https://dev.to/dustinbrett/running-the-latest-safari-webkit-... ³ https://webkitgtk.org/

transpaniel2• 1 year ago

DuckDuckGo has browsers btw

celsoazevedo• 1 year ago

Chromium based though.

diminish• 1 year ago

Firefox's problem is Mozilla; too much ad money made them evil. copying every chrome feature to boost search ads by breaking usability :(

We need a new browser fork! Linux way of governance could be awesome; a star leader/programmer- with community and enterprise contributors.

/just switched to librewolf for the short term; after years on firefox since early 0.x days

timhh• 1 year ago

Yeah... how long do you think librewolf is going to survive if Mozilla dies?

tbrockman• 1 year ago

Haven't seen it mentioned yet, but Zen (https://zen-browser.app/) seems to me so far like a Firefox fork worth supporting.

uwagar• 1 year ago

i had turned off the data collection and today i noticed after updating the browser, its back on and studies are on too :(

lazyeye2• 1 year ago

Also the Mullvad browser which is based on the Tor browser but with the Tor bit removed. Note: it doesnt require a vpn.

https://mullvad.net/en/browser

keernan2• 1 year ago

Tor Browser is Firefox (modified for Tor) but updated with each Firefox update.

lazyeye2• 1 year ago

Yep am aware of that.

its-summertime• 1 year ago

LibreWolf, Waterfox: Both kinda just Firefox ESR with a policies.json file, can just use Firefox with said file and get the same result.

Ungoogled Chromium, from what I tested, since it doesn't ask google anything (it can't, google domains are completely replaced with invalid domains across the entire browser), it in turn doesn't check cert revocation. Trading losing privacy with Mozilla to losing privacy and security with everyone, seems bad.

"While there is some alarmism" I feel that is poor form to write what could be considered alarmism and then have such a statement.

eviks• 1 year ago

the void will be replaced by other incumbents, especially since Privacy protections and Ad-blockers are values that attract a certain following And other bright future arguments

If this were true, we wouldn't be in such a dire state now, but already have a bunch of solid alternatives

keernan2• 1 year ago

Haven't seen Opera on the list. I regularly use 6 browsers daily, each with different security/privacy settings - one with everything blocked but for my financial and health related sites.

And I use Opera as a weak alternative to when I don't need Tor. Opera comes with a built-in free VPN, which I primarily use to get around reddit's aggressive efforts to block anonymous/multiple accounts.

While I don't spend much time on Opera (I don't use reddit much), it's a pretty decent browser. I seem to recall hearing about some issues people had with Opera in the past, but I can't recall the details.

standardly• 1 year ago

So my takeaway from the thread is.. No browser is good, and there is no acceptable alternative currently. Got it, thanks guys

Trust in Firefox and Mozilla Is Gone – Let's Talk Alternatives

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