Another item onto the list of stupid, self-sabotaging ideas from Mozilla.
Pocket
Cliqz
Looking Glass
(Anything else I missed?)
That said, I’m still a Firefox user, because after all, I still trust the Mozilla Foundation and Community more than the makers of the other browser vendors.
Mozilla has it’s missteps, on the other hand, they are still better than the other Browser Vendors out there and I haven’t seen a viable Firefox Fork out there that works for me. Plus it seems the Looking Glass addon was inert unless specifically enabled by the user, so I don’t see the harm tbh.
“Atleast [they are] the prettiest pile of shit.” ~ Some quote I heard somewhere
My understanding is, it’s not yet. It’s being worked on. I have no idea what kind of work it takes, but the intention is that it will be fully open sourced.
That one I actually like; the performance is much better, and the memory leaks much fewer. Pre-quantum I was on the verge of switching to Chrome because of the performance gap and leaks.
I agree. The browser engine is noticeably better - if only the software around it were also on the same level. Some lightweight browser like surf or midori should adopt it, instead of WebKit.
WebKit is easy to adopt because WebKitGTK and QtWebKit (or whatever it’s called) are well supported and easy to use. And Chromium has CEF. (IIRC Servo is also implementing CEF.)
I don’t think current Gecko is easily embeddable into whatever.
Back in the day Camino on Mac OS was a Gecko browser with a custom Cocoa UI, but doing that today would be way too hard.
I should clarify, I was talking about Servo. I don’t really thing there would be a point in using Gecko, since it will probably turn into a legacy project.
It seems the other way to me? What they’re doing instead is slowly retrofitting pieces of Servo into Gecko piecemeal. (or at least, some kind of Rust equivalent to the C/C++/JS code being replaced) Servo would then be dead or explicitly turned into some staging ground for Gecko.
I will go beyond alleging a performance improvement, I will attest to it. Surprisingly enough, the improvement includes Google properties such as Gmail and YouTube. They are both more responsive in Firefox now than Chromium or Chrome.
On the extension side, I do not use a large number. Those which I do, however, still function.
I freely admit that the plural of anecdote is not “data”, but I would feel remiss not to share how impressed I am with Quantum. Pocket has always annoyed me, so I certainly do not see Mozilla’s actions as unimpeachable and am only giving them credit for Quantum because I feel they deserve it.
Based on this, Quantum was a balanced update where the team had do sacrifice the old extension API. Also, it’s not that they’ve removed extensions completely. (And no, I’m not talking about you Looking Glass)
IIRC it worked but the UI was somewhat different. Now uMatrix is also available, and both extensions have UI that looks practically identical to the desktop versions.
How much? How much would it cost to stop this, over and above Mozilla’s existing income? Why doesn’t Mozilla, as a user first organization, tell its users “we need this much money or we’re going to add the looking glass extension”?
When you are donating to Mozilla, you are donating to the Foundation, which is not involved much in Firefox, but in a lot of other tech and policy advocacy things. This includes net neutrality lobbying, discussing the copyright reform in Europe and support many many tech teaching projects all over the globe.
You’d be hurting all those projects instead of Firefox development over your anger with the product.
Making your anger known in a different fashion will have more impact.
(FWIW: I don’t want to keep you from stopping to donate if you don’t feel like Mozilla Foundation is not following their mission anymore)
Regrettably, the net neutrality thing didn’t pan out, I’m not sure about the copyright work, and the educational stuff is probably better left to local efforts (if my own experience is to be believed).
I’d rather they focus on Firefox, Thunderbird, and documentation and free up people and resources to go do other things.
Regrettably, the net neutrality thing didn’t pan out, I’m not sure about the copyright work, and the educational stuff is probably better left to local efforts (if my own experience is to be believed).
Policy is no “put enough money here, it’ll work” game. The debate about net neutrality has been going back and forth in the recent years and Mozilla has always been involved. Losing Mozilla as a campaigner there would not be helpful in any way.
The educational stuff is probably better left to local efforts (if my own experience is to be believed).
This is obviously very personal, but in my experience, Mozilla has reach to a lot of people and other groups that other tech groups can only dream of. I would highly recommend looking at who’s around at MozFest. Also, the Foundation does a lot of these things through co-operations like with the Ford Foundation, which are usually quite productive and the output brings a lot of worthwhile reading.
I’d rather they focus on Firefox, Thunderbird, and documentation and free up people and resources to go do other things.
Thunderbird obviously left out, Mozilla Corporation has most employees on precisely these products. It is their focus.
The Corp is just not the Foundation and merging them also makes no sense, IMHO.
Firefox is the only relevant browser that isn’t working for the corporate interests of big silicon valley companies.
I’d rather have my employer misstep here and there, but listen to feedback than not at all.
Besides, why is it always the idealized non-profit that gets the dirt, but not those working for shareholder value.. %shrugs%
Besides, why is it always the idealized non-profit that gets the dirt, but not those working for shareholder value.
Precisely because we know Google is out to sell our data for a nickel - that’s why we hold Mozilla to a higher standard, and why fuck ups like this are so disappointing.
I wonder if there’s some lightweight browser that just displays HTML/CSS webpages and maybe runs some JavaScript on trusted websites, without WebRTC, WebGL, WebDRM and other bloatware that is being baked into the web standards these days, eats resources and extends the attack surface.
Why can’t modern software just do the damn thing it’s asked to without doing anything behind my back?
Another item onto the list of stupid, self-sabotaging ideas from Mozilla.
That said, I’m still a Firefox user, because after all, I still trust the Mozilla Foundation and Community more than the makers of the other browser vendors.
Mozilla has it’s missteps, on the other hand, they are still better than the other Browser Vendors out there and I haven’t seen a viable Firefox Fork out there that works for me. Plus it seems the Looking Glass addon was inert unless specifically enabled by the user, so I don’t see the harm tbh.
“Atleast [they are] the prettiest pile of shit.” ~ Some quote I heard somewhere
I would add Mozilla Persona to this list, which was a great idea, but was mismanaged and shut down by Mozilla before it could do anything good.
I pretty much lost my faith in Mozilla having any idea what it is doing at that point.
Original Pocket introduction was mishandled, but since Mozilla owns and operates it now, integration with Firefox makes sense.
is it open source now?
My understanding is, it’s not yet. It’s being worked on. I have no idea what kind of work it takes, but the intention is that it will be fully open sourced.
You missed ‘Quantum.’ (The one where they broke their extension API for the sake of alleged performance).
That one I actually like; the performance is much better, and the memory leaks much fewer. Pre-quantum I was on the verge of switching to Chrome because of the performance gap and leaks.
I agree. The browser engine is noticeably better - if only the software around it were also on the same level. Some lightweight browser like surf or midori should adopt it, instead of WebKit.
WebKit is easy to adopt because WebKitGTK and QtWebKit (or whatever it’s called) are well supported and easy to use. And Chromium has CEF. (IIRC Servo is also implementing CEF.)
I don’t think current Gecko is easily embeddable into whatever.
Back in the day Camino on Mac OS was a Gecko browser with a custom Cocoa UI, but doing that today would be way too hard.
I should clarify, I was talking about Servo. I don’t really thing there would be a point in using Gecko, since it will probably turn into a legacy project.
It seems the other way to me? What they’re doing instead is slowly retrofitting pieces of Servo into Gecko piecemeal. (or at least, some kind of Rust equivalent to the C/C++/JS code being replaced) Servo would then be dead or explicitly turned into some staging ground for Gecko.
I will go beyond alleging a performance improvement, I will attest to it. Surprisingly enough, the improvement includes Google properties such as Gmail and YouTube. They are both more responsive in Firefox now than Chromium or Chrome.
On the extension side, I do not use a large number. Those which I do, however, still function.
I freely admit that the plural of anecdote is not “data”, but I would feel remiss not to share how impressed I am with Quantum. Pocket has always annoyed me, so I certainly do not see Mozilla’s actions as unimpeachable and am only giving them credit for Quantum because I feel they deserve it.
Based on this, Quantum was a balanced update where the team had do sacrifice the old extension API. Also, it’s not that they’ve removed extensions completely. (And no, I’m not talking about you Looking Glass)
Quantum is great. uBlock Origin and uMatrix now work on Firefox for Android just as well as on desktop.
ublock origin worked on firefox android before firefox quantum no ?
IIRC it worked but the UI was somewhat different. Now uMatrix is also available, and both extensions have UI that looks practically identical to the desktop versions.
[Comment removed by author]
I love the smell of outrage in the morning. Or afternoon. Whichever.
I like Firefox. I’m not terribly concerned about this. A sure way to get them to stop is to donate monthly.
How much? How much would it cost to stop this, over and above Mozilla’s existing income? Why doesn’t Mozilla, as a user first organization, tell its users “we need this much money or we’re going to add the looking glass extension”?
Oh, yes, a 1000 times this! I’d happily pay for Firefox more than I pay for every single web service I use.
It would cost an infinite amount, because that’s the amount companies need to aim to earn in a capitalist economy.
It’s a non-profit.
Even non-profits have expenses to cover. Over infinite time these approach infinity as well.
The point still stands that them having a transparent budget would make it easier for us the users to “pay off” these kinds of threats.
The mozilla corporation (a branch of the mozilla non-profit Foundation) is for-profit.
Only legally. It’s “keep the lights on”.
The problem is that software development and the services the corp provides is not considered non-profit under most jurisdictions.
This setup (a foundation and a corporation) is straight from the playbook for non-profits that have substantial non-eligible parts.
They made $360,000,000 last year: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/02/mozillas-revenue-increased-significantly-in-2016/
Why would you want to throw more money at the corporation who’s pissing on you while telling you that it’s raining?
When you are donating to Mozilla, you are donating to the Foundation, which is not involved much in Firefox, but in a lot of other tech and policy advocacy things. This includes net neutrality lobbying, discussing the copyright reform in Europe and support many many tech teaching projects all over the globe.
You’d be hurting all those projects instead of Firefox development over your anger with the product.
Making your anger known in a different fashion will have more impact.
(FWIW: I don’t want to keep you from stopping to donate if you don’t feel like Mozilla Foundation is not following their mission anymore)
Regrettably, the net neutrality thing didn’t pan out, I’m not sure about the copyright work, and the educational stuff is probably better left to local efforts (if my own experience is to be believed).
I’d rather they focus on Firefox, Thunderbird, and documentation and free up people and resources to go do other things.
Policy is no “put enough money here, it’ll work” game. The debate about net neutrality has been going back and forth in the recent years and Mozilla has always been involved. Losing Mozilla as a campaigner there would not be helpful in any way.
This is obviously very personal, but in my experience, Mozilla has reach to a lot of people and other groups that other tech groups can only dream of. I would highly recommend looking at who’s around at MozFest. Also, the Foundation does a lot of these things through co-operations like with the Ford Foundation, which are usually quite productive and the output brings a lot of worthwhile reading.
Thunderbird obviously left out, Mozilla Corporation has most employees on precisely these products. It is their focus.
The Corp is just not the Foundation and merging them also makes no sense, IMHO.
[Comment from banned user removed]
Or use a fork if all else fails. Sad day if it comes to that, after all the good work otherwise gone into Firefox.
Firefox is the only relevant browser that isn’t working for the corporate interests of big silicon valley companies. I’d rather have my employer misstep here and there, but listen to feedback than not at all. Besides, why is it always the idealized non-profit that gets the dirt, but not those working for shareholder value.. %shrugs%
Precisely because we know Google is out to sell our data for a nickel - that’s why we hold Mozilla to a higher standard, and why fuck ups like this are so disappointing.
I noticed I got a down vote tagged “incorrect”. What do you think is incorrect? No corporate interests? Listening to feedback?
Let’s talk!
I wonder if there’s some lightweight browser that just displays HTML/CSS webpages and maybe runs some JavaScript on trusted websites, without WebRTC, WebGL, WebDRM and other bloatware that is being baked into the web standards these days, eats resources and extends the attack surface.
Why can’t modern software just do the damn thing it’s asked to without doing anything behind my back?
Dillo
Just HTML/CSS2 – no Javascript, “HTML5”, or CSS3 and it’s blazing fast
What bothers me is that dillo appears to be unmaintained and has “alpha” SSL support that I failed to enable (the suggested –enable-ssl didn’t work).
I don’t care about Mozilla. They are a creature of their incentives, and where else is the money going to come from?