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by jjawssd 3112 days ago
It is impossible to fork Firefox and survive. If you destroy Mozilla all the users will migrate to Chrome. There is no successful financial model for browser development. Browser development is a financial black hole and requires alternative revenue streams for developers to put food on the table.
2 comments

A real fork might be impossible, but a soft fork that just disables features like this should be possible.
Indeed, this is how IceCat works: by taking the Firefox ESR release and sed'ing out things like EME and telemetry.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/makeicec...

"It is impossible to fork Firefox and survive"

Pale Moon did this a while ago and is still around, although in need of donations as many other volunteer-driven projects. https://www.palemoon.org/

Pale Moon would sink in a week if Mozilla closes, it does not have the resources to implement or influence new standards.
That wasn't a Mozilla vs Pale Moon contest, anyway if Mozilla would close Pale Moon would likely inherit at least part of its developers and user base. Surviving economically however would be a totally different beast.
And Mozilla has?!
Certainly more so than Pale Moon.