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by uniqueid 1711 days ago
I'm out!

I don't care how few users Firefox has. I do care that the product has become a pile of garbage. I already tolerate the dumb tab bar, the update nag screen that interrupts my work, the telemetry setting that doesn't actually disable telemetry, the web services I don't want like Pocket, the ads, the memory issues that hobble my machine when I stream video...

I won't move to a browser like Chromium with a connection to Google, but I'm moving to something. I'm done with Firefox.

3 comments

And what browser would that be? Mozilla keeps doing these things because they're desperately searching for a revenue stream that doesn't make them beholden to their biggest competitor. There aren't any other viable options because no one else knows of any better revenue streams for web browsers either
Of Wikipedia can survive on donation, why not Firefox and MDN?
Firefox might survive, but the salaries of the people in charge of that decision might not.
Boom. "Mozilla Firefox Usage Down 85% but why are Exec’s Salary Up 400%?"

https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...

Firefox could, I think. I don't think the Mozilla Foundation could. And that's the rub, at least to those in charge at the Mozilla Foundation.
To avoid significant layoffs they'd something like 10% of their user base to donate $20/year. I'm far from an expert on nonprofit finances, but that strikes me as a tough but potentially doable goal
Their cost base is too bloated.

The reason I stopped donating to Mozilla is because they have too many people not doing things I think are important and are paying their executives too much.

There is no single piece of software I use more than Firefox. At $20.00/month it would be a bargain. Assuming it wasn’t a dumpster fire.
what about Firefox's forks such as Waterfox[1], Pale Moon[2], IceCat[3], SeaMonkey[4]...? Genuinely asking.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfox

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Moon_(web_browser)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMonkey

None of these projects have enough resources to keep up with web standards, and patch security bugs on their own. So forks are either almost the same as Firefox, or may be less secure and/or doesn't work for as many websites and addons as Firefox.
Waterfox is owned by an ad company, which IMO is enough to disqualify it. Sure it's probably fine now, but it'll assuredly have problems soon.
Of the four, I've only ever heard of SeaMonkey before. I'll definitely check them out though.
Opera / Vivaldi
That's another chromium browser.
yes, but with a completely separate set of features, options, defaults, revenue stream, incentives, etc.
Try LibreWolf -- it's Firefox with the nasty stuff stripped out. You can use your existing Firefox profile, but be sure to go through LibreWolf's settings as some of the defauts may be different than what you already have set up (they select privacy-protecting options by default).
>the update nag screen that interrupts my work

If you're on Linux, exclude it from automatic updates in your package manager, and it won't interrupt you. On Windows, you should be able to set app.update.auto to false in about:config, but I don't know if that still works.