Here's a bit more information, though i do believe that there indeed could be more clarity about the project's goals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfox
It appears that Waterfox is one of the few ways to use the legacy extensions that Firefox removed the support for and to use a browser that Mozilla doesn't have control over.
It's actually curious to see a discussion about a fork of Firefox, since a little bit ago i personally felt that there might just be a rise of more forks and attempts to abandon Mozilla due to their recent behaviour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28785896
It doesn't ship ads in your web browser, unlike Firefox. It allows you to install WebExtensions from any source (even if you don't sign them with Mozilla!), unlike Firefox.
I wouldn't recommend it, but that's just because I wouldn't recommend any web browser right now.
Sorry, context for this? I take a pretty thorough scalpel to removing any traces of sponsored content from Firefox, and it never occurred to me that they might have ads in the address bar. Is there a previous discussion an announcement about this?
They added it unannounced in the last update, Firefox 93. There was a small outrage on behalf of the dozens of people still paying attention to Firefox, but nothing came of it. If you're on a good distribution, you'll probably see it disabled by default.
Honestly I have been disappointed beyond the capacity for outrage with Firefox. Do you know of any positive cases of a distribution that disables this?
Edit: just to add to this, my understanding is that Mozilla uses (abuses?) their trademark on Firefox to keep the distributions in line. If you distribute a version of Firefox that's been patched to remove anti-features, you can't call it Firefox.
Yes, actually. Chrome is unusable adware. Firefox is borderline unusable adware, and it takes a long time to remove all of the proprietary components and proprietary services from it. Waterfox is probably doing something to snatch your data, but it probably won't outright impede your use of the browser. Epiphany exists, but they still aren't shipping with WebExtensions a year after implementing them because it goes against the "GNOME way" or some garbage knockoff-HIG.
It had earlier 64bit builds, but that was then and … now it seems mostly for the niche that are pissed off at the new Firefox tabs and the audacity that Mozilla wants to partner directly with advertisers instead of having Google be the middleman.
Firefox also has some telemetry which Waterfox cuts out.
It appears that Waterfox is one of the few ways to use the legacy extensions that Firefox removed the support for and to use a browser that Mozilla doesn't have control over.
I'd maybe also look at GNU IceCat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat
It's actually curious to see a discussion about a fork of Firefox, since a little bit ago i personally felt that there might just be a rise of more forks and attempts to abandon Mozilla due to their recent behaviour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28785896