For some reason, Firefox (and its variants) seems to attract an especially tough crowd. People will let Chrome hoover up every last bit of information about you but FF will get relentlessly pilloried for every minor decision.
The problem with Mozilla is that most of us seem to be holding them to a higher standard. It's not minor details that are scrutinized but more like "HOW IN THE HELL DID THEY THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA", and sadly there's been about 1-2 of those per year.
That is pretty much a problem they created themselves by claiming to be a champion of tge free Internet and then doing stuff like invetsing in an adtech company and then handing a sample of user browser history to said company. Why does a corporation owned by a foundation do stuff like that? If you have an official mission other than making money people will hold you to a higher standard than normal for profit companies.
You see the same thing with non-profits. For-profit companies can ask $50 for a product, do whatever they like with the profit, and everyone is happy. A non-profit asks for voluntary donations for a similar product and gets all of their receipts to local pizza joints examined.
Not my opinion, but from what I've seen, it's a different standard.
FF has historically been concerned with privacy and transparency. When they move contrary to that, people "hold them accountable" by issuing public critiques.
In comparison, I'm not sure that the Chromium project ever intended to have privacy as one of their forefront values.
Please stop making excuses for Mozilla - their management has made many questionable decisions including bundling unnecessary extensions like Pocket and closed source DRM plugin without user permission, aggressive telemetry tracking, downloading and running codes / features without your knowledge (it's opt-out but only if you know what to opt-out of) and now even bundling adware into the browser.
Instead of ensuring their engine is easily modular and usable they are more concerned about others making competing browsers and thus let greed drive their design decisions to make a clunky and poorly architected product that just lags in development.
Fire the greed driven management of Mozilla, and bring a team more concerned about developing a good product than letting money drive the design decisions, and Firefox will be back on track.
Honestly, do you think you'd ever be happy with anything Mozilla produces? The comments like this from people who will complain about everything are completely valueless.
We're lucky to have an alternative to the WebKit oligopoly. If you don't like Firefox, just stick with the other browsers and let the rest of us that are trying to prevent a monoculture continue our work.
I don't work for Mozilla or have ever done work on Firefox other than bugfixing, but I'll gladly run an alternative browser so the web doesn't end up stagnating like it did before.
> do you think you'd ever be happy with anything Mozilla produces?
I switched to Mozilla Gecko after Opera Presto was sold to a chinese firm and they switched engines to Chromium. After that, I have been using various Firefox forks since Firefox started bundling useless software and made really questionable decisions sacrificing user privacy for their greed. I am really glad that forks that respect the user, like LibreWolf and Tor browser, exists.
> The comments like this from people who will complain about everything are completely valueless.
I have given specifics. Your comment though is less useful.
> We're lucky to have an alternative to the WebKit oligopoly.
We are unlucky that the current management of Mozilla is slowly selling out on this, under the influence of Google and their own greed - 100's of millions of dollars and yet, making a modular browser engine is not a priority for them as that means more competition and innovation from other open and closed source developers that will threaten their cash cow.
> I have given specifics. Your comment though is less useful.
I disagree. You list a number of random topics that are exaggerated and overblown, then attack the leadership of the organization personally and ascribe motivations that you have invented. Your comments are not useful for setting future direction of a browser, and you are contributing to a browser monoculture.
When we lose the only viable competitor to WebKit because you and other commenters hold Firefox to your unreachable standards, it will be a sad day.
> Honestly, do you think you'd ever be happy with anything Mozilla produces?
I used to be happy with their output, many years ago. So yes, of course.
I haven't liked FF in a very long time. But I used to love it.
> I'll gladly run an alternative browser so the web doesn't end up stagnating like it did before.
The only thing actually stopping Google from completely owning the Web is Apple's mandating Safari's engine for all browsers on iOS. Firefox has been floundering for too long (a decade? More?) and no longer matters much, aside from providing some kind of value to Google. Microsoft's probably maneuvering to open a second front on that, despite using Google's engine now, unless they decide to team up with Google to go after Apple. FF has been an also-ran for years.
Agreed. Except to say that many recent decisions have moved Firefox closer in alignment with the monoculture. So, you have to at least consider that maybe, even if it's just a few of the people complaining have good intentions, or might even be canaries in a dark mine with potential dangers of collapse. Unfortunately, canaries can't do much to fix the problems. They can only be used as warning signs by the people who can do something to fix things.
> bundling unnecessary [...] closed source DRM plugin without user permission
Not making including a plugin required for a top 50 site would be user hostile, and I will die on this hill.
This is exactly the thing everyone else in the thread is pointing out as the issue, complaints from FOSS-or-nothing folks expecting to be catered to at the expense of the other (probably) 99% of potential users. The fact that it's even a plugin at all (that you can disable!), rather than an integrated part of the browser, is them already catering to that. Firefox already caters to this niche a ton, and nothing is good enough.
> running codes / features without your knowledge (it's opt-out but only if you know what to opt-out of) and now even bundling adware into the browser.
I'm unfamiliar with these last two things. What code do they run? And what adware?
From the top of HN literally yesterday. They can match user downloads to multiple installs across systems now. The "solution" is to select "opt out of telemetry" in the settings, which you can't get to until after you've installed the browser and it's already happened.