[ta988]

Mozilla is starting to seriously have a long list of highly questionable if not directly user hostile behaviors. They are hiding behind the fact that they are the almost only viable alternative to the chrome ecosystem... But they may well loose that advantage. What should we think of their VPN they try to promote so much if they bow to Russian demands for blocking extensions...

[KennyBlanken]

Starting? Remember the time they silently installed an extension written for a TV network?

The project manager for it used to work in the advertising industry. When the ticket was filed in Bugzilla, she quickly set it to be private to try and hide it. Another mozilla employee put it back to public, and then the ticket was set such that not even employees could see it by Mozilla executive leadership.

How about them ramming Pocket down everyone's throats?

Or the 2022 "partnership" with Facebook over an advertising a "privacy preserving" advertising standard?

How about the CEO's astronomical pay increases while market share sank? How about the fact that they now have a billion dollars in assets, half of that in cash? And they slashed their software development budget a year or two ago? And paid someone ~350,000+ to write an "AI and racial justice" report?

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

And then there's the partnership with an identity protection service (why the fuck is a browser company getting involved in that!?) whose CEO was running people-search network sites https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/mozilla-drops-onerep-aft...

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

Any alternatives to Firefox worth exploring where users are the customers and you can pay for the product instead of being sold as one?

[deely3]

I have good expirience with Vivaldi. Yes, Chromium based, but very-very customizable, a bit slower than other browser, again because of customizations, but in general it looks like they believe that user know what he/she is doing.

[paulryanrogers]

An independent browser engine is top reason I use Firefox. Anything based on Webkit/Blink is just reinforcing the monoculture and further locking out alternatives.

[deely3]

I don't know honestly. I don't like what Mozilla is doing with Firefox, and I'm not sure that we should support it.

[paulryanrogers]

Clearly we have different priorities and I've failed to convince you. Which is fine.

Hopefully enough folks do prioritize browser engine diversity, so we aren't stuck with no significant alternative.

[lawn]

Kagi has their own browser called Orion, their whole business model (including search) is that you pay for it instead of you being sold.

Unfortunately, it's iOS only and based on WebKit.

There's definitely an opportunity here, maybe using Servo as the browser engine.

[rpozarickij]

> it's iOS only

It's available on macOS as well: https://kagi.com/orion/#download_sec

[lawn]

Sorry, should've said Apple only.

[infotapeworm]

LibreWolf, Mullvad Browser, Brave, Chromium

[beretguy]

WaterFox

[screamingninja]

> Mozilla is starting to seriously have a long list of highly questionable if not directly user hostile behaviors.

Would you care to provide examples? I am a longtime user of Mozilla products unfamiliar with the topic and I am genuinely curious.

> What should we think of their VPN they try to promote so much

Mozilla does not have its own service but rather resells Mullvad, one of the most privacy focused services in existence. Is there more to this story that I am unaware of?

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Allow me to add this to the other sibling comments: Pocket was an... interesting series of choices.

"""

Mozilla replaced a feature that was end to end encrypted with one that sent private data to a third party for data mining. They denied getting paid for the integration. That was technically true. They eventually admitted they got paid for referrals. They bought the company in 2017 and promised to release the source code. They still haven't. The Pocket website says "as a member of the Firefox family, privacy is paramount."[1] The first part is misleading and the second part is simply false.

"""

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121973

[astiela]

Open Sourcing something is never a easy task especially if it calls for a complete rewrite which i assume is why it still has not been open sourced yet

[digging]

Really? I'm genuinely unaware, what would make it difficult? In what situations would it require a rewrite?

[loa_in_]

Buying a technology company, they buy a proven idea. If the bought tech has a diffrent stack than everything else Mozilla already had then rewriting it is going to be a good long term idea.

[eviks]

User hostile: restricting browser customization

[sdk-]

Enlighten us. What's that long list of questionable behaviours?

[9991]

The ones that angered me were the surveillance and the inclusion of closed source DRM. Enough to get me to switch to LibreWolf.

[arp242]

> inclusion of closed source DRM

Because what people really want is a browser that can't use Netflix or Spotify...

Firefox would no longer exist today if they hadn't included DRM. Ideological purity is fun and all, but it's perhaps a good idea to occasionally recognize reality.

[9991]

I would also never pay for DRMed media, so LibreWolf is a good fit for my use case. I don’t decide any one else’s use case.

[torstenvl]

Don't forget the Mr. Robot malware.

[phantomathkg]

> inclusion of closed source DRM Do you think if DRM is not included, will Firefox still retain 3% usage across the world?

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Let's put it bluntly, but libre principle does not live well with consumerism of the modern world.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

So in exchange for their principles, they got to keep 3 whole percent of the market? That's a victory?

I think that's a poor argument. However, I think the stronger argument is that in this case it's actually relatively okay. Like, it'd be a better world if DRM didn't exist, but given that they lack the market power to do anything about that, EME actually seems like the least bad option:

* It's sandboxed.

* It's optional and doesn't run by default.

* Firefox prompts the user and asks if they want to run the DRM.

In fairness, I understand that there are different views on this; I stop one tiny half-step shy of the GNU/FSF position, in that I would argue that people should have complete control of their machines, but that that includes the right to run software that doesn't respect their right to control the machine.

[astiela]

The close sourced DRM is necessary for Netflix and a bunch of other apps, Also its provided for free to mozilla by google + cisco