In terms of open source there are really only Chromium- and Firefox-derived browsers (I’m disregarding projects like the still pre-alpha Ladybird here). With Chromium browsers, you’re still subject to Google’s whims in the long term, such as removal of V3 extension support. (I.e. a conceivable fork with V3 compatibility will inevitably become too difficult to keep up to date with the mainline.) If Mozilla dies, Firefox and derivatives will in all likelihood wither away as well. IMO there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, and also keeping them accountable and criticizing them where criticism is due. They are still roughly the good guys, even if sometimes misguided.
The topic of Firefox and ads is nothing new:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28783381
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36351322
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-adverti...
One alternative recommended by the present article, Brave, is dabbling in ads as well: https://brave.com/brave-ads/
If there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, how do we keep them accountable? If they know that they're the only hope for a cross-platform browser that isn't developed by Google, then they know that any outrage is a bluff that can't have teeth because they're indispensable.
> They are still roughly the good guys, even if sometimes misguided.
There aren't any good guys here, there are just people doing people things.
Mozilla is more than sometimes misguided, they've been essentially permanently distracted from Firefox as the core mission for more than ten years now. Their organization is designed in a way that makes funding Firefox directly impossible, and they haven't made any moves to fix it. Instead they set up failed side project after failed side project and repeatedly alienate their core with ads, while insisting that donations couldn't possibly work in spite of the fact that Thunderbird clearly shows that they can—as long as the project is unshackled from the mess that is Mozilla.
It might well be that the best thing that could happen for Firefox would be for it to get evicted from Mozilla like Thunderbird was.
> failed side project after failed side project
Rust and MDN have been huge successes. Their mobile OS is still alive and kicking, although other people are making money from that now. They also put in a ton of resources into decreasing FF memory footprint as part of the failed mobile OS effort, which benefits all of us.
Also, and mainly, because that's a lot less of a moving target.
- there's not much that's new to email, there are some recent ideas like jmap but they're not exactly hard requirements
- UI requirements are largely fixed and a pretty minor concern
- and between web clients and completely broken ones (cough cough outlook) email HTML rendering is pretty damn far from any sort of leading edge
Neither is an income stream, and Rust was evicted while it was still taking off and is no longer a Mozilla project.
If there are users, and there is a need, we should directly furnish the project with a bunch of hired employees rather than indirectly pay some manager, rely on charity or ads.
Yes, I know, how unamerican of me. ;)
Who is “we”?
It might also be possible to fork and spin off Firefox into a new non-profit, circumventing Mozilla if some of the devs organize it.
Money is fungible. If you want to do this, frankly, donate to LibreWolf.
Another major pain point is they lost support from WhatsApp, which is really the king maker in many countries when it comes to mass market adoption of a mobile platform.
Except they're not indispensable. They're now the fourth place browser in terms of market share on a good day, and dwindling. They need all the good will they can get, and this sort of discussion amongst their most hardcore audience is exactly what keeps them accountable.
While neither Mozilla nor Firefox are not indispensable, Gecko is.
We literally have three working rendering engines: Chromium/V3, Gecko/Spidermonkey and ... Long nothing ... WebKit/KHTML?
I don't know when exactly it was canceled - maybe around the time Firefox Quantum shipped.
Note that I never said it was ever not experimental. Just that it would have been more until it was canceled.
WebKit. Also, the only thing keeping Chromium a Google monopoly is Europe, China and India’s concession.
This is performative. Mozilla is accountable to a small circle of donors, and they mostly see Firefox as a monetisation vector.
They could’ve gone the Wikipedia route and heavily asked for donations, but, instead, they’ve chosen to sell user data. That’s why I must leave. At least Google was very obviously reliant on advertising. Mozilla had no excuse other than desperation and pure idiotic evil.
No, they won't. The community will pick them up and maintain them sensibly because there will be a need. The best thing that could happen to Firefox would be Mozilla dying.
If you disagree, you can look at decades of Linux being successful despite endless bellowing about how it couldn't survive until it did. It did because it fit a sorely needed open source operating system niche. BSD failed to meet that exactly because it was controlled at the time by selfish garbage organizations.
Firefox developed by the community could reject frivolous new features and move a lot slower than Chrome. The web is heading in a shitty direction anyway, so moving slower is better.
You may want the web to stay the same but it isn't going to
It is all quite dystopian and depressing to think about.
*) The stats are somewhat wrong, I guess there are more Firefox users with different privacy blockers than Chrome, thus hiding from Google analytics and similar, which people use for stats in higher percentage
I completely agree, though what I believe would happen if Firefox went to maintenance mode is that fewer and fewer websites would work on it. It's already the case that I sometimes need to switch to Chromium to do some things because those shitty websites only work on Chromium.
As an iOS user, I am happy that I cannot install alternative browsers. If I could, those shitty websites would force me to install Chrome. I currently have zero google branded apps on my phone. (Some third party apps that I need bundle google tracking crap…)
Edit: I guess I should add that I prefer Firefox to Safari, but I’ve watched devs try to only support Safari and Chrome. Once they do that, they almost always accidentally support Firefox too.
A lot of the internet doesn’t even need JavaScript enabled. I think we over-state the compatibility nightmare. I mean it depends on your use patterns of course…
But what's annoying me right now is that it happens more and more that passkeys work with Chromium but not Firefox. And I want passkeys (well, I want to log in with my Yubikeys).
It isn’t an exact match to what you have claimed, but if it was going to start happening I’d expect it to have started by now. But for example, my favorite sites works fine in Lynx, let alone old versions of Firefox.
I really don’t get it. It isn’t obvious to me if people are really experiencing compatibility issues, or if it is just a boogeyman…
For new web technologies, the consequences of Firefox not supporting them is obvious. But even for existing sites, Mozilla is maintaining a long list of "Web Compatibility" patches that can be updated outside of regular browser updates (which is important for long-term support versions and managed environments): https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/07/firefox-68-bigints-contras...
That's exactly the type of thankless but essential work that I fear people are always underestimating when talking about "just developing a new web engine". It's probably difficult but still feasible to become "standards complete"; becoming and remaining compatible with HTML/JS as it's actually written in the real world seems much harder.
Unfortunately, BSD’s growth was stunted due to the lawsuit between AT&T (USL) and BSDi, where there were allegations over the open source code:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_In....
By the time the lawsuit was settled, Linux had already captured the attention of those wanting a FOSS Unix-like operating system. However, it’s quite remarkable how FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD found niches in the 1990s and are still around today. They may lack Linux’s market share, and admittedly they don’t have the same levels of driver and application support as Linux, but they are excellent operating systems that serve their niches well.
The community can't offer the resources and competence necessary for maintaining a Browser on the same high level as Mozilla is doing now. The community would likely also not be able to influence, or even just follow, the workgroups for web-standards. Ultimately, they would be left out and have to play a game of catch.
Of course, how much of that would be necessary is a different question, but long term, in a world without Mozilla, any Firefox-fork would become slowly useless, or even fast if Google decides to abandon the free web and go down a different route. If you want to see how useful this will end, look at all the other browser out there which are not Blink-based, a Firefox-fork or Safari. They do exist, and they all are pretty awful for general usage.
It's not all, but it doesn't take much imagining some industries want a stable open source browser with, say, security features they can toggle in to their standards. I hear people here all the time who say they would pay for a good browser but won't because Mozilla doesn't spend it on the browser. I can see a productive marriage.
If open source is your ride or die, sure. My unfortunate takeaway is non profit, open source and free isn’t a good fit for browser development.
Kagi’s Orion [1] is a solid WebKit browser and to where I’m shifting my support. (I’ve been a medium-sized fundraiser for Mozilla. They’re going to see seven-figure chargebacks from a variety of directions over the coming weeks.)
> One alternative recommended by the present article, Brave, is dabbling in ads as well
And crypto. Hard pass.
You donated a seven-figure sum to Mozilla that you are going to chargeback? Sorry i didn't understand this part.
I helped with fundraisers. The pitch was privacy. I and the others who donated feel we were mislead. (I was never a major donor. But at least one who charged six figures on his Amex has initiated a chargeback.)
Say, the threat of an actual litigation, would help hold them accountable in the future?
Litigate yes, win, probably not. If the goal is to bleed Mozilla dry, the correct angle is antitrust action against their contract with Google.
It’s a non-profit and those were donations. Those who made the donations on a card whom I know are charging it back, that’s the closest to donor accountability we’ll come to.
It would be a guide rail for people at the top to align themselves with people at the bottom. To be aligned with the promises they use in fundraising from donors (of both time and money).
I'm torn with the "just don't give them money then" which a sibling commenter said, it might work short term, but what about everything people have poured into this throughout the decades? I think all that work deserves to be safeguarded, it would show that whatever resources, be it money or time, cannot just be turned on itself by a passing leadership, and that there would be a safeguard against "flushing everything down" as the only choice.
Furthermore, I just don't see a promise/company statement as being enough, after everything that has happened. There needs to be legal accountability and safeguards for not sinking a multi-generational ship.
If you disagree with either Mozilla's mission statement or their execution, just don't donate any money, and if you must, campaign and try to convince other people to not do so either.
But lawsuits... I'd be seriously pissed to see donations go towards lawyers instead of browser development or other open web advocacy. (And yes, I'm aware Mozilla has been pretty controversially/poorly managed for a long time now, but I really don't think the right way to turn that ship around is external litigation.)
But I would hope that a lack of future donations, combined with (former) donors voicing their specific concerns, can achieve more direct outcomes than litigation. I'd hate to see their already limited funding go towards legal fees.
And seriously, threatening chargebacks, which can and often do cost the recipient money beyond just the loss of an original payment/donation, against a nonprofit over an (all things considered) minor change in direction is pretty despicable.
I could get behind it if this was actual non-profit fraud, but none of these points of criticisms against Mozilla seem new. You knew what you were donating to.
No. I buy their products. As I said, I’m no longer of the opinion that a free / donation-based browser works as a model.
> threatening chargebacks, which can and often do cost the recipient money beyond just the loss of an original payment/donation, against a nonprofit over an (all things considered) minor change in direction is pretty despicable
Not a threat. I wrote a cheque, unfortunately, but others didn’t and Amex has begun processing them. If Mozilla litigates I said I’d indemnify them up to a sizeable amount.
Obviously your decision, but even given that, do you think it'll do the state of the open web much good to litigate against Mozilla?
I’m not litigating. I am saying if Mozilla decides to litigate I’ll help my friends fight back and frankly ensure the court battle costs Mozilla more than anything they recover. The extent of my actions are to withdraw to the ability I can the prior support I gave them.
On the open web, I don’t see Mozilla as a good actor. And they’re not going anywhere over a few chargebacks. So not particularly concerned about their costs or frankly going concern.
Again, you're of course allowed to be as spiteful as you wish within the limits of the law, but I sincerely hope that your money never touches any open source project I care about if it comes with such strings attached as a substitute for prior due diligence.
I really wonder what it is about Mozilla that makes them subject to significantly more vicious rhetoric on this site than their for-profit competitors... Personally I'm also conflicted and as a result I'm not donating to them, but this is a completely different level.
If you do so, I'll forward Mozilla's legal team, and the court, a copy of your comments from this thread.
You've admitted that the chargebacks were not justified, and that your sole reason for fighting any litigation resulting from the chargebacks is to inflict financial harm on the opposing party.
The law offers a remedy to deal with situations like this: they can make you pay Mozilla's court costs, meaning that they get the chargebacks back, and all of their legal fees covered. And there is a better than 50/50 chance the judge imposes sanctions on you for wasting the resources of the court (though based on your profile this may not be a meaningful sum to you).
Seriously, talk to a lawyer before you comment any further.
isn’t webkit open source?
https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit
or maybe are you referring to something else?
The evidence points in the exact opposite direction.
Open source implies free. And free means getting fucked with ads. I trust a product I pay for versus one reliant on getting bailed out by Google.
This is distinct from its own Emacs Web Wowser, which is a more primitive browser (but quite good for quite a lot!).
here you go:
Is it roughly comparable to safari, functionality-wise?
Also, is there a non-gnome version? Gtk’s fine; containerized gnome, not so much.
A proper trustworthy Chromium-based alternative would be Vivaldi. Even more, as a company based mainly in the EU, they've managed to create a fantastic browser while also following all consumer protection mechanisms typical for the region.
What am I missing that I should be considering?
Right now ladybird is the closest to getting past the mark and has the most momentum by a long shot.
As great as having another option would be, Servo is not a browser, if people were going to build a browser on a different engine then webkit is perfectly viable right now, but people don't.
The Ladybird team are very good at marketing themselves but their technical choices are questionable. Who can think that it's a good idea to start a new web runtime in C++? They said they would switch to Swift but that doesn't seem to happen if you look at the recent commit history.
> Who can think that it's a good idea to start a new web runtime in C++?
Swift wasn't ready and clearly they dont like rust for this application, swift might still not be ready on non-apple platforms although it does look very promising.
Go look at the ladybird source, it's not the C++ you and everyone who shouts "unsafe" thinks it is.
And I took all of a day and less than a thousand lines to find UB in safe rust, so don't even bring up the UB argument. In case you are wondering, a str with invalid UTF-8 may cause UB, it's not unsafe to handle a str and they sure aren't going to put checks everywhere for it so they just hope that whoever handed you that str didn't encoded it some other way.
Now at least the only safe ways to parse a str actually involves checking but that means I need to now trust every single library that passes me a str to make sure they didn't parse it in an unsafe manner, and UB that I cannot be aware of might exist in my code, sound familiar?
Any way I know of for making a str from bytes is checked or unsafe, even slices (by byte indexes) are checked (panic). Is there a current example that hasn't been fixed at the language level where this invariant can be broken without unsafe?
I can avoid UB in my own C++ code too, the fact that the language has UB is a reason I even look at other options from time to time. To find UB in such a fundamental part of safe Rust was truly a surpise to me.
It feels like they could have very easily just made it a byte slice and said it's up yo you to validate, instead they decided it has to be valid UTF-8 or it's UB.
Looking at https://github.com/servo/servo it's very actively developed and gaining new contributors. The number of contributors for both projects is very similar. They are both active.
I'm not going to actually go and do a study because I actually have better things to do than be right on the internet but you have to provide a stronger argument than that.
FWIW, webkit's github [1] links directly to the "Epiphany Technology Preview" at gnome.org as a supported project. I have no idea if that leads to a full-featured modern browser for Linux, but I'm pretty sure if it doesn't, there should be a fork that does or creating one might be worth considering, and should be even fun and relatively easy to get kicked off. Also, since Webkit is based on KHTML, there might be re-integrations into KDE worth exploring. Ages ago there used to be Safari builds for Windows Apple created to get Safari into the hand of web developers that weren't using Macs, but it doesn't look like there's anything left to pickup.
Mozilla could allow for donation/services exclusively bound to develop Firefox, but at this point they have absolutely no incentive to do so and unsurprisingly have always refused to do it.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/opera-defends-its-android-a...
It blocks ads by default. It also doesn’t indicate it would sell my data. So, I’m using Brave or anything that doesn’t sell my data until Ladybird is available.
Moving to Brave is just supporting a Chrome monoculture in the long run, and the problems with Chrome are far worse than the problems with Firefox.
It's not "dabbling", their whole model is ad-funded and crypto-funded.
There once was a company with the second most popular browser but it could not survive against the monopoly. People got together and their browser rose as open source like phoenix from the ashes.
Initially they even called it Phoenix but switched to Firebird, for reasons I don't remember. Since this was also the name of a database they changed the name again this time to Firefox.
Don't you think history could repeat?
People hate on IE now, but there was a phase when IE was that best free browser and I say this as someone who breathed open source at the time and who was as Anti-Microsoft as you can imagine.
From how I remember it IE's downfall came after Netscape's.
Mozilla just can't stop f**ing up, and half of the websites I use don't work well with Brave.
- Leaving my smartphone in the car in case I must MFA for work or have for safety... I’d love to use a flip phone or minimal smartphone that only had camera, FaceTime, maps and an authenticator; I could just delete apps, but I don’t want to be able to install anything that wastes my life.
- If others are watching streaming video, could go somewhere else to read.
But, I may not have adequate willpower, and I struggle to read.
They are not. They are the bad guys. This is just telling people to go back to their abusers. Shame on your morals. Shame on your lack of vision.
Mozilla are a non-profit. They don’t work for their users. I’m honestly convinced a non-profit open-source model isn’t a good fit for browser development.
Kagi’s Orion [1] has the right idea. If the users pay you’re accountable to them.
They can ride a bigger player’s wake. Orion runs on WebKit. Apple hasn’t shown itself to be as problematic a steward as Google.
> Kagi, Mullvad, Proton etc should to start a common org in which they sit on the board
They would be as ignored as the actual web standards.
Except, apparently, the paying users that don't use Apple hardware.
> Are there plans for a Windows/Linux/Android version of Orion?
> We currently do not have the resources to hire a new team to do any of these platforms yet. Since Orion is funded by its users only, it is entirely up to the number of subscribers and Orion+ sales we have that will enable funding a new team to make Orion for any new platform.
[0] https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#other_os_support
There's not really accountability to the users when a bunch of them are funding software for the rest of them to use. The rest of us don't even know if Orion is any good, even if we're paying for it. It's hard to hold them accountable when I can't even try the product.
You’re paying for a product. The search product.
Like, I don’t run Linux. That doesn’t mean every product I pay for that supports Linux is somehow unaccountable to me as a customer.
> not really accountability to the users when a bunch of them are funding software for the rest of them to use
You can pay for Orion. Obviously if you don’t have a Mac, don’t do that.
One is that, since Kagi subscriptions also help fund Orion (according to the Orion website), Kagi users that don't have Apple products can't actually verify the functionality of the browser they're helping to fund. That makes accountability hard in terms of Kagi users verifying that Orion is something they're happy to be funding. Maybe I would think it sucks and rather they not spend any of my money on Orion and send the entirety of my subscription to fund search? I don't know - I can't use Orion.
Also, since Kagi subscriptions help to fund Orion, Orion is clearly not accountable only to users of Orion. In theory, Kagi users who don't/can't use Orion could demand that Kagi subscriptions stop funding Orion. Or they could theoretically say, "I'll only fund it if you start selling user data to make it possible to raise additional funds for a Windows port." That's probably not something that will happen, but the idea that Orion is solely accountable to users of Orion doesn't seem to be true, since Kagi users are also involved. Hell, if it means my Kagi subscription would get cheaper, sell the data. None of my data is in there, so I don't care.
I just don't think this idea of Orion being accountable solely to the users funding it is true, basically.
Well yes, if you don’t use Orion Kagi won’t be accountable to you as an Orion user.
> the idea that Orion is solely accountable to users of Orion doesn't seem to be true
Nobody claimed as much. The point is Kagi has some accountability to Orion users where Mozilla has almost none to Firefox users beyond their eyeballs.
Growing pains, I hope, but it doesn't bode well...
You think the freedoms granted by Free and Open Source licenses are a problem? How's that?
I see little value in the 'Kagi' browser, it looks like just another WebKit distribution. It promises to be free of telemetry, but refusing to even release your source is a death-knell for a privacy-oriented browser.
It was Microsoft trying to EEE the web with bundled IE and ActiveX that led to free browsers becoming the norm, and with it came the normalization of giving up control and privacy rather than paying $50 for a browser. Google sealed the deal with Chrome.
Maybe browsers shouldn't be free. If it takes giant multinational conglomerates subsidizing them to make them free, at the expense of users and the Web as a whole, maybe that's just not a good business model.
If Kagi can make Orion profitable and sustainable, it might jumpstart other paid browsers again. Maybe even other renderers, eventually.
After Manifestv2 and the Firefox situation, I tried out Orion and was ready to pay for it ($150 for a lifetime license), but it kept crashing on me every few minutes :( If they fix that, I'd be very interested in supporting its continued development. Would rather it be open source, but not for any privacy concerns... their team is just too small to do all the work on their own.
No, I’m saying the inherent conflict of interest in a free product that’s expensive to maintain is a problem.
One! And I haven’t even started paying for Orion directly! (I pay healthily for their search product.)
So the board and the org are accountable to nobody (else) and can do whatever they want. As long as they keep getting millions from Google, there's no real incentive for them to change. And there's a very real disincentive... if they actually do anything significant, they risk alienating their primary funder and the entire org goes bankrupt the next day.
It's an inherent conflict of interest.
While I am no fan of Mozilla’s moves here, I think people are transferring their anger and distrust at the worst offenders in the market to Mozilla, and I worry that the end result will be much worse if we just abandon Mozilla.
The core of the issue is that Google pays directly or indirectly for the salaries of most of those working on Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, and Safari. Their money is funding the whole thing.
Alternatives like Ladybird that lack this funding and commercial backing don't stand much of a chance to catch up technically. Unless they nail a sustainable funding model that isn't Google bribing them into submission.
Both Chromium and Firefox are fixable and there's plenty left to salvage. Firefox has loads of regular contributors. Mozilla employs many of them of course but not all. Aside from the drama at Mozilla, it's a pretty well run and healthy open source project. Same with Chromium probably. Though most developers are likely Google employed currently.
The solution isn't moving the problem to some new project but actually addressing the core issue. Which would be funding them properly.
Edit: Yeah, about $20 billion to be the default search: https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933206/google-apple-se...
It does seem to me that Mozilla corporation management has become corrupted, and will only get worse; so I'd like to move off Mozilla Firefox and onto something else.
But I really like that when I wipe a machine and install a new OS, first I install the Bitwarden plugin, then that lets me log in to the Mozilla account, and then that syncs down all my plugins and bookmarks into Firefox. I really like my Temporary Containers plugin in Firefox, for example, in addition to uBlock Origin. But all of them, really: the GNU Terry Pratchet plugin is fun.
The Mozilla Firefox solution does also work both on Linux and Windows.
If there is some other form of sync for plugins and bookmarks, then I'd leap at Librewolf or Waterfox or Icecat. But I am unaware of a sync solution that would work.
Anyone have something they like? I can self-host if that is an option.
(I don't use it except for web development, but I also despise FUD.)
Didn't they change that to some more centralized solution in the past couple of years, citing difficulties with peer-to-peer syncing?
> Sync v1 was a completely custom sync system, built as part of the old “Muon” browser. Sync v1 stored all data into an encrypted log on S3. New browsers joining the sync chain had to download all the logs and re-assemble the events in order. The browsers were also responsible for cleaning up out of date data records.
> Sync v2 was rebuilt to be more directly compatible with the Chromium sync system (Chromium is the same open source base of Google’s Chrome and Brave). Brave built a sync server that more directly followed Chromium’s sync protocol, but defaulting instead to use encrypted data records. Sync v2 more easily supports more sync data types, while still keeping the client side data encrypted, so only you can see your data.
https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047642371-Syn...
I have vetoed it at several organisations on the basis of its crypto tie in. Has that changed?
Web browsers are not one of these. Way too complicated, largely due to the complicated and changing DOM and JS specs.
[0]: JQuery/AJAX were probably the beginning of the end. But even without those, you had developers doing things like putting main images in CSS using the background property, overloading text with icon fonts, loading videos using "blob:" crap, or other abuse of semantics. Once it became possible to push more state to the browser instead of the server, the floodgates opened. I remember in the dial-up days, you could take a browser offline, and webpages would function perfectly, yet now, even hitting the back button can be a gamble. Now, hitting File > Save fails 95% of the time for me.
This is the best week ever for the SerenityOS guy. He must be over the moon.
What I meant was: a release that doesn't require building from source.
Also 'close' may have come across like 'days away' which is not what I meant.
We need a new browser fork! Linux way of governance could be awesome; a star leader/programmer- with community and enterprise contributors.
/just switched to librewolf for the short term; after years on firefox since early 0.x days
Brave couldn't find time to maintain IPFS the rest of the browsers are stuck in a kind of "no one owns a fax machine" vision.
TOR also seems fun out of the box.
Are there other newer things in the works or that would look good on a browser?
I’m serious: They were much more user-respecting than the web.
Now that html has grown into an application platform I would like to see some new document types. Say, turn readability into its own document type. Headings, text images and video. Give it a sticky hamburger menu with links in it. A spec for how the user should be able to style the doc. A protocol to check for new versions. Then freeze it forever.
Similarly there could be standard forms the way the paper world has them.
Or something else that bags a bunch of obvious permissions into one easy to use thing.
And I use Opera as a weak alternative to when I don't need Tor. Opera comes with a built-in free VPN, which I primarily use to get around reddit's aggressive efforts to block anonymous/multiple accounts.
While I don't spend much time on Opera (I don't use reddit much), it's a pretty decent browser. I seem to recall hearing about some issues people had with Opera in the past, but I can't recall the details.
No replacement for Pocket so far, but also not sure if I really need one.
Note how two of those are still Chromium.
Cannot get either of them to integrate with my Kobo ereader like Pocket does, though. :-(
Not the rendering engine, but the browser around it? Is it something a small team could conceivably do if you placed reasonable constraints on it: one platform at first, no cloud sync, minimal feature set, etc.? Or are we talking years and years of work and dozens of devs?
I believe so, yes.
There's a `webkitdev` Docker image which includes the required software to build WebKit on Windows¹, and you can use Playwright to run WebKit (including Web Inspector) on Windows very easily². If you wanted to start with Linux, WebKitGTK would presumably be extremely helpful.³ (Tauru uses WebKit on Linux through through `webkit2gtk`, for example.)
¹ https://github.com/WebKitForWindows/docker-webkit-dev ² https://dev.to/dustinbrett/running-the-latest-safari-webkit-... ³ https://webkitgtk.org/
If this were true, we wouldn't be in such a dire state now, but already have a bunch of solid alternatives
- upstream firefox
- volunteers
- paid developersBut I do wonder how many of us there are who would pay, and what kind of dev team that would support.
Ungoogled Chromium, from what I tested, since it doesn't ask google anything (it can't, google domains are completely replaced with invalid domains across the entire browser), it in turn doesn't check cert revocation. Trading losing privacy with Mozilla to losing privacy and security with everyone, seems bad.
"While there is some alarmism" I feel that is poor form to write what could be considered alarmism and then have such a statement.
Edit - Windows options?
For web access I use RoundCube. FairEmail on Android.
One is hoping to release something usable next year. The other one is Gnome Web.
I had to install it for some work thing, and booting a clean copy reminds me of a peak pre-loaded-software windows box.
All they need to add to reach full feature parity is a Candy Crush captcha that gates the “login to enhance google tracking” and “switch search engines” dialogs.
I honestly don’t understand how people put up with the boiled frog crap from Google. The last time I ran a test query, the ads pushed 100% of the search results off the front page.
and I imagine also that you are a software dev and you want to get paid for your efforts yourself.
Got it.
I'd be willing to pay for a browser which truly had its users best in mind. As far as I know, no such browser exists.
Remind me what's wrong with those again?
> Remind me what's wrong with those again?
Edge is a Chromium re-skin, which has the exact same problems of being controlled by Google. And it has tons of Microsoft spyware added on top.
Safari is pretty good, but it only works on Mac OS. If they released it for Windows and Linux I bet it would be very popular.
mainstream news sites are landfills of terrible banner ad tech. Once we can use AI for efficient scraping into e-paper interfaces, the smart people will migrate to a quieter luxury experience, probably something more modular than a browser.
For example Amazon.com is usable with an adblocker but the Amazon app is a horrific mess of ads. Facebook.com can be made barely usable using a dedicated browser extension but their app is similarly 95% ads and “suggested content” and 5% actual content from your friends.
HN client would use what, RSS? HN does not have an API to get at the posts now?
X is dead and buried. Pipewire is almost ready instead for the purpose, but the UI needs to be made. And remote input handling.
OpenAI is a proprietary system, it can crash and burn at you at any time. Go run Sonnet or Claude or something.
booting a cloud container to pull and process web content in an ai intermediate web client might provide some privacy and distance as well.
i just think browsers are the artefact of decades old ideas a out how we use tech.
Librewolf, Vivaldi, Orion (iOS and macOS only) are all solid options.
Librewolf is based on Firefox. If Firefox dies then Librewolf is done as well.
Orion is Webkit-based, which is not too bad, but as you said it's ios and macOS only.
Also because of how economy works now, interest in Brave translates to the value of its built-in cryptocurrency (BAT) and therefore the economic power of its creator.
[0] https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-we...