My Thoughts on the Firefox situation

  • I’ve used Firefox since it was Mosaic, and when it was called Netscape Navigator.

  • I agree that the removal of the promise not to sell your data is bad, and the new EULA is bad.

  • I worry about the long term product development of Firefox

  • I question the role of the fork in development, meaning I don’t know how much they can do on their own without Firefox proper.

  • Firefox sync is an important feature to me. I’m open to self-hosting but not losing it.

  • I’m open to new browsers for the future, but this is a huge effort.

  • Brave is NOT the solution. No way, no how.

  • We need an alternative to Webkit based browsers.

  • Firefox will have lessons for us about FLOSS sustainability. We don’t know what those lessons are yet.

#Mozilla #Firefox

  • Serge from Babka@babka.socialOP
    1·
    2 months ago

    @calispera@babka.social

    Mozilla is a very strange entity and the Mozilla Corporation is tasked to make money. The way it does that has changed over time but largely through deals- for example by having Google as the default search engine, Mozilla is paid millions of dollars. By making deals with VPN providers and others, it makes other money.

    We know that over time Firefox has gotten worse and worse for users.

    We don’t know why.

    It will be interesting to understand what happened in depth so we can learn lessons from it.

    • TerryB@babka.social
      1·
      2 months ago

      @serge@babka.social @calispera@babka.social I’ve pondered this for a while. It’s not hard to assume that the financial cart will start to pull the FOSS horse. But maybe there’s a second strand of enshittification caused by focus-group based design. Though that said, FOSS also sometimes suffers the opposite way too- dev chosen features that are based around their own preferences and interests, but may not match user needs.

        • Serge from Babka@babka.socialOP
          0·
          2 months ago

          @calispera

          I won’t speak for @terryb but there’s are two polarities. On one hand you have a singular vision, and on the other, a group.

          There’s an expression in English “A camel is a horse designed by committee”.

          There’s an idea that a thing made purely by focus groups will have no identity and no spirit.

          Of course sometimes hearing the views of others will help inform and make a better work, but if it’s not done thoughtfully then you get “mush”.

          Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci had a focus group. We’d have paintings of cats. :)