This is sad 😢

[mxk@hachyderm.io]

@dazo Linux got adoption due to its features, not because of politics.

Some people might work on it out of idealism, but wide adoption and financing come from Linux actually being a useful project.

[dazo@infosec.exchange]

@mxk

Linux got adoption due to its features, not because of politics.

Not quite so simple. You skip why Linux was created in the beginning. It was because there was no affordable Unix alternatives available to students.

All the features we take for granted in Linux today was lacking in the beginning. It was a pretty limited OS in the beginning, only supporting a very limited set of hardware.

But Linux got adoption because it was a community wanting to builds something better, which happened to happen in the open. And it gained features through open collaboration. It was not a commercial drive itself which gave Linux the adoption.

What gave adoption was the freedom it delivered. You can call freedom a feature in this context. And others have tried to stop Linux from gaining success over the years; from Microsoft calling it a cancer, to SCO suing it for copyright issues.

The reason more and more companies decided to bet on Linux, support it in various ways, the reason some companies tried to fight Linux ... they are all based in (corporate/business) politics.

What Mozilla is doing is contrary to this. And Firefox is the immediate collateral damage, which makes the whole browser scope more difficult unless a sustainable alternative surfaces. The Chrome/Chromium dominance today is therefore a considerable threat for an open, free and sustainable browser experience.

We have already been down this path before, with Internet Explorer. We don't need to repeat these mistakes. In that sense, the Chrome browser "saved us" back then. Now Chrome/Chromium has become the new threat.

[mxk@hachyderm.io]

@dazo even if I would buy into your position:

Which browser would be the freedom haven that people form a community around and enjoy the freedom.

Firefox isn't a community project in any serious fashion, nor is chrome.

If you look for that type of dynamic, servo is the best bet we currently have. And it's just not there yet, to be usable as your daily driver.

[gabboman@gabboman.xyz]

this is from last year

[joby@hachyderm.io]

@dazo It's like when Google took "don't be evil" out of their motto. They're self-aware, at least, I guess, maybe that's worth something?

[jef@mastodon.social]

@dazo This is like when the warrant canary doesn't squawk.

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@EdCates @mxk @theorangetheme @dazo @graves501 oh but lynx, links2, www-wo-miru, @dillo and Arachne are also very usable browsers, all with their own rendering engines with respective upsides and downsides. I know I switch between them depending on what site renders better where.

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@mxk @dazo Vivaldi kicks people off for merely questioning the genocide done by Israel. (I’ve seen that happen to someone I knew on Fedi.)

[edcates@mastodon.social]

@mxk @dazo @graves501 @theorangetheme

What gives me a headache is contributing to turning the WWW into Google's private playground while carrying on like they're the scrappy, unsung rebel's choice.

Nah. It's just Chromium in a nicer suit.

[riaschissl@sigmoid.social]

@dazo First, please don't get me wrong: Like anyone else, I don't want my data to be sold, and at the very last by the browser I've been using as my daily driver for anything internet for years.

But the question I can't find a viable answer for is: How can Firefox become a sustainable organization?

Selling our data is a no-go, that's for sure. But how do they make the money required to not only maintain but also invest in Firefox?

[ra@mstdn.social]

@dazo #boostingforthread

[anthony@indieweb.social]

@dazo @danielquinn This is a year old change and Mozilla already responded: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/.

Could you please update this toot with the date to avoid confusion?

[zbrown@floss.social]

@anthony @dazo @danielquinn they didn't assert any date, the commit itself is dated, the change was not reverted.

[duco@norden.social]

@tomf @dazo which has it's own drama, too. Would also be nice if Servo would get finished.

[adamw@fosstodon.org]

@dazo also a year old?

[ohir@social.vivaldi.net]

@mxk @dazo I'd like to inform you that NetSurf is still alive and kicking. It has kinda working js engine now, and also a basic support for some css and simple svg. Are you ok to support and promote Netsurf?

[mousey@mastodon.seattlematrix.org]

@dazo

RIP

[ohir@social.vivaldi.net]

@dazo I am no fan, euphemistically spoken, of Chromium. But since last US elections I was on the quest where to go if FF I use in GUI for um 25 years now will go fascist. And it happens that only Europe-based browser that seems to have enough power to continue looking into Chromium codebase for me is Vivaldi. Yes I have read many diss posts acusing them of "selling data" and even of "stealing passwords". Often by the same posters who have history of writing about chips in vaccines. Europe with their GDPR laws and User Data Czars in every country counters many of these narratives. Ultimately you must trust in whomever builds browser you use. If you can compile and build for yourself, you can also comment-out all that FF telemetry, don't you? And only then, only if you read and understood every diff that came to your fork, only then you can say "likely this browser is not rigged against me, likely". _Any_ binary you use implies trust.

Yes, we have few choices now. And we, the prols, have no means to support feature bludgeoning that comes from w3c enabling two corpos, one totalitarian government and one non-profit to hold oligopoly/.
Now I am still doing whack-a-mole with Mozilla "inventions" for work activities, but I am learning Vivaldi quirks to be able to switch 2500+ mostly Goog bond community to Vivaldi.

[mgorny@mastodon.com.pl]

@dazo, ah, the FUD again? Not going to fall for it the second time around.

(Yes, there was a heated discussion when they've changed the original copy, and the main conclusion was that nobody bothered to read the whole file, where the same point still exists.)

[yoasif@mastodon.social]

@realcaseyrollins @djsumdog @dazo No Nightly for LibreWolf, but you can use policies in Firefox to escape the badness if really want Nightly.