[HN Gopher] (Opinion) When Firefox jumps the shark, the call to ...
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(Opinion) When Firefox jumps the shark, the call to action is
Ladybird
I want to start this post off by saying that I fully understand
software loyalty. There are people who will defend Firefox to the
end of the Earth, and there should be! Over the years, Firefox has
been invaluable to the open web, and is solely responsible for
securing web standards in general. Without them, the web would
surely be yet another decaying Google platform. So in my opinion,
there is nothing wrong with defending Firefox at every turn. It is
a tough market, and they should do anything it takes to secure
their own survival. That being said, there comes a time when we
must explore our options. As Firefox shifts towards an advertising
and tracking model, Ladybird, the first new browser engine since
the 90's with the ability to pass the Acid3 JavaScript test suite,
has secured a $1 million grant from the founder of GitHub. This is
exciting news to put it lightly, and may very well be a small
glimmer of light at the end of this tunnel. In my opinion, if
there is to be any hope for the future of the open web, we must put
our full support in backing behind the Ladybird project by any
means available to us. Please, spread the word, contribute, or
donate whatever you can. I truly feel the future of the open web
may depend on it. Tell your friends!
Author : mouse_
Score : 27 points
Date : 2024-07-16 11:40 UTC (11 hours ago)
| infotainment wrote:
| Why not just fork Firefox? IIRC there are already several
| actively-developed forks.
| mouse_ wrote:
| Starting fresh with a competent, modern, minimal initial
| platform can provide many benefits in the realms of
| sustainability, security and performance. See: WireGuard vs.
| OpenVPN, Wayland vs. X.Org.
|
| Sustainability wise, Firefox is not built for hackers. One
| example is the Haiku community has been working on porting
| Firefox for years, to varying degrees of success. The problem
| is that it's just so huge; there are so many things going on,
| so many libraries that each require porting efforts on their
| own, DRM standards built into the core platform that will
| likely never see support, so real "Firefox" is likely to never
| happen regardless of community effort.
|
| Meanwhile, though it is in a quite early state, multiple people
| are already experimenting with their own working builds of
| Ladybird on Haiku.
|
| I'm not trying to say I can guarantee this will continue being
| the case as the ladybird project reaches maturity, but I think
| they deserve an honest shot. Wouldn't it be nice to have a
| truly portable browser engine?
| infotainment wrote:
| Fair point, but then, what about Servo? Being based on Rust
| and not C++ seems like a major plus point over Ladybird, IMO.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I'm going to look seriously at Ladybird. I'm completely
| neutral about Servo. I don't care if the language a thing
| is written in is Rust or not.
| tardy_one wrote:
| When ypu are talking web facing client full scale
| browser, C++ is impossible to secure as well as a safer
| language and most safer languages are impossible to
| optimize as well as C++. So rust is not so much exciting
| as not horrifying.
| nextos wrote:
| I agree with this, I love SerenityOS and LadyBird looks
| very interesting. But scaling that to a serious and safe
| browser with C++ is going to be _hard_.
|
| Plus, I don't see how Firefox is really broken. Right
| now, forking and shipping with a custom user.js is
| sufficient to fix most annoyances.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, I know the argument and it has some merit. I just
| don't find it very persuasive, so a thing being
| implemented in Rust doesn't make me any more or less
| willing to use it. To each their own.
| autoexec wrote:
| I'm moving to a fork at first, but what's exciting to me about
| Ladybird is that it's got a new web engine. There's not really
| a lot of options in that space right now, so it's great to see
| a non-proprietary newcomer. I'm hoping it helps bring some more
| diversity to the ecosystem which is extremely Blink heavy at
| the moment.
| bguebert wrote:
| I've also been looking at palemoon and midori, but not for sure
| yet on them. It just seems like firefox has reached a point where
| it's not going to get any better.
| mouse_ wrote:
| Midori is very cool but in my experience is fairly unstable. I
| love it and wish it the best as well. I do feel Ladybird has a
| better shot at being a primary browser candidate in 2 years'
| time, though.
| autoexec wrote:
| > It just seems like firefox has reached a point where it's not
| going to get any better.
|
| I wish. To me it seems like Firefox is certain to only get
| worse and worse. For a while now it felt like every major
| update came with something new I had to disable, often for
| privacy reasons, but now that Mozilla is an ad tech company,
| Firefox users are their product and they're just getting
| started selling us to advertisers.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Palemoon is just a fork of obsolete Firefox which is liable to
| suffer from vulnerabilities already fixed in Firefox. At this
| point it lacks support for a vibrant ecosystem of Firefox
| extensions.
|
| It also lacks the substantial improvements to hardware
| accelerated decoding on linux within the last year or so and
| improvements in performance.
|
| It does have a sync backend but inactive account data may be
| deleted and if the project is shuttered your data is kaput.
|
| It also lacks Android and ios support meaning you lack the
| virtuos benefits of using the same tech on all platforms like
| syncing passwords and bookmarks.
|
| They also recently improved integration by allowing you to
| browse open tabs on synced computers
|
| Firefox in also has in the last while added privacy preserving
| local translation support and long ago added really good local
| reader mode.
|
| Also my browsing would be less nice without addons like
| Sideberry and Tridactyl not to mention colorful via pywal.
|
| Then we get to adblocking an arms race that Palemoon with its
| several year old (2021)version of uBlock that will never be
| updated stands to lose.
|
| Also the lack of a mobile version means that your options for
| adblock on the go are meager unless you either run Firefox
| Mobile or look into a more complicated option like pihole with
| its own tradeoffs like not being able to turn it off for a site
| with a click.
|
| Firefox has been making dumb communication mistakes and been
| too friendly with partners but it remains in my opinion the
| best choice. Dumb choices like this can easily be disabled and
| if that becomes onerous libreWolf unlike Palemoon is just
| Firefox with different privacy friendly defaults.
|
| That said it also requires more setup as far as addons and sync
| which is why I prefer to simply configure Firefox.
| Improvement wrote:
| Don't forget Servo engine, it's supported by the Linux foundation
| and they had been achieving impressive milestones.
|
| Project Page: https://servo.org/
| devwastaken wrote:
| Ladybird and servo are not replacements for a feature full web
| browser and are years away from fulfilling that role if at all.
|
| The hype is unfounded. Yet another browser engine designed using
| the same tools with the same methods isn't going to yield an
| organization resistant to the monetary and social problems that
| Mozilla has faced.
|
| It's not about the tech. It's about the org making the tech. Dev
| time is expensive, and there isn't a way to pay for it.
| Eventually people get tired of working for free and begin to
| treat life realistically - f#@$ you, pay me. That is the correct
| and expected outcome.
|
| Ladybird as a browser has nothing special going for it other than
| hype. It's a walking vulnerability that has to play catch-up to
| be a contender as a web browser.
|
| Chromium was/is "the" open browser, and it only happened because
| google and friends footed the bill.
|
| Where ladybird and servo could shine is as an embeddable renderer
| that doesn't have to have all the other features of a fully
| kitted browser.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Dev time is expensive, and there isn't a way to pay for it.
| Eventually people get tired of working for free and begin to
| treat life realistically - f#@$ you, pay me. That is the
| correct and expected outcome.
|
| That must be why there are no successful open source projects
| in the world and nobody ever works on software for long unless
| it's for money (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fs-motives.html)
| devwastaken wrote:
| GNU, the org where the devs make money at corps where they
| use that software. Open source does not mean no money.
| iwontberude wrote:
| Isn't Ladybird Hank Hill's racist dog?
| terramoto wrote:
| Arent they just sharing metrics like ad x was seen y times in b
| place? If that's the case I think that's a good compromise. Sites
| that don't sell anything need to make money some way, if all they
| want to know is if an ad in a certain place about a certain
| product is working or not, that's fine by me.
| autoexec wrote:
| No, the browser tracks what ads you see/click on, then monitors
| what you do online for signs the ad was successful, and if it
| thinks it found one it sends all that data to a third party who
| compiles a report to deliver to the ad company.
|
| That might be okay to you, but a browser that snoops on my
| browsing history and reports it to third parties who will then
| use it to send reports to advertisers is totally unacceptable
| to me.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It only does that for websites that are funded by
| advertising. If you avoid those (e.g. HN) you should be fine?
| autoexec wrote:
| I mean, if there are no paid ads on the site it won't track
| any.
|
| That said, I don't expect this to be the end state of their
| user tracking. They could expand their system to track the
| kinds of ads we get here on HN too. Maybe eventually start
| ups will be able to pay Mozilla to track how many firefox
| users use their web apps after seeing a "Show HN" post or
| even just after seeing mentions of a product in comments.
| Right now it's hard to track the success of astroturf
| campaigns, but when a web browser is working for
| advertisers instead of being a user agent it becomes
| possible.
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