Do Firefox forks allow us to avoid this enshittification or will they also be affected as well?
Comment on Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic
HexadecimalSky@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I see it said agian and agian. because its true. Firefox is one of, if not the best of the mainstream browsers. (Not included its many forks) but Mozilla is a horrible caretaker of it. Mozilla does not focus on firefox and they dont care/believe in it nearly as much as its users or devs who fork it.
The motivations of a company are extremely important, and has Mozilla does not care for a lightweight, good, privacy centric browser, the enshitification will and has corrupt firefox.
It’s only a matter of time until it is as bad as chromium or flat out joins it.
afronaut@lemmy.cafe 17 hours ago
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 16 hours ago
In theory yes. But remember that Chrome is based on Chromium which is open source. But nobody has stepped up to do a viable hard fork to take power away from Google.
Maintaining a modern browser is a huge undertaking which is why almost nobody except Google, Mozilla, and Apple are really even trying. Even Microsoft threw in the towel.
The more bad stuff is added to Firefox the harder it will be for any forks to keep up removing it while also keeping it up to date. Will anyone step up?
theherk@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
There are at least two projects trying. Ladybird is one and will make a splash next year. In addition, since the Servo project was adopted by the Linux Foundation it is again under active development.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Because it hasn’t been needed. Alternatives like vivaldi and brave do make some changes to allow you to disable Google services. Ungoogled chromium is also a thing.
For all the hate, Google has mostly done fine beyond a few boneheaded decisions.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
Yes, they allow full avoidance of any potential data collection through the browser, if they remove the collection features.
Mozilla would need to change their licensing terms to prevent forks from being able to remove things like that, and forks could just use the last version of the code before the license change and just backport new features.
Also Firefox is fully open source, unlike chromium which relies on a closed source binary blob in the middle. Some chromium forks have replaced the binary blob with open source code, but the default is for chromium forks to have a nice chunk in them controlled by google that no one can deeply inveatigate what it does. Firefox does not have this issue.
Mozilla can’t hide any potential data collection in Firefox due to the full open source nature (unlike chrome forks). They also can’t stop fork devs from stripping out any data collection functions. And as of today, they have not introduced any data collection that is not supremely anonymized, and they have not introduced any data collection that cannot be opted out of through the browser settings (and about:config).
Lem453@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
Is librewolf a good alternative? Most plugins seem compatible
RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 18 hours ago
I don’t believe Mozilla doesn’t have the best interests of the browser at heart, I believe that they do think their browser is the their number one product.
But that’s the problem. It’s free software, going up against a juggernaut whose browser is just another side project to drive engagement with their core product.
A juggernaut who just so happens to be one of Mozilla’s primary source of income. All it will take is a little bit of legislation somewhere in the world to make that deal less attractive and Mozilla could be dead in the water. And it will take all of those forks with it, paving the way for Google to become the true web Hegemony.
Mozilla needs to diversify to ensure they can continue to provide stewardship to the browser.
But trying to make money in 2025 just seems to summon the enshittification brigade.
Free software is not free. Someone has to make it.
lemminator@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
Have they considered just asking for money? Also getting rid of the giant holes that they keep pouring their money into?
A lot of people love Firefox, and would happily donate. They could also trim a lot of fat at Mozilla quite easily.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 19 hours ago
Chromium is bad only in your head. It’s a fucking rendering engine with different incarnations. How can this be bad? And no, FF is not “the best”, otherwise it wouldn’t have the shitty market share it actually has.
RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 18 hours ago
Ah silly us.
We spent a decade hating on IE, it’s slowness, poor support for any standards, plugins that fuck your shit up, etc.
But it was obviously the best because it had that huge market share.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
It’s even worse. You spent several years worshipping a misguided Corp. making a mediocre browser fir laughable reasons and you have been f*cked in the end.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
“Worshipping”? What online spaces have you been frequenting??
4am@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
Found the t3.gg enjoyer
Engywuck@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
I don’t know what is that.
HexadecimalSky@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Each person has thier own opinion. I have used IE, edge, before it went chromium and have used chrome. They work, and if you get into the ecosystem they work really well, but if you don’t want to be in the ecosystem or try to stop some it, I ran into problems.
When I just accepted all google ecosystem products, chrome worked great, when I needed to use alternate google accounts for school I ran into issues. So I moved to edge and it worked fine, except for with google I ran into issues, then it became chromium.
Then ads, and popups being an ad company, google doesn’t like supporting ad or content blockers, which makes sense but ublock has been so great at blocking unwanted popups and ads and as far as I am aware it doesn’t wirk as well on chromium based browsers, or at all.
So agian Chromium is a solid system and if you don’t care to change it it can work grest for you, but I found trying to change it to suit my needs as been problematic, in ways firefox or some fork of it hasn’t been.
If you are happy with Chrome or Edge or whatnot, great, there isn’t a problem but I want other options, I want more options about how it works, how it runs on my system and what data it collects or shows, things chromium doesn’t support.
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I don’t know why they haven’t floated the idea of some kind of subscription or one-time payment (though a subscription might be just as infuriating). I’m not above paying for software and if it was a reasonable price, say $10 one-time, I’d much prefer that over it becoming the new Chrome.
RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 18 hours ago
Could you imagine the enshittification cries if they did this. “Mozilla to add subscription model to your browser”.
They have other products that have subscriptions you can pay for to support the company.
Instead of using Mullvad, use Mozilla VPN (it is literally exactly the same, you just pay Mozilla not Mullvad)
If you’re a web developer, Subscribe to MDN Plus.
Hate spam? Firefox Relay.
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I learned more about their paid services from this one post than in the last 5 years of using their browser. Not that their browser should be constantly inundating you with ads for their other services but dang.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The problem is that none of this revenue or profit is guaranteed to go to Firefox. It goes to Mozilla and they decide how it is spent. It could go to pocket, a new overpaid CEO, or a hundred other ways that don’t benefit FOSS.
I would have donated hundreds of dollars to Firefox development already, if that were possible, but that is not an option. The only option is Mozilla, and they may spend that on anything else but Firefox.
Also Mozilla VPN is shit. It is a severely limited implementation of Mullvad, and they even enshittified their browser for it. You can only have per container VPN’s (a major gain for user privacy) if you pay for Mozilla VPN… They’ve already chosen to harm their users privacy for profit. This is the kind of shit that guarantees I will never donate as long as a for profit entity has control over Firefox, and its features.
balder1991@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I’m pretty sure a $10 one time payment won’t pay for the costs of development that Firefox requires.
Open source only works when there are people motivated enough to maintain something for free or when the organization managing it has another source of income.
unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org 11 hours ago
Donating has always been an option
morrowind@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
They’re already dying. This would be throwing themselves in the grave. People aren’t used to paying for browsers