Anthropyevery time I see someone going "I finally ditched #firefox and went with this closed source chromium based alternative instead"
all I can think of is
Jaime Soriano@anthropy I agree with you, and I am also staying on Firefox, but I understand some people moving on. Governance also matters.
@jsoriano oh I'm definitely not blaming people for finding alternatives, I just think that people aren't considering their alternatives carefully enough-- which to be fair, is hard, because there aren't a lot of good ones. This is exactly why I'm funding Servo
@jsoriano but, I also ironically kind of get where Mozilla comes from.
If you want to do proper opensource AI with datasets that aren't made of plagiarism and code from questionable sources, there's basically nothing there.
Guess who IS working on that though? Mozilla.
So as much as I REALLY REALLY wish they'd stop putting it in their browser, I don't hate that they're working on AI in itself, because the way they did that wasn't bad so far, AFAIK.
modulux
Daniel Schildt
➴➴➴Æ🜔Ɲ.Ƈꭚ⍴𝔥єɼ👩🏻💻@anthropy +1 to supporting Servo, I really hope it succeeds.
5225225@anthropy @jsoriano speaking of servo: are you aware of a project for "a browser around servo(the engine) that is intended to be usable"
like, servoshell is okay but it doesn't really feel like it's meant to be anything more than a way to try servo's engine out (lack of, say, browser history / extension support / other settings)
ascii_only@ascii_only @anthropy oooh didn't know about that page, ty ty ty!
will check those out
KATastrophE@ascii_only @5225225 @anthropy from the readme:
At the moment, Servoshell should provide a better user experience.
it would be really cool to have a proper browser based on servo though, but i guess that is not trivial to do
MostlyBlindGamer@anthropy @jsoriano I’m not funding @servo because they don’t have accessibility anywhere in their roadmap (even after asking about it multiple times).
Firefox keeps up with standards and both Apple and Google have to care about #accessibility because of government procurement laws and regulations.
I’d happily donate, but I’m not impressed by my screen reader just saying “empty window.”
Maruno Ulfdrengr@anthropy I did that for a brief moment but found our Chromium is still very crap too... Now I resort to some forks of Firefox on both mobile and desktop, which still have issues but a bit less...
I really wish they didn't drop the ball on quality so much. :/ I remember it used too be so much better in both performance and stability.
MaxineInYourWifii lowkey need to watch the good place
Bolet modo Sombrero de paja 🏴☠️ 
mxk@anthropy I am betting on Servo, but until then I stick with Vivaldi, since it's the only browser with all features I need and it doesn't push AI into my face.
The virtue of open source doesn't trump every day usability for me, nor does it offset using a product that pushes AI.
Which of those things is more important is a very open question and for me AI and the moment is by far greater threat to all of us.
The virtue of open source doesn't trump every day usability for me, nor does it offset using a product that pushes AI.
Which of those things is more important is a very open question and for me AI and the moment is by far greater threat to all of us.
mmphosis
W. Latif Ayubi 🏴☠️@anthropy Chromium itself is open source, and there are also open source chromium projects like ungoogled-chromium.
@wayubi I unironically think the Chromium opensource project is probably one of the best alternatives to Firefox.... Except that Google exerts significant control over it of course, and this is a problem if you care about e.g Manifest V3 aka "the adblocker blocker", which Firefox and derivatives have not implemented in such way.
@anthropy Does Google also exert control over the ungoogled chromium project?
@wayubi yea, they are still the main developers of it, and in general the manifest v3 thing is unavoidable on anything chromium derived unless they specifically implement workarounds for it
edit: no wait my bad I thought you meant the actual chromium project, not the "Ungoogled Chromium" project, which is of course made by different people. I still don't think they actually worked around Manifest v3 though
@anthropy I'm not exactly sure what the issue is with Manifest V3. I use ublock origin in my chromium based browser, and it still works in them.
Adblock Plus says they're Manifest V3 compliant, so the extension continues to work with the latest chromium manifests.
> Update as of 5/3/2024: The Manifest V3 version of the Adblock Plus extension is officially here!
https://blog.adblockplus.org/blog/how-adblock-plus-is-getting-ready-for-manifest-v3
@wayubi oh interesting I thought they made it impossible
[..]
ah, it seems that it definitely does impact adblockers because now they have to predefine sets of things to filter and it is not nearly as flexible as it was in v2. Basically everyone got nerfed and things like trackers are harder to block now and one might've noticed in ublock the filtering rules to be less advanced, in ABP I'm not sure it's as visible, but it supposedly does impact its ability to filter things more thoroughly.
[..]
ah, it seems that it definitely does impact adblockers because now they have to predefine sets of things to filter and it is not nearly as flexible as it was in v2. Basically everyone got nerfed and things like trackers are harder to block now and one might've noticed in ublock the filtering rules to be less advanced, in ABP I'm not sure it's as visible, but it supposedly does impact its ability to filter things more thoroughly.
@anthropy Well, who knows. I haven't noticed an impact, and I don't know about adblock, but chromium with ublock origin is still blocking ads. All browsers have their issues, for instance, Firefox now has an AI sidebar (unnecessary bloat). In any case, Firefox is fine too. I've used it since before it was Netscape Navigator 3.0 Gold.
@wayubi I'm glad to hear that it works! having good open browser options with the features people want is important, and it's nice if (degoogled) chromium can fill that gap without people having to resort to those closed chromium derivatives
@anthropy Yea, it's good to have options. If it wasn't for the degoogled chromium, the next chromium I'd recommend is probably Vivaldi, but that's closed source and heavily bloated.
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️@anthropy
They did make it impossible to do as well as it was before. There's still a version being put out, but it had to be made in a way that's less effective. There's still an extension with the same name, made by the same people, but make no mistake, it is not the same extension or the same quality.
@wayubi
They did make it impossible to do as well as it was before. There's still a version being put out, but it had to be made in a way that's less effective. There's still an extension with the same name, made by the same people, but make no mistake, it is not the same extension or the same quality.
@wayubi
Oblomov@anthropy that's literally the only reason why I haven't switched over. I used to be an Opera aficionado when it was its own browser with its own rendering engine, and now I would *love* to switch to Vivaldi for many of the same reasons why I used to love Opera, but its reliance on Blink is a killer 8-(
Matt@oblomov @anthropy I used to work at Opera 
when it had its own rendering engine (and for a bit post-blink), so know a lot of the people making Vivaldi 
Right now, I would much rather put my trust in the group of people that I know, making that product in Norway 🇳🇴 and Iceland 🇮🇸, that keep making good decisions about their product, than in the Silicon Valley strangers at Mozilla the USA 🇺🇸 that keep making terrible decisions.
🤷
It's a me, Mauro@matt @mauro @anthropy the problem is that they can only listen to customer feedback for UI/UX comments, not concerning what defines the world wide web, which is way more important.
For example, they cannot support JPEG-XL that Google decided to drop https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/85153/adding-support-for-jpeg-xl-jxl-images/15
When Google will finalize dropping support for XSLT, Vivaldi will have to follow suit https://wok.oblomov.eu/tecnologia/google-killing-open-web/
Similarly, it won't be able to support the Gemini protocol or the Gemtext format.
Chromium is open-source and there are tickets in the public bug tracker which Vivaldi staff are cc'd in on - so I would presume there is some collaboration happening.
Vivaldi *could* dedicate resources to either improving the existing code for Chromium or legally fork Chromium and develop their own version based on it.
Until then, Chromium is used by many other browsers that there's an industry-wide interest in keeping it up to date compared to Gecko.
@matt @oblomov @anthropy I'd say chromium is "open-source", since it's maintained by google devs that can decide on any external contribution wether to accept it or not.
I believe that any browser that is using chromium is doing a huge disservice to the open web, definitely not helping the cause.
Vivaldi is great at marketing to the right audience. That's it.
People seem to lament the Presto days and whilst I really loved Opera, it was all proprietary software.
Chromium is open source and maintained by Google devs. But - correct me if I am wrong - Gecko is open source and maintained by Mozilla devs. Both companies are making shitty decisions.
It just feels like a lose-lose to me but I can understand why a new browser (2015 is new, right?) would choose Chromium over Gecko. 🤷
Proprietary software is less of an issue for the health of an ecosystem than a monoculture. Opera/Presto was a net positive for the health of the web because it was an independent implementation of the W3C standards. Google's control of the WHATWG via Chromium and the controlled opposition of Gecko is catastrophic: the Blink code being open source is completely irrelevant when whatever Google decides (and nothing else) goes.
Kaye@anthropy I love to live on a world where my alternatives are "Firefox that Mozilla is constantly making worse" and "reskinned Chromium" and "toy browser that doesn't work." I love that. I love that for me
cholling@anthropy I have no religious obligation to use open source software. Vivaldi lets me block ads and trackers and doesn't have AI garbage. The fact that using it makes Stallman cry is just a nice bonus.
Jan ☕🎼🎹☁️🏋️♂️@anthropy Unfortunately people don't seem to get it.
WerySkok 
@anthropy it's really good that Zen browser now exists as a humane alternative to that already dead Arc browser, and it's also good that Zen is still open source. This makes it a great alternative to Firefox if its UI became boring.
Ethan Blanton@anthropy I saw a huge rant from somebody the other day about how they would never use Chrome because evil tech and Google spyware ... and then somewhere down-thread it came out they were using MS Edge on Ubuntu. You can't make stuff like that up.
@anthropy ugh don't remind me that i wanted to switch from plain firefox to librewolf a long time ago 😅
Klaus Frank@anthropy At this point I consider it similarly closed source (or better gate keepered source). The firefox codebase is so complicated I don't even know where to get started with it....
@agowa338 sorry but this is basically saying "the source code is complicated so it might as well be closed soruce", which I disagree with.
while I, too, like readable and well-documented code, I consider it a less problematic than having to decompile and reverse engineer a binary if I want to understand a program.
Browsers are big complicated projects, easily as complicated as an OS kernel, that goes for all of them. For firefox there are some tools you can try to help like searchfox.org
@anthropy
I'm not referring to the source code itself. But to how it is published and presented.
Like if you're not already familiar with Firefox or Thunderbird development just try to find it for example. And once you managed to do that, try to figure out how to compile it without having changed anything (yet)...
Also this is the first time I even hear searchfox.org exists.
Nspace@agowa338
My first search result for "firefox source code" is https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox.
The third link in the main README points to https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contribution_quickref.html, which explains how to compile firefox from source.
Doesn't look that complicated even without any prior knowledge.
@nspace Well that GitHub is not where you contribute and mostly just a mirror....
And now try to actually check it out and heaven forbid figure out how to compile and maybe even patch some minor thing.
However I acknowledge that it appears to be a bit more accessible and less gate-keeperish than Thunderbird...
The contributor's guide, linked at the top of the README (same link I posted in my previous reply) has step-by-step instructions on how to
* check out the source code
* build firefox
* test changes
* submit patches for code review
* get code review
* ...
Again, doesn't seem all that obscure.
I mainly looked into Thunderbird (not Firefox). And for that you're told to get the firefox source first and there the documentation wasn't that great.
I probably should not just have used what it pointed at but also looked for how to get firefox sourcecode and compile it directly first then though.
I mainly just assumed it is the same for Firefox as it was for Thunderbird. But I already admitted that oversight in my last post...
@anthropy i dont really care
when someone telles me they are using alternatives, i'm like "they will end up in the fediverse, all of them! he he he 😈"
Xoa Gray@anthropy Not gonna' lie, part of me just kinda' wishes that Google would suddenly fold. Just be gone. It would allow Firefox to get some ground back, and other browser makers to show off their stuff without having to try and fight their way out from under Google's shadow.
One can dream.
sylvie@xoagray isnt firefox funded by google? wouldnt taking down google take mozilla down with it?
(the official website states the majority of revenue is from "web browser search partnerships" (read: google, google (corporation) pays them for making google (search engine) the default))
@sylvie It is largely funded by Google yes. But I think in a situation like that they'd find another way. It might actually cause them to come around and start considering what their users want again instead of burying their heads in "AI" crap.
But even if it did knock out Firefox, it might be worth sacrificing it to take down Chrome. There are new alternatives on the way, but they'll never get anywhere as long as Chrome looms over them.
Martin Ruskov@anthropy ouch... I just realised Vivaldi is not FOSS. However, Brave is
@anthropy Tell me you're talking about Vivaldi without telling me you're talking about Vivaldi... 😛
And yes, very much agreed with the sentiment. Not only is it still Chromium-based, meaning more market share for Google's web engine, thus negating one of the biggest reasons to be using Firefox in the first place, but it's also using proprietary pieces of software of potentially questionable origin.
*sigh*