The answer to “what is Firefox?” on Mozilla’s FAQ page about its browser used to read:
The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.
Now it just says:
The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.
In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.
A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, “is Firefox free?” Moz used to say:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.
Now it simply reads:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.
Again, a pledge to not sell people’s data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.
Soon the only private option left will be to curl the website, read the html and picture it in my head.
stallman was right
It also now is against the terms of service to use Firefox for illegal activity or to use it to watch porn.
Are there any specifics about this? It all seems fairly theoretical to me. What do they [want to] do that contradicts “doesn’t sell your personal data” within the context of the fluid definition of “sell”? Do they sell my personal data or don’t they? What definitions of “sell” are relevant here?
It’s all sounding a bit Bill Clinton to me: “it depends on your definition of ‘is’.”
The ambiguity is the smoking gun.
Soo… where do we go now? What open source alternative exists that is on the side of its users?
Just keep using Firefox. Nothing in the code has changed, and if it does you can switch to forks. You all are evangelizing about how important FOSS is to prevent this exact scenario and yet you keep switching browsers for no need at all.
Note: I love Foss, I just think this is an overreaction
Oh sure, but browsers are an entirely different beast.
Eventually, they’ll take it closed source, now I know what you’re thinking “Then one of the forks will just become the dominant one!”
But here’s the thing, the browser engine is very complicated just to keep up with. The W3C spec that all engines must follow is thousands of pages long. So all those forks will wither and die once the engine has been cut off from upstream updates.
None of those forks touch the engine as-is
Do tell how something like Zen or Ladybird has a better chance at doing so. It would be better if instead of this fragmentation the Zen and Ladybird would work in a Firefox fork.
Ladybird has some serious backing and employed developers working on their engine and has been worked on for years (Ladybird started life as the SerenityOS browser)
And even after all that time and money, it’s still not even ready for general use. Their roadmap has them having a public release ready in 2028 iirc
And fragmentation? Really? LMAO there needs to be some competition in browser engines, if there was we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
There are only 2 modern, open source and fully working engines. Chromium and FF, that’s not fragmentation, that’s a duopoly
That’s like calling Linux on the server a monopoly. It’s open source, with many distros (forks). Anyone can fork the engine.
Anyone can fork the engine.
Even the Linux kernel is not as much of a beast that a browser engine is, I’ve seen estimates that a dedicated small team could build a new modern Linux kernel from scratch and generally usable in about 2-3 years
A browser engine takes years more, again, ladybird’s engine is built from scratch, and it’s currently in year 3 targeting an alpha release in 2026 or Year 4. With it projected to be generally usable in 2028 a full 6 years later.
And there are actually a couple different independent kernels, so no it’s not a monopoly
FUTO could develop a browser engine much quicker by simply forking Firefox.
Even the Linux kernel is not as much of a beast that a browser engine is
A browser engine takes years more [than a kernel]
That’s cool, I didn’t know that. [email protected]
Ladybird looks promising.
Depends on where you stand on misogyny and transphobia.
I feel out of the loop on this one. Is there a particular individual on the project that this is about, or is this a company policy issue?
Essentially, someone submitted a PR on GitHub changing a “he” in the build instructions to a gender-neutral “they”, to which the main dev of Ladybird (Andreas Kling) replied:
This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.
This next part’s just my opinion; that’s an insane response to someone suggesting neutral language. As a non-binary person, I wouldn’t feel comfortable around this person after such a reply, and I certainly wouldn’t donate to Ladybird or anything of the sort.
That being said, we all likely use tons of software developed by people way worse than Kling. As long as it’s FOSS and is privacy-respecting, I’ll run code that’s been written by bigots. However I definitely won’t support them by recommending their software to others, or by donating time or money to the project.
Honestly it seems blown way out of proportion. You are leaving out the part where he said he thinks that they sounds weird. I believe he is still open to rewriting the docs to not use pronouns at all
You are leaving out the part where he said he thinks that they sounds weird.
That doesn’t help. Also, his main reason remains “keep politics out of my project,” completely missing the point that his stance is also political. It’s the old “my politics aren’t political because they’re normal.”
I believe he is still open to rewriting the docs to not use pronouns at all
That’s even more political, and ridiculously so. Linux kernel docs refer to users as “they.” Should they change it? Are they bringing in unnecessary politics into the sanctity of one of the world’s greatest collaborative technical projects? Are they too fucking woke?
Documentation shouldn’t have pronouns since that’s the wrong tone
I think the dev probably just hasn’t been exposed much to transgender people. Reacting with hate immediately doesn’t help at all.
There is a link on another FF post to GitHub where someone changed “he” to “they” in the documentation. All references to a user being able to do anything in the documentation only uses “He”.
The main dev told them to “keep their politics to themselves” and refused the fix.
In which context? If it was referring to a man I get why he’d say that answer
Parent comment says “a user.” Reading the docs, it clearly wasn’t referring to a man, but any user, as in “the average Lemmy user interacts with many instances, and they have the option to block those they’re not interested in.”
In Firefox, type about:config in address bar, search for “sponsored” and “telemetry” and set all the paremeters you see from TRUE to FALSE. Done.
We shouldn’t have to do workarounds like that in the first place. It’s getting to be like the Stockholm syndrome people have about Windows abuses. I didn’t put up that shit, and I’m not gonna put up with this either.
I’m running Linux and neither Waterfox or LibreWolf are present in repository of one of the most popular distros. Come on?!
You aren’t using the Flatpak?
If you are using a debian flavor, you can likely add extrepo that searches a central repo of repositories and can add them as needed.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install extrepo -y sudo extrepo enable librewolf sudo apt update && sudo apt install librewolf -yWhy always this Terminal bullshit? Why can’t I just find it and click Install like a normal user and not like a fucking caveman?
I’d be more worried about how long that flag is going to work. And how long is it going to take us to realize the flag isn’t working.
“Flamed”, that’s a new one
That’s an OLD one. Wow I haven’t heard that term in like 20 years
Orion is much better. Vote with your computing power.
