- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Lets just take Firefox and make it the open source standard. If we all get behind it like we did for Blender, we might succeed.
I doubt it tbh.
For blender it’s fine, but for browser engines it’s different because of their sheer size, complexity, need to adhere and collaborate with others to form web standards, need for security experts, day one vulnerability patches, etc.
If Mozilla dies, random volunteers or existing projects like LibreWolf can’t just pick up the slack.
Volunteers can’t run a modern web engine, it takes hundreds of millions per year to upkeep.
There’s a reason why we’re down to just Google, Apple, and Mozilla. Nobody wants to foot the massive bill unless they have a damn good reason for doing so.
It’s probably more expensive to maintain a browser engine than a full operating system at this point. It’s truly insane how large and costly they are.
I’m sure Linus was told the same at some point.
The Linux kernel is actually a perfect example of this.
It’s worked on by hundreds of companies, and the bulk of the work is done by a small number of megacorps.
If it was worked on by a group of volunteers doing bits whenever they had spare time, it’d be in a much less useful state right now.
You’re seriously underestimating how large and complex web engines are. There’s a reason we’re down to 3 engines and the community hasn’t been able to create one.
It’s hard to do. It requires hundreds of millions a year to keep going.
If it were genuinely so trivial to maintain a browser engine, more would be doing it. Even easier, Firefox forks could take over maintaining the engine, as opposed to just tweaking the browser (not even having to work from scratch with a new engine). But they don’t, for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.
KHTML was the basis of WebKit and then Blink/Chromium, so the community did make something. It was just overtaken by the corporate projects, for those same reasons you mention.
those days the web was way simpler than it is now. complexity has doomed every web engine not maintained by a mega corp (and some that were, Microsoft killed their own).
I feel like you missed the point.
Webengines are not more complex than a full OS, and yet, Linux works as a community driven project and Chromium does not.
The difference is that Linus is the one with final say in Linux, and he never sold out to a company. Chromium is Google.
It will never be a “community” project, because Google pumps so many resources into it. The goal is obvious: to make sure that it’s always ahead of any competitors, and anyone willing to catch up would have to match Google spending.
The brilliant move here by Google was making it open source. This ensures that no other megacorp needs to fight them, as long as their interests are aligned.
Edge has died already. Safari will follow. The future is grim.
Nah, you’re missing the point.
Again, maintaining a web engine takes hundreds of millions. It’s no small task.
Volunteers can’t do it.
We cannot simply take over from Mozilla if something happens. It needs corporate or governmental backing, a permanent workforce, management at the top who work on setting web standards alongside other companies, etc.
The Linux kernel was brought up against my argument, but it is in fact an argument for it. It is worked on by megacorps, and without that corporate funding would be little more than a tinkerer’s side project.
Linux has the benefit of companies relying on it and therefore wanting to maintain it. Firefox doesn’t. Businesses have chosen Chrome.
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Linux is its own OS, not a Windows clone with the goal of binary compatibility.
With Web browsers the problem is in trying to deceive ourselves that the Web itself is a neutral space. It has long ago become a hostile space, controlled by the enemy. Its standards are intended to prevent pluralism.
Check out Ladybird tho, from serenity os project (it also works in Linux). It’s developed by an open source community, and some companies are sponsoring it’s development. It’s not at a usable point, but it’s development has been impressive. If more money is donated by other companies it could be an alternative, maybe
Of course they can’t compete on the adversary’s field when that adversary has bigger resources and monopoly in many areas.
What I don’t understand is why nobody has tried to sell the idea of an alternative Web to the wider audience?
Like Gemini, only without the “minimal” and “non-commercial hobbyist” parts.
Without trying to follow Google/MS/etc on the path intentionally chosen to not be passable for others.
That would be excellent, but trying to convince everybody to move to a “new web” would be extremely difficult in itself, even before we start to think about the likes of Google that very much want to maintain the status quo
Just leverage the app mentality. They do have a hundred apps for every stupid thing. Just one more.
Arguably since mainly what people actually want from the Web is just a cross-platform document renderer/UI system, if you designed something new from the ground-up with zero legacy nonsense, well, those are both complex problems, but I somewhat suspect we’d end up with something better and easier to develop for than the Byzantine nightmare that is the web.
Network effects would limit growth, but I think as the web gets shittier and shittier there would be growth.
It’s just that when people compare this to Linux vs Windows\MacOS - the correct comparison to what Mozilla is trying to do would be ReactOS vs Windows. Where’s ReactOS? Right.
Arguably since mainly what people actually want from the Web is just a cross-platform document renderer/UI system,
Yes, most customers want that and it’s rather cheap to develop (not being childish, look at Gemini again, it just should be repeated with the same means, limiting extensibility of the standard, and different goals - one, more rich markup, two, some way to replace Flash of the olden days and\or the script nightmare of today without allowing the replacement to grow into a similar monster, three, some degree of content-based addressing, like in P2P, so that CDNs and big platforms would be less important, four, something to replace the centralized PKI system with all those wildcard certificates sometimes issued to bad guys and everybody saying oops).
People who want the Byzantine nightmare, or the ad-stuffing system with some websites existing today, are all on the other side. Only if the ad-stuffing system isn’t really required for what we need to do, then those people should lose the competition and go bankrupt. I hope I’ll see that happen.
but I somewhat suspect we’d end up with something better and easier to develop for than the Byzantine nightmare that is the web.
That’s certain.
Network effects would limit growth, but I think as the web gets shittier and shittier there would be growth.
There absolutely would, especially in the times of “there’s an app for everything”.
Today, only a relative handful of Firefox users are left. According to the US federal government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which gives us the running count of the last 90 days of US government website visits, only 2.2 percent of visitors use Firefox.
Look, I know far fewer people use Firefox than Chrome, but basing it on who uses U.S. government websites in the last 90 days doesn’t even make sense if Firefox users were only in the U.S.
I’m in the U.S. and use Firefox and I haven’t been to a U.S. government website in the last 90 days as far as I know.
And, I don’t know if the author knows this or not, but there’s around 200 other countries out there.
Some of those government websites only work on chromium too, which is irritating
You guys know of government websites that actually work?
For all the flaws of the UK our gov websites show information about gov laws and how to use services, and medical topics.
The ones hosted by my government literally shut down outside business hours…
Try to login to view your tax info for example and it’ll tell you to come back 9-5 mon-fri.
Back in the day it was the case with IE as well.
The cause?
At least in IE’s case, deliberate siloing of non-standard features needed for table input.
Microsoft didn’t have to write it that way, but they did, knowing it would capture a fucktonne of government and regulatory sites.
I had to support IE all the way to 2018 at one site because the only way they could pull permits was from an ancient government site that only supported IE.
Based off the User Agent varriable?
Opinion piece by a person who has little to say outside of ad-hominem.
Indeed. Article reads like a spoiled brat. “Get over it”. The second something like that appears, it’s crystal clear the writer thinks they’re above the reader.
Yeah, and she didn’t quit, she stepped down to get previous position on the board.
A lot of people in this thread seem to downplay the article with “yeah, that might be your opinion…” but two facts that are facts and not opinions are:
- The market share Firefox hold is insignificant.
- Mozilla’s business is a near 100% dependency on one “customer”, Google.
This means that if Google decides to stop bank rolling Mozilla it’s game over. Firstly because other revenue streams are currently near insignificant when you look at the total expenses.
Secondly because since Firefox hold no significant market share, no one else would be interested in investing in Mozilla and the future of Firefox. After all, whatever Mozilla will throw up on the wall as the “grand masterplan for world dominance” would just end up in the question “Why didn’t you do this before?”.
I’ve been using Firefox for almost 20 years. I started using it because I saw what happens when one company controls the browser market. That web browser did so much damage and we only really got rid of it some year ago.
Chrome is a perfect example that the history repeats itself and that people are fucking stupid. People are actually acting surprised and complain about Google putting effort into making adblocking impossible in Chrome.
So all in all, if Mozilla doesn’t find other revenue streams, Firefox is dead… It just doesn’t know it yet.
Now, everyone yapping about that Linux was an insignificant player and still made it to the top just sound like enthusiasts who really doesn’t know history and the harsh reality of doing business.
Linux was just a little more than hobby project (business wise) that essentially only Red Hat and Suse made real money from in the 90’s.
Arguably you could say that the turning point was when the CEO of IBM, Lou Gerstner, shocked the world by saying that IBM was going to pump in 1 billion dollars in Linux during 2001. Now, that doesn’t look like much today when just Red Hat has a yearly revenue of 3-4 billion, but that’s how insignificant Linux was at that time.
After that milestone Linux went for the jugular on Windows Server. For ordinary people it would still take almost 10 years before they would hold something Linux in their hands.
The rocket engine that accelerated Linux and pieces that it was ready for end users was Google and Android in 2007. Linux’s growth the last 20 years wasn’t mainly driven by enthusiasts, it was business pumping in money in future opportunities.
What future opportunities can Mozilla sell to investors with the market share Firefox has today?
Yup. Mozilla really needs to diversify and find new revenue sources.
They’ve been trying, but it’s proving difficult to do while still refraining from hoovering up and selling everybody’s data. Nobody wants to pay.
To make matters worse, anytime Mozilla tries to make any money, people accuse them of selling out or say they should just focus on Firefox. Some of these people even say that Firefox needs to get rid of Google funding immediately to get rid of Google’s influence.
But that means the death of Firefox. I don’t really get what these people want.
These people want to be rid of Google’s influence, which is why they chose Firefox over Chrome to begin with. But they don’t understand the position Mozilla is in…
Well yeah, I want that too, but it can’t happen until Mozilla is making a decent amount themselves
Some of these people even say that Firefox needs to get rid of Google funding immediately to get rid of Google’s influence.
Which is an importnt factor, because Mozilla is currently being kept alive specifcally to lose.
To be fair, those people (and lots others too) watch everyday some millionaires or billionaires just up and throwing money. Under that premise, it “should be as easy” as just convincing a random capitalist with narcissist complex to fund Mozilla. The problem with that is, people’s memory on the internet tends to not be retrospeculative, so they don’t notice if Mozilla did that they’d be in just about the same position eg.: Reddit was 5 years before 2023.
The issue is biggest for web browsers, but I also feel like I see that issue for a whole lot of web industries. Journalism, for instance. Everyone wants everything for free, and so the “articles” you see are garbage half churned out from algorithms to optimize click rate, and blanketed with dozens of ads. To take another example, games, we have a market saturated with freemium games that encourage people to spend nothing (and then hundreds). Pirates would now claim it’s a moral responsibility to pirate, but if we end up in that world, only a slim minority of people would ever make a living out of it.
The general unwillingness/inability for consumers to pay for digital content definitely causes a lot of problems now. I personally attribute it to a generally low minimum wage, but it could be an issue going beyond that.
Arguably Google needs Firefox and co to not lose chrome in Europe due to anti monopoly rulings. Think that is sadly the best thing Firefox has to offer investors.
The rocket engine that accelerated Linux and pieces that it was ready for end users was Google and Android in 2007.
N-no. Correct about IBM though.
It seems that what made Linux and FreeBSD relevant was the late 90s’ and early 00s’ Web. And FreeBSD then lost to Linux, not to Windows Server or Solaris.
Linux’s growth the last 20 years wasn’t mainly driven by enthusiasts, it was business pumping in money in future opportunities.
Only there are different kinds of businesses, and the balance between them is becoming worse.
Before IBM made that statement there were essentially no major software vendors that ported and supported their software on Linux.
Yes, one might argue that Linux-Apache-MySql-Php revolutionized things but other than that a clear majority of things were run on solutions that put money in Microsoft’s pockets.
Feel free to name drop some major finance systems or similar enterprise systems you could run without Microsoft cashing in on the OS in some way between 1990-2005.
As I wrote before, it took us 20 years to get rid of IE and a lot of proprietary server side junk Microsoft blessed us with. It’s not an coincidence. 99% of all companies were stuck in development tools from Microsoft.
It wasn’t until the hardware really really caught up with Java requirements that things really changed.
I’ve just found mentions of Linux support by Oracle before that, so there were things before IBM and that statement. Though on that page there’s no Linux link, but there are AIX, Solaris etc and an NT one.
Feel free to name drop some major finance systems or similar enterprise systems you could run without Microsoft cashing in on the OS in some way between 1990-2005.
Could you please, on the contrary, name some such systems strongly requiring Microsoft really? IIS and AD are not that.
I mean, OK, for the thick clients for administrators likely it’d be many things.
But everything IBM or commercial Unix-based, like, again, Oracle databases.
I’m born in 1996, so don’t really know what I’m talking about. Just seems a bit skewed.
Great write up, thank you very much!
I expect Google to keep Mozilla/Firefox on the lifeline indefinitely to avoid antitrust issues in the states and EU, so Mozilla/Firefox won’t go anywhere.
Still, this doesn’t mean anything, because I often need Chrome or Safari to access some websites.
In the end it is quite funny: Moving a lot of stuff to the web made Linux a more realistic desktop option, at the same time to access a lot of stuff on the web one needs to run a Blink browser.
IMHO the most annoying thing is, that we could have at least some laws, which mandate that every government service must be available to Open Source users and every government paid software must run on at least Linux. Thanks to lobbying and power this will never happen.
Edit: To state it more clearly: Firefox is IMHO in bad shape and in a bad situation. Firefox won’t die, but at the same time right now I already need Chrome/Safari browsers, because Firefox support is broken on many sites. I see no way Firefox can gain significant market share, especially seeing what regular consumers tolerate from Microsoft/Edge and Google/Chrome.
One big problem, even if Google continues to pour money into Mozilla, is that more and more sites and systems drops support for Firefox. When I say “drop” I mean implement measures for making it harder to use a service if you use Firefox. Even Google does this.
Really appreciate the perspective, thank you for sharing
It’s just sad. I love my Firefox and will always do…
Solid write up and a great question!
This sure is an opinion.
Lol, that sentence sure describes The Register in general
Never even heard of The Register before right now. Been using Firefox for most of my life. This checks out.
My only question is, why do so few people use Firefox?
Most internet usage is mobile and people use whatever’s preinstalled on their phone because it just works is my guess.
And also Firefox on mobile is kind of a hot mess. Videos regularly are unable to play and dark mode is wonky until you restart the app.
Try the Firefox Beta instead of stable, no clue why, but it runs much better. You also get access to “about:config” back (they removed it from the stable version :-/).
Never had any issues. Been using it for years. It was slow in the early days, but now its a better experience then Chrome. Might be different on IOS.
Agree it is kind of buggy on iOS.
Flawless on desktop though.
that’s ironic, because Firefox on iOS is just rebranded Safari, as is every other browser on iOS.
Yeah I know. Sometimes tabs just stop working and I have to kill the app.
Firefox on iOS is just Safari with a skin. You’re likely experiencing quirks with Apple’s WebKit engine.
I see, yeah that makes sense. Especially because mobile firefox really wasn’t that good as a normal browser anyway.
Any browser without adblock is utter crap. So Firefox with uBlock Origin has been doing great for me. Try the Firefox Beta version, it somehow runs a lot better than stable.
There are features, like swiping the url bar to switch tabs, that are missing on the pre installed Chrome, but the firefox has them. Chrome has nothing to offer over firefox, besides your data collection
I can swipe the URL bar on Chrome to switch tabs, what do you mean?
Ah, seems like it works now, it has been a while since I’ve used it. But it still doesn’t have an option for moving the url bar to the bottom of the screen and blocking trackers.
As I recall, Chrome got it first, and I was waiting for a long while for Firefox to add it too.
But yeah, bar at the bottom is where it’s at.
Website incompatibility keeps me from using it 100%. Certain websites are simply non-functional except in a Chrome-based browser and I don’t have the shits to give to swap only for those sites. I might start the day with Firefox and by the end I’m using Brave.
I switched back to Firefox about 2 years ago, and I’ve only encountered a few sites that don’t work properly.
With the exception of ONE annoying SaaS site I need at work (which I might use a ton for a week then not again for weeks), I’ve only had to open a site in Chrome/edge maybe once a month. That includes running Firefox on my phone in addition to my work and personal desktop/laptops.
Do some websites refuse to function even with useragent spoofing?
Haven’t tried this before. Worth a shot.
I wonder if it’s the diversification within the Chromium user space.
There are a ton of browsers based on Chromium each with their own little gimmick.
On the other side there’s basically just Firefox.
From a casual point of view, I don’t think there’s much reason to go for Firefox. It doesn’t really stand out from that point of view.
I just like the cute fox picture
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Nice try Manifest v3 pushers
Firefox will live on regardless of Mozilla’s support. Since it’s FOSS the community will keep it alive
Will it though? Seems like the kind of task that requires a huge amount of effort, way beyond the kind of capacity you get from casual contributions in peoples’ spare time…might be difficult to maintain feature parity and implement new standards without a full time team on it.
couldnt you say the same about linux?
Linux is currently mostly made by big corpo, but they are held by community and Linus’es checks.
Unfortunetly for browsers most of the giants focused on Chromium, which Google has final say over. Also Linux is OS, where browser should be simple and websites should work even if some one API is not supported. In Chromium’s world web"apps" are won’t be compatible with anything non-Chromium. Any browser would be required to support 99+% of Chromium features or not work.
Linux is cheating by having every major tech company help develop the kernel
Sounds like we just gotta add Firefox to the kernel while Linus is on vacation.
firefox doesnt have any corporate friends besides mozilla?
Not many and none that I can think of with deep pockets (besides google). I think the corporate world has almost completely piled on Chrome.
True, but web designers already treat Firefox and its offshoots as an afterthought. Do you think without Mozilla it would get even worse?
the corporate world seems desperate to kill it. its chrome/edge or GTFO
They all want to FULLY control the end user.
- probe and profile the device used
- force unstoppable ads
- require GPS location and maybe 2fa to make sure it’s you that is watching the ads. -web assembly alone will make script blocking impossible and enable scammers to run anything they want.
The end result will be something like the DVD menus from the 90s and 00s. The difference is that it will have full access to all the data on your computer or device.
A huge portion of Firefox code is ancient. Never mind that the codebase is gigantic. Small FOSS projects fail to organize properly, I can’t imagine maintaining Firefox without Mozilla would be a small feat.
The feds should mandate that all websites must be accessible by Firefox. Plus, they should completely switch to Firefox internally.
How would you define “accessible”? The web app I’m working on works in Firefox, but a few text labels are misaligned with their input controls due to slight CSS deviation from Chromium. It’s those things that are most of the problems for supporting both browsers, functionality-wise they’re very close (except newer features that Firefox hasn’t implemented yet or Google-specific features like WebUSB).
I thought it was funny when cockpit a web interface for Linux servers said my Firefox browser was out of date. It locked me out for security reasons until I accessed it with an updated version of Firefox. I was using archlinux and ran updates that morning.
It wasn’t that inconvenient I just SSH into my server for whatever I was doing and they fixed it in about a week.
Fox
Firefox
The firefox looks more like foxkeh from the old japanese firefox site.
I found the stats re Firefox usage a little surprising/hard to believe so I double-checked them. Indeed, most rankings show Firefox use hovering at around 2.5%. The open web is sort of already dead, I think. It’s honestly not that uncommon now that I come across websites that don’t work in Firefox and there are zero hints or info that you need to use Chrome. It’s like the world has already forgotten that the web isn’t just an app you access through Chrome.
Google’s been working on this more or less since they launched Chrome, so it’s not surprising, but wow, that fucking sucks.
I blocked this website on my news feed because of this article. It’s opinion piece written by an asshat.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And when I see Mozilla Corp’s CEO Mitchell Baker stepping down, I wonder if it’s really because she’ll be more useful devoting all her time to the foundation than overseeing Firefox’s decline into a web browser afterthought.
Almost ten years after Chrome appeared, in 2017, Mozilla CEO Chris Beard admitted, "Firefox did not keep up with the market and what people really want.
Baker told Fortune she decided to step down as CEO because she wants to draw attention to our increasingly malicious online world “and how humans are engaging with each other and technology.”
In Baker’s subsequent blog post, she announced that Laura Chambers, a Mozilla board member and entrepreneur with experience at Airbnb, PayPal, and eBay, will step in as interim CEO to run operations until a permanent replacement is found.
In Fortune, Chambers was more forthcoming: She’ll “focus on building out new products that address growing privacy concerns while actively looking for a full-time CEO.”
It’s hard to buy that all’s well with Mozilla, given Baker’s poor results at shepherding Firefox forward and the lack of a real replacement CEO.
The original article contains 777 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s a bit worrying that the journalist doesn’t point out that it’s ALL chrome. Safari, Edge, they all use the chrome engine. A complete monopolization of web features. Most recently we’ve seen the problems with that in trying to ditch good innovations like jpegXL.
Safari has its own engine WebKit
Afaik Blink is a fork of WebKit. It’s good there is some independent development but also safari is closed ecosystem.
