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Wow. - Mozilla made architectural changes to address limitations in Firefox that inhibited the pace of improvements - We didn't like the changes Mozilla was i

by ygjb 11y ago

Wow. - Mozilla made architectural changes to address limitations in Firefox that inhibited the pace of improvements - We didn't like the changes Mozilla was implementing - We forked Firefox to revert the changes - We spent years insulting Mozilla engineers for the changes they were making - We realized that we can't implement changes because of architectural limitations - We are going to re-fork Firefox from a later version - We still think the Mozilla engineers don't know what they are doing - This is a totally new browser product and a fork of Goanna, not Gecko! I am a huge Mozilla fan-boy, and an ex-employee, but come on, this is just off the wall silly.

raverbashing 11y ago
Any semblance with the current Bitcoin situation is merely a coincidence, I'm sure
digi_owl 11y ago
CADT squared?
J_Darnley 11y ago
Mozilla engineers do not know what they are doing. If they did they would not be planning on removing all existing extension, they would not have listened to the designers and implemented australis, they would not be trying to make a chrome clone.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  I wouldn't have phrased it that way. I have removed my fair share of malware from other peoples machines though and I have yet to observe that Firefox extensions has been the attack vector a single time. For that reason I do find it puzzling that they want to irrevocably destroy their single biggest advantage (in my and many other vocal supporters eyes): real, USEFUL extensions. (Even Lastpass has to add an extra binary to my OS to fully work under Chrome IIRC.) Also while I should mostly not say much about design I do find it odd that so many projects attempt to look Mac OSX and I think it is the same frustration some people have with Firefox starting to look like Chrome: not everything the big boys do is necessarily better.
- RaleyField 11y ago
  > they would not have listened to the designers and implemented australis I happen to think australis looks way more spiffy, old design looked kinda clunky, but then I also love minimalist design of Chrome.
superkuh 11y ago
The changes are architectural but also ethical. I particularly don't like Firefox switching to a walled garden for extensions, adding digital rights management black boxes, baking in commercial software like Pocket, intending to abandon XUL for better security of non-technical users. But there's also much more (https://gist.github.com/haasn/69e19fc2fe0e25f3cff5 https://gist.github.com/haasn/69e19fc2fe0e25f3cff5). Your implication that he's calling it a unique new browser is either intentionally disengenous or confused. A "browser product" is a product made from an existing browser: Firefox. There's nothing in the linked post that presents it how you do. Pale Moon's fork fixes some important ethical (and aesthetic) issues I have with Firefox's current direction. I'm glad that both (and icecat, iceweasel, etc) can coexist because they're open source. Re-forking from a later version seems reasonable to me since not that many people think the above issues are important. As the post said, there aren't enough contributors to keep up with the evolving web. Re-baseing from an acceptable later Firefox version would give me another few years of breathing room. The only part of this I don't agree with is the existing Firefox extension ecosystem not being compatible with the new Pale Moon. But I guess as Firefox abandons them the value of the old ecosystem dimishes.
- ygjb 11y ago
  - switching to a walled garden for extensions With respect, this argument falls flat on it's face. Both Firefox and AMO (old and new versions) remain open source. The additional requirement of signed extensions allows Mozilla to exert a light increment in control. - Adding digital rights management black boxes Fair enough, I didn't like the additional of EME either, but I also like netflix, despite the DRM constraints. As a user I am ok with this choice, because it enabled me, as a user, to choose to either consume DRM content or not, while using the browser of my choice. - baking in commercial software like Pocket Yep, that one left a bad taste in alot of peoples mouths. It would have been better if an API had been published and more than one provider had been supplied (cough cough social API, looking at you). - intending to abandon XUL for better security of non-technical users Palemoon does absolutely nothing to protect it's users. The Palemoon devs and project leads never miss the chance to take pot-shots at Mozilla and the Firefox engineering team, but the only reasonable claim they can make about security is "Pale Moon is based on the Mozilla release source code that has a large community of developers and security-aware people, next to having seen over a decade of development by now." The problem, which the Palemoon devs have now stated clearly, is that they can't improve on the legacy version of Firefox they forked, and even when I still worked there were only able to take up security fixes with diminishing capabilities due to deviations in the code base. Finally, Mozilla is not abandoning an old ecosystem, they are making a substantial investment in building out a new ecosystem while providing tools, documentation and an upgrade path. I recognize that there are still people who like to use old software, but at some point you have to take a good solid look at things and think: ok, lets try this again and apply the lessons learned. Palemoon is an insecure knockoff browser that leverages open source in all of the worst ways without giving anything significant back, and even worse, they weasel around what they are doing and make claims about performance and stability that are flat-out indefensible (not that they could prove it since they have no mechanism to collect the data outside of their own build machines).

by ygjb 11y ago

raverbashing 11y ago

Any semblance with the current Bitcoin situation is merely a coincidence, I'm sure

digi_owl 11y ago

CADT squared?

J_Darnley 11y ago

Mozilla engineers do not know what they are doing. If they did they would not be planning on removing all existing extension, they would not have listened to the designers and implemented australis, they would not be trying to make a chrome clone.

reitanqild 11y ago
I wouldn't have phrased it that way. I have removed my fair share of malware from other peoples machines though and I have yet to observe that Firefox extensions has been the attack vector a single time. For that reason I do find it puzzling that they want to irrevocably destroy their single biggest advantage (in my and many other vocal supporters eyes): real, USEFUL extensions. (Even Lastpass has to add an extra binary to my OS to fully work under Chrome IIRC.) Also while I should mostly not say much about design I do find it odd that so many projects attempt to look Mac OSX and I think it is the same frustration some people have with Firefox starting to look like Chrome: not everything the big boys do is necessarily better.
RaleyField 11y ago
> they would not have listened to the designers and implemented australis I happen to think australis looks way more spiffy, old design looked kinda clunky, but then I also love minimalist design of Chrome.

superkuh 11y ago

The changes are architectural but also ethical. I particularly don't like Firefox switching to a walled garden for extensions, adding digital rights management black boxes, baking in commercial software like Pocket, intending to abandon XUL for better security of non-technical users. But there's also much more (https://gist.github.com/haasn/69e19fc2fe0e25f3cff5 https://gist.github.com/haasn/69e19fc2fe0e25f3cff5). Your implication that he's calling it a unique new browser is either intentionally disengenous or confused. A "browser product" is a product made from an existing browser: Firefox. There's nothing in the linked post that presents it how you do. Pale Moon's fork fixes some important ethical (and aesthetic) issues I have with Firefox's current direction. I'm glad that both (and icecat, iceweasel, etc) can coexist because they're open source. Re-forking from a later version seems reasonable to me since not that many people think the above issues are important. As the post said, there aren't enough contributors to keep up with the evolving web. Re-baseing from an acceptable later Firefox version would give me another few years of breathing room. The only part of this I don't agree with is the existing Firefox extension ecosystem not being compatible with the new Pale Moon. But I guess as Firefox abandons them the value of the old ecosystem dimishes.

ygjb 11y ago
- switching to a walled garden for extensions With respect, this argument falls flat on it's face. Both Firefox and AMO (old and new versions) remain open source. The additional requirement of signed extensions allows Mozilla to exert a light increment in control. - Adding digital rights management black boxes Fair enough, I didn't like the additional of EME either, but I also like netflix, despite the DRM constraints. As a user I am ok with this choice, because it enabled me, as a user, to choose to either consume DRM content or not, while using the browser of my choice. - baking in commercial software like Pocket Yep, that one left a bad taste in alot of peoples mouths. It would have been better if an API had been published and more than one provider had been supplied (cough cough social API, looking at you). - intending to abandon XUL for better security of non-technical users Palemoon does absolutely nothing to protect it's users. The Palemoon devs and project leads never miss the chance to take pot-shots at Mozilla and the Firefox engineering team, but the only reasonable claim they can make about security is "Pale Moon is based on the Mozilla release source code that has a large community of developers and security-aware people, next to having seen over a decade of development by now." The problem, which the Palemoon devs have now stated clearly, is that they can't improve on the legacy version of Firefox they forked, and even when I still worked there were only able to take up security fixes with diminishing capabilities due to deviations in the code base. Finally, Mozilla is not abandoning an old ecosystem, they are making a substantial investment in building out a new ecosystem while providing tools, documentation and an upgrade path. I recognize that there are still people who like to use old software, but at some point you have to take a good solid look at things and think: ok, lets try this again and apply the lessons learned. Palemoon is an insecure knockoff browser that leverages open source in all of the worst ways without giving anything significant back, and even worse, they weasel around what they are doing and make claims about performance and stability that are flat-out indefensible (not that they could prove it since they have no mechanism to collect the data outside of their own build machines).