9 ms·

I really like what Brave is doing. I wish it was built on Firefox instead of Chromium. I just don't see myself leaving Firefox without major upheaval in the bro

by zargon 7y ago

I really like what Brave is doing. I wish it was built on Firefox instead of Chromium. I just don't see myself leaving Firefox without major upheaval in the browser space.

balaksakrionon 7y ago
agreed, everytime i am in the settings and elsewhere i realize i'm using chrome and hate myself for a moment
jchw 7y ago
IIRC it was actually originally Firefox. I wonder what exactly made them switch?
- jonathansampson 7y ago
  This is correct. Note that both of our founders are from the Firefox team originally. Our CTO, Brian Bondy, originally built the first Brave prototype on the Gecko engine. Unfortunately, after much testing, it was clear that a modified Chromium would be the better route forward. You can imagine this was not a decision taken lightly, as both of these individuals have lived and breathed Gecko/Mozilla for years prior.
  - orblivion 7y ago
    Would the story be different with Quantum now?
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      No, the decision was based on a spreadsheet with many items concerned with web compatibility, HTML5 DRM plugin free-as-in-beer, extension support, etc. Chromium without Google tracking is dominant, this is just a fact (it will change some day; not soon). The best way to counter this is not to die on the wrong hill (engine wars) right now -- it is to go a level up and fight for privacy and user sovereignty where Google cannot defend: blocking all tracking, paying users 70% of user private ad revenue.
      - lol768 7y ago
        > No, the decision was based on a spreadsheet with many items concerned with web compatibility, HTML5 DRM plugin free-as-in-beer, extension support, etc. This is a spreadsheet I'd be interested to see. Was this compiled before or after Firefox supported WebExtensions?
        BrendanEich 7y ago
        This was in late 2015, but WebExtensions support in Firefox is never complete vs. Chrome, and you are ignoring DRM and all the other junk (gmeet screen sharing extension! ChromeCast! the list goes on... Chrome is the new IE, but at least most is open source or free as in beer).
        xtracto 7y ago
        > or free as in beer IE was also free as in beer.
      - input_sh 7y ago
        "Fighting for privacy" and third-party ads do not belong in the same sentence.
        Semaphor 7y ago
        While I don’t like Brave, from what I’ve read the ads are decided on locally, so no information is sent to the advertiser. Again, this is what I’ve heard.
        reportgunner 7y ago
        Yes, perfect. I absolutely want to download ALL ads instead of NO ads.
        jonathansampson 7y ago
        With all due respect, that isn't how the solution works. Users must first opt-in to Brave Ads. Once they do, they download a regional catalog. This is a text document, compressed down to about 3 MB in size. Your machine (via on-board machine-learning) studies this for relevancy. When a relevant ad is found, you are given 70% of the revenue, and a notification is displayed on your operating system. You have control from the start, even over the frequency of ads you'll see within an hour.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    It doesn’t speak for Mozilla that even with these people Chromium turned out to be the better option.
    - sp332 7y ago
      Mozilla has been admitting that Gecko is a huge drag since around the time they decided to break the extension model.
      - toyg 7y ago
        Actually, they have said so for much longer. The fact they started writing a completely new engine (Servo) in early 2012 was in itself an admission of defeat -- so many "embeddable Gecko" projects have been started and killed, over the years, that the only way forward is to replace with something new.
  - reportgunner 7y ago
    >lived and breathed Gecko/Mozilla for years prior but they don't anymore ? So if someone lives and breathes policeman life and then becomes a drug dealer, is it just like buying drugs from a policeman ?
bsclifton 7y ago
(Brave employee here) Curious: what are some of the shortfalls you see in Chromium? Before I joined Brave, the desktop browser was originally using Gecko (from Firefox). Ultimately, there were some problems and the decision was made to move to Chromium. On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox though You can check out more detail on Reddit where folks asked why FF was not used (which has links to more detailed info): https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_browser_and_chromium/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_br...
- vorticalbox 7y ago
  The monopoly google has over the web standard is probably the biggest issue.
- jsgo 7y ago
  Not OP, but I'd imagine that it is Brave seems to be a browser that advocates for the user (and presumably in the future, publishers too with the pay thing). As such, the ideals seem more aligned with Firefox than Chrome (and by extension, Chromium). Basically, you guys are in a weird space where your decisions aren't looked at purely from a technical lens, but also an ideological one.
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    Welcome to current year. But don't let browsers pretend to be neutral runtimes for the terrible third party scripts on which surveillance advertising depends. They are not neutral. The big-4 browsers in the west apart from Apple are partly or fully captured by $100B ad businesses. We are all in a weird space. Best to fight back at the endpoint with the right browser. Could be Safari, Firefox, or Chrome with opt outs and uBO and other defenses (but risks remain in Chrome especially), if you are not game for Brave.
    - jsgo 7y ago
      Not saying you guys are wrong, just saying where it seems you get blowback for what another vendor doing more or less the same thing wouldn’t even register as a talking point. Not saying it’s fair, but it seems people hold you to something of a righteous/ideological expectation that Google et al can’t meet so they don’t even complain of it there. In my mind, considering the push you’re making, you’d validate that vanilla chromium meets the requirements to achieve said push. If it didn’t, it’d be a non-starter and you’d have went a different route (leveraging aspects of Firefox’s stack maybe if, again, it met requirements).
buboard 7y ago
If anything i see it as the revenge to chrome
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
option_greek 7y ago
Brave being based off chrome is actually great and your comment illustrates that. If it is based on FF, it will cut into FF market share which is already shrinking. Now, it cuts into Chrome which means two privacy focused browser instead of one.
- barnabee 7y ago
  What? It’s a separate browser, it cuts into the market share of whatever the user was using before.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  It cuts into market share regardless. Why would market share changes matter for browser engine?
Ididntdothis 7y ago
“ I wish it was built on Firefox instead of Chromium. “ I commented in another thread. This is one area where Mozilla has failed. It should have been the goto engine for projects like Electron or Brave or even MS Edge instead of Chromium. But the last time I looked Mozilla was not very friendly towards developers who want to use their engine.
- dmix 7y ago
  Everyone is also switching to headless chrome for automated testing since it's faster than Gecko. I don’t know if FF has changed in this regard but it takes a long time to get rid of a perception of poor performance and this should have been their first priority long ago (which seems to be the case with their Rust work and GeckoView/mobile preview browser). In addition to how far they were behind Chrome security wise for so long, such as isolated tabs. But I agree, this should have been Mozilla's niche that they owned. Owning the early adopters is critical to mainstream success IMO. We're the ones that regular people listen to when making tech choices.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    They still don't have isolated per-domain render processes... That means if I exploit any renderer, I can take all your cookies for online banking and your webmail.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Presumably they don't want to split their Google funding.
onyva 7y ago
Mozilla's focus is user's rights online and privacy. They have a track record doing that. Brave (AKA AdBuddy) is just another product, desperately looking for a revenue stream, notably believing contaminating all news regarding browser technology with its presence is the way to go. The last thing the world needs is a predatory vendor trying to force itself somewhere it's not needed. Its non existing market share is the proof.
- omnimus 7y ago
  I think he meant build on Gecko/Servo not Blink.
- marichards 7y ago
  Whatever Mozilla's focus is when you load Firefox you experience the following: 1. On ESR first time it loads two pages load including https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/60.8.0/firstrun/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/60.8.0/firstrun/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ You then find first party cookies are set by Google Analytics _ga GA1.2.1671101194.1567114471 _gat_UA-36116321-1 1 _gid GA1.2.377831647.1567114471 In the EU this would breach the ePrivacy Directive - as there is neither consent or information supplied in advance. Privacy is not just about information captured about you, but about privacy of what you have stored on your electronic devices. Note: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2019/07/blog-cookies-what-does-good-look-like/ https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-bl... Myth 2: Analytics cookies are strictly necessary so we do not need consent 2. If you then type "privacy" into the address bar, it loads https://www.google.com/search?q=privacy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-e https://www.google.com/search?q=privacy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&cl... directing users into the most privacy invasive service on the internet with no advance warning. I now have a wealth of Google cookies from their search domain, but there are also cookies set for DoubleClick and Adservices. I'm now enrolled into surveillance capitalism and all I did was open Firefox for the first time, type "privacy" and press enter. Mozilla talk a lot about privacy, but their products and websites don't live up to the privacy standards we need and if anything they're on the wrong side of the fence when it comes to acting on privacy - they still make things worse and not better; although it has to be acknowledged that they have improved a lot with the tracking protection features that have slowly been making their way into Firefox. You might find this interesting to read https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...

by zargon 7y ago

I really like what Brave is doing. I wish it was built on Firefox instead of Chromium. I just don't see myself leaving Firefox without major upheaval in the browser space.

balaksakrionon 7y ago

agreed, everytime i am in the settings and elsewhere i realize i'm using chrome and hate myself for a moment

jchw 7y ago

IIRC it was actually originally Firefox. I wonder what exactly made them switch?

jonathansampson 7y ago
This is correct. Note that both of our founders are from the Firefox team originally. Our CTO, Brian Bondy, originally built the first Brave prototype on the Gecko engine. Unfortunately, after much testing, it was clear that a modified Chromium would be the better route forward. You can imagine this was not a decision taken lightly, as both of these individuals have lived and breathed Gecko/Mozilla for years prior.
- orblivion 7y ago
  Would the story be different with Quantum now?
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    No, the decision was based on a spreadsheet with many items concerned with web compatibility, HTML5 DRM plugin free-as-in-beer, extension support, etc. Chromium without Google tracking is dominant, this is just a fact (it will change some day; not soon). The best way to counter this is not to die on the wrong hill (engine wars) right now -- it is to go a level up and fight for privacy and user sovereignty where Google cannot defend: blocking all tracking, paying users 70% of user private ad revenue.
    - lol768 7y ago
      > No, the decision was based on a spreadsheet with many items concerned with web compatibility, HTML5 DRM plugin free-as-in-beer, extension support, etc. This is a spreadsheet I'd be interested to see. Was this compiled before or after Firefox supported WebExtensions?
      - BrendanEich 7y ago
        This was in late 2015, but WebExtensions support in Firefox is never complete vs. Chrome, and you are ignoring DRM and all the other junk (gmeet screen sharing extension! ChromeCast! the list goes on... Chrome is the new IE, but at least most is open source or free as in beer).
        xtracto 7y ago
        > or free as in beer IE was also free as in beer.
    - input_sh 7y ago
      "Fighting for privacy" and third-party ads do not belong in the same sentence.
      - Semaphor 7y ago
        While I don’t like Brave, from what I’ve read the ads are decided on locally, so no information is sent to the advertiser. Again, this is what I’ve heard.
        reportgunner 7y ago
        Yes, perfect. I absolutely want to download ALL ads instead of NO ads.
        jonathansampson 7y ago
        With all due respect, that isn't how the solution works. Users must first opt-in to Brave Ads. Once they do, they download a regional catalog. This is a text document, compressed down to about 3 MB in size. Your machine (via on-board machine-learning) studies this for relevancy. When a relevant ad is found, you are given 70% of the revenue, and a notification is displayed on your operating system. You have control from the start, even over the frequency of ads you'll see within an hour.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  It doesn’t speak for Mozilla that even with these people Chromium turned out to be the better option.
  - sp332 7y ago
    Mozilla has been admitting that Gecko is a huge drag since around the time they decided to break the extension model.
    - toyg 7y ago
      Actually, they have said so for much longer. The fact they started writing a completely new engine (Servo) in early 2012 was in itself an admission of defeat -- so many "embeddable Gecko" projects have been started and killed, over the years, that the only way forward is to replace with something new.
- reportgunner 7y ago
  >lived and breathed Gecko/Mozilla for years prior but they don't anymore ? So if someone lives and breathes policeman life and then becomes a drug dealer, is it just like buying drugs from a policeman ?

bsclifton 7y ago

(Brave employee here) Curious: what are some of the shortfalls you see in Chromium? Before I joined Brave, the desktop browser was originally using Gecko (from Firefox). Ultimately, there were some problems and the decision was made to move to Chromium. On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox though You can check out more detail on Reddit where folks asked why FF was not used (which has links to more detailed info): https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_browser_and_chromium/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_br...

vorticalbox 7y ago
The monopoly google has over the web standard is probably the biggest issue.
jsgo 7y ago
Not OP, but I'd imagine that it is Brave seems to be a browser that advocates for the user (and presumably in the future, publishers too with the pay thing). As such, the ideals seem more aligned with Firefox than Chrome (and by extension, Chromium). Basically, you guys are in a weird space where your decisions aren't looked at purely from a technical lens, but also an ideological one.
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  Welcome to current year. But don't let browsers pretend to be neutral runtimes for the terrible third party scripts on which surveillance advertising depends. They are not neutral. The big-4 browsers in the west apart from Apple are partly or fully captured by $100B ad businesses. We are all in a weird space. Best to fight back at the endpoint with the right browser. Could be Safari, Firefox, or Chrome with opt outs and uBO and other defenses (but risks remain in Chrome especially), if you are not game for Brave.
  - jsgo 7y ago
    Not saying you guys are wrong, just saying where it seems you get blowback for what another vendor doing more or less the same thing wouldn’t even register as a talking point. Not saying it’s fair, but it seems people hold you to something of a righteous/ideological expectation that Google et al can’t meet so they don’t even complain of it there. In my mind, considering the push you’re making, you’d validate that vanilla chromium meets the requirements to achieve said push. If it didn’t, it’d be a non-starter and you’d have went a different route (leveraging aspects of Firefox’s stack maybe if, again, it met requirements).

buboard 7y ago

If anything i see it as the revenge to chrome

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

option_greek 7y ago

Brave being based off chrome is actually great and your comment illustrates that. If it is based on FF, it will cut into FF market share which is already shrinking. Now, it cuts into Chrome which means two privacy focused browser instead of one.

barnabee 7y ago
What? It’s a separate browser, it cuts into the market share of whatever the user was using before.
skinnymuch 7y ago
It cuts into market share regardless. Why would market share changes matter for browser engine?

Ididntdothis 7y ago

“ I wish it was built on Firefox instead of Chromium. “ I commented in another thread. This is one area where Mozilla has failed. It should have been the goto engine for projects like Electron or Brave or even MS Edge instead of Chromium. But the last time I looked Mozilla was not very friendly towards developers who want to use their engine.

dmix 7y ago
Everyone is also switching to headless chrome for automated testing since it's faster than Gecko. I don’t know if FF has changed in this regard but it takes a long time to get rid of a perception of poor performance and this should have been their first priority long ago (which seems to be the case with their Rust work and GeckoView/mobile preview browser). In addition to how far they were behind Chrome security wise for so long, such as isolated tabs. But I agree, this should have been Mozilla's niche that they owned. Owning the early adopters is critical to mainstream success IMO. We're the ones that regular people listen to when making tech choices.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  They still don't have isolated per-domain render processes... That means if I exploit any renderer, I can take all your cookies for online banking and your webmail.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Presumably they don't want to split their Google funding.

onyva 7y ago

Mozilla's focus is user's rights online and privacy. They have a track record doing that. Brave (AKA AdBuddy) is just another product, desperately looking for a revenue stream, notably believing contaminating all news regarding browser technology with its presence is the way to go. The last thing the world needs is a predatory vendor trying to force itself somewhere it's not needed. Its non existing market share is the proof.

omnimus 7y ago
I think he meant build on Gecko/Servo not Blink.
marichards 7y ago
Whatever Mozilla's focus is when you load Firefox you experience the following: 1. On ESR first time it loads two pages load including https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/60.8.0/firstrun/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/60.8.0/firstrun/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ You then find first party cookies are set by Google Analytics _ga GA1.2.1671101194.1567114471 _gat_UA-36116321-1 1 _gid GA1.2.377831647.1567114471 In the EU this would breach the ePrivacy Directive - as there is neither consent or information supplied in advance. Privacy is not just about information captured about you, but about privacy of what you have stored on your electronic devices. Note: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2019/07/blog-cookies-what-does-good-look-like/ https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-bl... Myth 2: Analytics cookies are strictly necessary so we do not need consent 2. If you then type "privacy" into the address bar, it loads https://www.google.com/search?q=privacy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-e https://www.google.com/search?q=privacy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&cl... directing users into the most privacy invasive service on the internet with no advance warning. I now have a wealth of Google cookies from their search domain, but there are also cookies set for DoubleClick and Adservices. I'm now enrolled into surveillance capitalism and all I did was open Firefox for the first time, type "privacy" and press enter. Mozilla talk a lot about privacy, but their products and websites don't live up to the privacy standards we need and if anything they're on the wrong side of the fence when it comes to acting on privacy - they still make things worse and not better; although it has to be acknowledged that they have improved a lot with the tracking protection features that have slowly been making their way into Firefox. You might find this interesting to read https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...