10 ms·

Waterfox sold to System1, an ad company that bought a majority of Startpage

188 points by djsumdog 7y ago

greenyoda 7y ago
Official statement from Waterfox's developer: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1 https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1
- marcinzm 7y ago
  On reddit the developer has stated multiple times that this is a search partnership and not a buyout. The blog indicates that it is a buyout and so does the change in company director. That makes me confused as to what is happening here.
  - chii 7y ago
    could be a deliberate tactic to sow confusion. I would not update waterfox beyond the pre-acquisition version.
    - squarefoot 7y ago
      That's probably why during the last 2 weeks Waterfox pestered me every day asking to upgrade it. I didn't know about the acquisition and tried to upgrade, but luckily in hindsight the upgrade failed because it required a new glibc version that isn't even in Debian unstable. I'll probably go back to FF ESR. Sad news indeeed; I loved Waterfox:( Also, If he would have asked for help, I'd have happily donated some quid.
      - MrAlex94 7y ago
        That’s just how the Mozilla platform works for newer products (that Waterfox has inherited).
      - smnthermes 7y ago
        Why not try Pale Moon or Basilisk?
        use-net 7y ago
        Pale Moon and Basilisk will now gain a huge followership!
    - MrAlex94 7y ago
      Probably just bad phrasing on my part. Also, Waterfox is OSS? There are definitely some security patches that have been released that I’d recommend you have; so for your sake at least use an up-to-date browser.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      I would go so far as to say that I would never have installed waterfox in the first place as it provides dubious value insofar as privacy and none as far as technical quality.
      - d00de 7y ago
        there sure are more weasel words in place about these crucial issues than hard facts!
  - geekone 7y ago
    Sure looks like they acquihired him: https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox Also, Alex appears to have stepped down as director of Waterfox and a co-founder of System1 became director: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08071145/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08071145/filing-h...
  - MrAlex94 7y ago
    Sorry if I was phrasing incorrectly. System1 are a search syndicator and that’s how they’ll be pushing forward with it. A lot of people seem to have extrapolated more than what’s actually happened.
    - smnthermes 7y ago
      So why did you transfer the directorship to the System1 director? This is not needed for partnerships.
    - use-net 7y ago
      " System1, a company describing itself as 'a consumer internet and applications company with the most powerful audience expansion platform in the industry.' In short, a data-collection company." Not sure about all this vague tech-babble here, but it spells evil "Big Data" to me. Must be just me...
ChuckMcM 7y ago
That is too bad, everyone has their price though so not unexpected. When Startpage got bought I noticed they immediately changed to doing all the scummy things that click jackers do (tracking, fingerprinting, affilitizing, Etc.)
- MrAlex94 7y ago
  > That is too bad, everyone has their price though so not unexpected. I think that’s a little unfair, makes it sounds as if there is malicious intent. I was just thinking of a way I could grow Waterfox with a company that would understand what Waterfox needs. VC for example would’ve definitely been the wrong fit, as they’d want an exit strategy and want it fast.
  - ChuckMcM 7y ago
    Okay, I can see that interpretation and I apologize. I was going for a 'next stage of things' which for businesses of this form (single product / modest revenue / digital assets) have a small number of exit routes for the developer. #1) (and most common in my experience) Is to sell the business to a larger aggregator which allows the acquirer to grow the surface area of what they do (in this case sell ads, but it could be anything like service dentist offices or market business services). This pays the founder some money and let's them move on to different things. #2) The founder/key contributor takes on a senior role at a larger company and their product becomes either an open source project or briefly a product of the larger company. #3) The founder moves on to something else and product support goes away, updates don't happen and eventually operating systems have moved on and the product just doesn't work any more. In all cases the 'intent' is that the founder needs to grow or do something different or their needs have changes (like having a family) and so their priorities shift. Life goes on and things evolve.
  - pndy 7y ago
    And I think you're unable to see or you're plainly ignoring the issue from concerned users perspective - what's more, you managed to insult them here saying there's some conspiracy theory just because users don't like what happened to the browser. Whatever your plans were from day zero or what had to be done, this is not how you should handle this.
tootie 7y ago
I use Waterfox because I still need to run a Java applet for one thing.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  Consider running the applet under `appletviewer`, if possible. Development of the Java NPAPI plugin has essentially ceased (as every major browser has dropped support for NPAPI!), so security and stability updates for the plugin will be limited.
jccalhoun 7y ago
As long as it stays fully open source then I guess it can be forked if it goes bad. I rarely use it myself but it would be a shame for it to get turned into crap.
- MrAlex94 7y ago
  Don’t think it would be possible (or at least feasible?) to make something closed-source with the MPL?
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    The Amiga build of Firefox did exactly that. All the platform specific stuff was in separate files (supposedly) so as to not trigger the per-file disclosure rules. Now, "modern" Amiga is a horrible dumpster fire of a software development and community. It's a worked example of that saying about how people fight most fiercely over the smallest stakes, with no more than a few thousand users fighting over which of half a dozen ways forward "must" succeed and a long history of scams, etcetera. But that's your example, such as it is.
    - MrAlex94 7y ago
      Ah I see, fair enough.
geophertz 7y ago
Here are some of the responses: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_browser_waterfox_appears_to_be_sold_to/fhitztz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_bro... https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_browser_waterfox_appears_to_be_sold_to/fhisfr7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_bro...
MrAlex94 7y ago
Hi all, Waterfox dev here. I’d appreciate if people read the blog announcement here as well: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1 https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1 While I’ve always kept Waterfox privacy friendly (and it will remain so) I’ve never tried to have it as a privacy product specifically (that was cherry picked by the author), as I’ve explained in the blog. It’s not something I’ve wanted to go down, so all the outrage towards me for that has been, at least towards me, a little unfair. Also, this post has led to a lot of (what feels like) harassment from disgruntled privacy users, even though nothing has changed. System1 are pivoting to focus on more privacy-focused ventures, something I’m sure a lot of HN readers are familiar with. At the end of the day, they were the right fit and aren’t going to change Waterfox in any of its privacy aspects, and I can finally grow out Waterfox to hopefully be more than it currently is. What should be IMO a joyful occasion for myself and Waterfox users has ended up into a collection of conspiracy theories and rather unkind words. Regardless, I hope everyone has a good weekend and am more than happy to try and answer questions :-)
- lawrenceyan 7y ago
  As long as you're okay with it, there's nothing wrong with selling out dude. Everyone has to make a living. It's understandable.
  - girvo 7y ago
    How is it “selling out”? That particular phrase has a heap of nasty connotations along with it.
    - lawrenceyan 7y ago
      What would you prefer it be called instead?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - 7y ago
hnuser123456 7y ago
So, anyone care to make a new fork of FF with all commercial elements ripped out? Lots of fame in it for you. No disrepect to you Alex, there's just a lot of desire for software with zero commercial element.
- haunter 7y ago
  idk about FF but I know ungoogled-chromium, been using that for years https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
- CDSlice 7y ago
  Is there any desire to help pay for software with zero commercial elements? Especially software as complex as a web browser, where it will take a lot more effort and time than other, smaller open source programs.
  - hnuser123456 7y ago
    Hence why I said fame and not money.
    - CDSlice 7y ago
      Fame won't pay the bills though.
  - use-net 7y ago
    what makes it complex is all those anti-features that they deny even do exist, LOL
- lilSebastian 7y ago
  > So, anyone care to make a new fork of FF with all commercial elements ripped out? Lots of fame in it for you. Sounds like you're volunteering ;)
  - hnuser123456 7y ago
Santosh83 7y ago
If one man software products can't be sold for money in such a fashion as to reasonably support the dev then it is inevitable that most of them will either be sold or become abandonware. That too, a browser being such a critically important piece of modern software and such a complex undertaking for a single (or few) devs, it is imperative that the user community undertakes to return the favour in terms of money so that such 'deals' are not necessitated. Now while today it is Waterfox we can expect most of the other smaller players to eventually fold too... even folks like Vivaldi/Brave may not be sustainable in the long term. For that matter even Mozilla has a revenue problem that has long been bandaged over by deals with ad companies. It's just that the sharp end of economic reality hits the lone dev much sooner. Microsoft and Google giving away their browsers for free will essentially undercut every other player out there including Mozilla. And only the users will emerge the poorer for such unhealthy consolidation.
dmos62 7y ago
I'd like to go on a slight tangent and notice that Startpage has been dropping 1/3 of my queries the past week, with a message saying that their systems are overtaxed. I don't have much confidence in it. In my experience technical problems often preclude more serious ones. I realise that I'm in the realm of reading tea leaves, but this heuristic has saved me more than once.
thinkingemote 7y ago
What announcement did Startpage make? Is it similar?
- grahamjperrin 7y ago
  https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox > Is it similar? Alex describes Waterfox as privacy-friendly. System1 describe Waterfox as privacy-friendly, and so on. A few highlights: >> … our promise to him was that we could provide much-needed resources to further build upon and market Waterfox to a broader audience, while maintaining the aspects that Waterfox is known for. We will honor that promise to him and the Waterfox community, … – and: >> … Alex will continue to drive product strategy, only now he has resources to hire a team and build an even better product. By leveraging the System1 engineering resources, Alex will be able to roll out more features, more quickly, while maintaining the Waterfox commitment to its users. …
ThePhysicist 7y ago
AdTech companies and data brokers often buy privacy-focused products from single developers / small teams and turn them into data collection devices. I was part of a team that uncovered such a large-scale data collection schema by a data broker company in 2016. They bought popular privacy-focused browser extensions like "Web of Trust" and turned them into spyware, sending every URL users opened in their browsers to their backend. They then slapped some token "anonymization" on the data and sold it to whomever was willing to pay. They even provided a sample consisting of more than two months of browsing data from three million people in Germany to a team of journalists posing as a startup as a freebie. The data contained tons of highly intimate and sensitive information and users where trivial to re-identify in many cases, e.g. via URLs that contained usernames, e-mail addresses or access tokens. Chrome and Firefox briefly banned the extension from their app stores, but a few weeks after the incident it was suddenly back, happily exfiltrating data from unsuspecting users again. I then realized that browser vendors often have perverse incentives when it comes to privacy and really don't care so much about it. Even companies like Mozilla allow plenty of shady extensions to exfiltrate really sensitive user data, because those extensions increase the popularity of the browser. BTW these companies often lie to the original developers / teams that they acquire. "Web of Trust" for example was originally written by a team of students that really cared about user privacy and trust. So I wouldn't give too much about the promises of such companies, their business is selling data and collecting as much data as possible is one of their primary objectives, privacy always takes a backseat.
mike50 7y ago
Burned.

188 points by djsumdog 7y ago

Official statement from Waterfox's developer: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1 https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1

marcinzm 7y ago
On reddit the developer has stated multiple times that this is a search partnership and not a buyout. The blog indicates that it is a buyout and so does the change in company director. That makes me confused as to what is happening here.
- chii 7y ago
  could be a deliberate tactic to sow confusion. I would not update waterfox beyond the pre-acquisition version.
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    That's probably why during the last 2 weeks Waterfox pestered me every day asking to upgrade it. I didn't know about the acquisition and tried to upgrade, but luckily in hindsight the upgrade failed because it required a new glibc version that isn't even in Debian unstable. I'll probably go back to FF ESR. Sad news indeeed; I loved Waterfox:( Also, If he would have asked for help, I'd have happily donated some quid.
    - MrAlex94 7y ago
      That’s just how the Mozilla platform works for newer products (that Waterfox has inherited).
    - smnthermes 7y ago
      Why not try Pale Moon or Basilisk?
      - use-net 7y ago
        Pale Moon and Basilisk will now gain a huge followership!
  - MrAlex94 7y ago
    Probably just bad phrasing on my part. Also, Waterfox is OSS? There are definitely some security patches that have been released that I’d recommend you have; so for your sake at least use an up-to-date browser.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    I would go so far as to say that I would never have installed waterfox in the first place as it provides dubious value insofar as privacy and none as far as technical quality.
    - d00de 7y ago
      there sure are more weasel words in place about these crucial issues than hard facts!
- geekone 7y ago
  Sure looks like they acquihired him: https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox Also, Alex appears to have stepped down as director of Waterfox and a co-founder of System1 became director: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08071145/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08071145/filing-h...
- MrAlex94 7y ago
  Sorry if I was phrasing incorrectly. System1 are a search syndicator and that’s how they’ll be pushing forward with it. A lot of people seem to have extrapolated more than what’s actually happened.
  - smnthermes 7y ago
    So why did you transfer the directorship to the System1 director? This is not needed for partnerships.
  - use-net 7y ago
    " System1, a company describing itself as 'a consumer internet and applications company with the most powerful audience expansion platform in the industry.' In short, a data-collection company." Not sure about all this vague tech-babble here, but it spells evil "Big Data" to me. Must be just me...

ChuckMcM 7y ago

That is too bad, everyone has their price though so not unexpected. When Startpage got bought I noticed they immediately changed to doing all the scummy things that click jackers do (tracking, fingerprinting, affilitizing, Etc.)

MrAlex94 7y ago
> That is too bad, everyone has their price though so not unexpected. I think that’s a little unfair, makes it sounds as if there is malicious intent. I was just thinking of a way I could grow Waterfox with a company that would understand what Waterfox needs. VC for example would’ve definitely been the wrong fit, as they’d want an exit strategy and want it fast.
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  Okay, I can see that interpretation and I apologize. I was going for a 'next stage of things' which for businesses of this form (single product / modest revenue / digital assets) have a small number of exit routes for the developer. #1) (and most common in my experience) Is to sell the business to a larger aggregator which allows the acquirer to grow the surface area of what they do (in this case sell ads, but it could be anything like service dentist offices or market business services). This pays the founder some money and let's them move on to different things. #2) The founder/key contributor takes on a senior role at a larger company and their product becomes either an open source project or briefly a product of the larger company. #3) The founder moves on to something else and product support goes away, updates don't happen and eventually operating systems have moved on and the product just doesn't work any more. In all cases the 'intent' is that the founder needs to grow or do something different or their needs have changes (like having a family) and so their priorities shift. Life goes on and things evolve.
- pndy 7y ago
  And I think you're unable to see or you're plainly ignoring the issue from concerned users perspective - what's more, you managed to insult them here saying there's some conspiracy theory just because users don't like what happened to the browser. Whatever your plans were from day zero or what had to be done, this is not how you should handle this.

tootie 7y ago

I use Waterfox because I still need to run a Java applet for one thing.

duskwuff 7y ago
Consider running the applet under `appletviewer`, if possible. Development of the Java NPAPI plugin has essentially ceased (as every major browser has dropped support for NPAPI!), so security and stability updates for the plugin will be limited.

jccalhoun 7y ago

As long as it stays fully open source then I guess it can be forked if it goes bad. I rarely use it myself but it would be a shame for it to get turned into crap.

MrAlex94 7y ago
Don’t think it would be possible (or at least feasible?) to make something closed-source with the MPL?
- tialaramex 7y ago
  The Amiga build of Firefox did exactly that. All the platform specific stuff was in separate files (supposedly) so as to not trigger the per-file disclosure rules. Now, "modern" Amiga is a horrible dumpster fire of a software development and community. It's a worked example of that saying about how people fight most fiercely over the smallest stakes, with no more than a few thousand users fighting over which of half a dozen ways forward "must" succeed and a long history of scams, etcetera. But that's your example, such as it is.
  - MrAlex94 7y ago
    Ah I see, fair enough.

geophertz 7y ago

Here are some of the responses: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_browser_waterfox_appears_to_be_sold_to/fhitztz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_bro... https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_browser_waterfox_appears_to_be_sold_to/fhisfr7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f3gqoc/privacy_bro...

MrAlex94 7y ago

Hi all, Waterfox dev here. I’d appreciate if people read the blog announcement here as well: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1 https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1 While I’ve always kept Waterfox privacy friendly (and it will remain so) I’ve never tried to have it as a privacy product specifically (that was cherry picked by the author), as I’ve explained in the blog. It’s not something I’ve wanted to go down, so all the outrage towards me for that has been, at least towards me, a little unfair. Also, this post has led to a lot of (what feels like) harassment from disgruntled privacy users, even though nothing has changed. System1 are pivoting to focus on more privacy-focused ventures, something I’m sure a lot of HN readers are familiar with. At the end of the day, they were the right fit and aren’t going to change Waterfox in any of its privacy aspects, and I can finally grow out Waterfox to hopefully be more than it currently is. What should be IMO a joyful occasion for myself and Waterfox users has ended up into a collection of conspiracy theories and rather unkind words. Regardless, I hope everyone has a good weekend and am more than happy to try and answer questions :-)

lawrenceyan 7y ago
As long as you're okay with it, there's nothing wrong with selling out dude. Everyone has to make a living. It's understandable.
- girvo 7y ago
  How is it “selling out”? That particular phrase has a heap of nasty connotations along with it.
  - lawrenceyan 7y ago
    What would you prefer it be called instead?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - 7y ago

hnuser123456 7y ago

So, anyone care to make a new fork of FF with all commercial elements ripped out? Lots of fame in it for you. No disrepect to you Alex, there's just a lot of desire for software with zero commercial element.

haunter 7y ago
idk about FF but I know ungoogled-chromium, been using that for years https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
CDSlice 7y ago
Is there any desire to help pay for software with zero commercial elements? Especially software as complex as a web browser, where it will take a lot more effort and time than other, smaller open source programs.
- hnuser123456 7y ago
  Hence why I said fame and not money.
  - CDSlice 7y ago
    Fame won't pay the bills though.
- use-net 7y ago
  what makes it complex is all those anti-features that they deny even do exist, LOL
lilSebastian 7y ago
> So, anyone care to make a new fork of FF with all commercial elements ripped out? Lots of fame in it for you. Sounds like you're volunteering ;)
- hnuser123456 7y ago

Santosh83 7y ago

If one man software products can't be sold for money in such a fashion as to reasonably support the dev then it is inevitable that most of them will either be sold or become abandonware. That too, a browser being such a critically important piece of modern software and such a complex undertaking for a single (or few) devs, it is imperative that the user community undertakes to return the favour in terms of money so that such 'deals' are not necessitated. Now while today it is Waterfox we can expect most of the other smaller players to eventually fold too... even folks like Vivaldi/Brave may not be sustainable in the long term. For that matter even Mozilla has a revenue problem that has long been bandaged over by deals with ad companies. It's just that the sharp end of economic reality hits the lone dev much sooner. Microsoft and Google giving away their browsers for free will essentially undercut every other player out there including Mozilla. And only the users will emerge the poorer for such unhealthy consolidation.

dmos62 7y ago

I'd like to go on a slight tangent and notice that Startpage has been dropping 1/3 of my queries the past week, with a message saying that their systems are overtaxed. I don't have much confidence in it. In my experience technical problems often preclude more serious ones. I realise that I'm in the realm of reading tea leaves, but this heuristic has saved me more than once.

thinkingemote 7y ago

What announcement did Startpage make? Is it similar?

grahamjperrin 7y ago
https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox > Is it similar? Alex describes Waterfox as privacy-friendly. System1 describe Waterfox as privacy-friendly, and so on. A few highlights: >> … our promise to him was that we could provide much-needed resources to further build upon and market Waterfox to a broader audience, while maintaining the aspects that Waterfox is known for. We will honor that promise to him and the Waterfox community, … – and: >> … Alex will continue to drive product strategy, only now he has resources to hire a team and build an even better product. By leveraging the System1 engineering resources, Alex will be able to roll out more features, more quickly, while maintaining the Waterfox commitment to its users. …

ThePhysicist 7y ago

AdTech companies and data brokers often buy privacy-focused products from single developers / small teams and turn them into data collection devices. I was part of a team that uncovered such a large-scale data collection schema by a data broker company in 2016. They bought popular privacy-focused browser extensions like "Web of Trust" and turned them into spyware, sending every URL users opened in their browsers to their backend. They then slapped some token "anonymization" on the data and sold it to whomever was willing to pay. They even provided a sample consisting of more than two months of browsing data from three million people in Germany to a team of journalists posing as a startup as a freebie. The data contained tons of highly intimate and sensitive information and users where trivial to re-identify in many cases, e.g. via URLs that contained usernames, e-mail addresses or access tokens. Chrome and Firefox briefly banned the extension from their app stores, but a few weeks after the incident it was suddenly back, happily exfiltrating data from unsuspecting users again. I then realized that browser vendors often have perverse incentives when it comes to privacy and really don't care so much about it. Even companies like Mozilla allow plenty of shady extensions to exfiltrate really sensitive user data, because those extensions increase the popularity of the browser. BTW these companies often lie to the original developers / teams that they acquire. "Web of Trust" for example was originally written by a team of students that really cared about user privacy and trust. So I wouldn't give too much about the promises of such companies, their business is selling data and collecting as much data as possible is one of their primary objectives, privacy always takes a backseat.

mike50 7y ago

Burned.