3 ms·

Because it quite literally takes hundreds of millions of dollars to make a browser. So, you can either: * Eat the costs because you're so wealthy you don't car

Because it quite literally takes hundreds of millions of dollars to make a browser. So, you can either: * Eat the costs because you're so wealthy you don't care (Apple, Google) * Use the work of those who ate the costs (Waterfox, Icecat, Edge, Firefox-Fork-Of-The-Month-Whose-Only-Purpose-Is-To-Shit-On-Firefox-Lol-Palemoon) * Find a way to actually make money (Firefox, Brave) Needless to say, you entire lifeline being depending on Google when you're Firefox is horribly bad.

panpanna 6y ago
Here is a crazy idea: Maybe web technologies have gotten too complicated. Maybe they need to be replaced with something that does not cost hundreds of millions to support?
- hjek 6y ago
  Lynx was always the best browser.
Teever 6y ago
What is so different about browsers? Why can we have the whole galaxy of free software with the various distributions and desktop environments and entire kernel ecosystems and device drivers free of this kind of monetization yet somehow this is impossible with browsers? I don't think twice about using Debian, Freebsd, Openbsd, or Openwrt. What the hell is going on with Mozilla and Firefox?
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  The consumer marketshare of desktop Linux/BSD and its ecosystem is tiny, something like 2% AFAIK. Mozilla is probably not happy for Firefox to occupy a similar browser marketshare, that would likely mean the end of Mozilla's influence on web standards. A lot of the remaining OSS ecosystem benefits corporate software development and is already supported by corporate backers.
- marcthe12 6y ago
  Browsers scope is so huge(and none of them is sufficiently modular). FOSS Software of that size and scope is usually require at the minimum donation from companies use it.
tinus_hn 6y ago
> Waterfox, Icecat, Edge, Firefox-Fork-Of-The-Month-Whose-Only-Purpose-Is-To-Shit-On-Firefox-Lol-Palemoon Many of these ‘forks’ emerged because of the Firefox trademark policy which prevented distributions from packaging Firefox under that name.

panpanna 6y ago

Here is a crazy idea: Maybe web technologies have gotten too complicated. Maybe they need to be replaced with something that does not cost hundreds of millions to support?

hjek 6y ago
Lynx was always the best browser.

Teever 6y ago

What is so different about browsers? Why can we have the whole galaxy of free software with the various distributions and desktop environments and entire kernel ecosystems and device drivers free of this kind of monetization yet somehow this is impossible with browsers? I don't think twice about using Debian, Freebsd, Openbsd, or Openwrt. What the hell is going on with Mozilla and Firefox?

themacguffinman 6y ago
The consumer marketshare of desktop Linux/BSD and its ecosystem is tiny, something like 2% AFAIK. Mozilla is probably not happy for Firefox to occupy a similar browser marketshare, that would likely mean the end of Mozilla's influence on web standards. A lot of the remaining OSS ecosystem benefits corporate software development and is already supported by corporate backers.
marcthe12 6y ago
Browsers scope is so huge(and none of them is sufficiently modular). FOSS Software of that size and scope is usually require at the minimum donation from companies use it.

tinus_hn 6y ago

> Waterfox, Icecat, Edge, Firefox-Fork-Of-The-Month-Whose-Only-Purpose-Is-To-Shit-On-Firefox-Lol-Palemoon Many of these ‘forks’ emerged because of the Firefox trademark policy which prevented distributions from packaging Firefox under that name.