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Shouting is easy, doing so isn't. I gave up on trying to maintain forks of web browsers, because their extension API deliberately doesn't allow modifying respo

Shouting is easy, doing so isn't. I gave up on trying to maintain forks of web browsers, because their extension API deliberately doesn't allow modifying response bodies. It's just impossible to maintain any fork of any browser because of the sheer amount of features that rely on JS APIs for websites and the amount of commits upstream. Ad Blockers are just a dirty hack that completely relies on Chromium respecting the Content-Security-Policy headers for all domains. If Google decides to blocklist their own domains for HTTP header modifications, we're fucked. Quite literally. That's the reason why I kinda started to build my own browser (without a rendering engine for now) that focusses on filtering, parsing, and peer-to-peer offloading traffic and sees itself as a mixture between web browser, scraper and proxy that can be used as a cache for others. It has the idea to act as a web filter service + a webview to render its UI rather than being a render engine and document engine. [1] I hope that with this market niche there's a way to make this kind of effort sustainable for the future, because all other web browser fork projects I've seen so far are dying off due to no funding and too much work to maintain the codebase. It's just not feasible to compete in the everday user's browser market. Lots of companies have tried, and lots of companies have failed. [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth Edit: Clarification of Chrome vs. libchromium

minitech 6y ago
> If Google decides to blocklist their own domains for HTTP header modifications, we're fucked. I mean, you could just stop using Chrome if this happened, if you haven’t already. All the other popular browsers would be unaffected, and I’m sure projects like ungoogled-chromium would patch a change like that out.
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  I'm using Ungoogled Chromium. But let's don't kid ourselves, this is just a temporary solution. There will always be the point where it's impossible to maintain patches and keep up with the cat and mouse game upstream. Also all the other popular Browsers are either based on Chromium or based on Gecko, an engine that has no developers anymore since last year. When I wrote about sustainability, that's exactly what I was talking about.
  - Signez 6y ago
    > an engine that has no developers anymore since last year There are still more than a hundred developers working on Gecko.
    - cookiengineer 6y ago
      Are we counting open source contributors or paid developers here? Because I think there's a difference in assumption vs reality here. External contributors work in their free time and are, as I'm trying to point out in my other comment, unsustainable as a work model [1] [2] [1] https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/graph/06b1ac14775250a1e95c0c1324fd7aee8fe5cc57 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/graph/06b1ac14775250a... [2] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/graphs/contributors https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/graphs/contributors
  - ripdog 6y ago
    You're confusing gecko and servo. Servo is an experimental web engine which was being developed by Mozilla to test experimental tech. Recently its dev team was laid off. Gecko is the production engine that Firefox is based on, and it's still under full steam ahead development by engineers employed by Mozilla.
    - CameronNemo 6y ago
      The Mozilla Corporation receives nearly all of its revenue from Google. As their market share inevitably trends toward zero (iOS defaults to Safari, Windows to Edge, and Android to Chrome), their negotiating power with Google and other search engines will suffer. The Gecko is drowning.
      - ripdog 6y ago
        Yes, this is a serious issue. However, I wouldn't claim that Mozilla has any negotiating power with Google even today - Google is likely to continue to fund Mozilla in order to stave off potential antitrust action.
yholio 6y ago
This cannot happen on an individual level. We need to take the internet standards writing process back into the hands of citizenry. The hacker ethos is long dead and all technical bodies have become negotiating tables where giant corporations divvy up their turf.
- zokier 6y ago
  Anyone can write internet standards. Nobody can force anyone to follow any particular standards.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  If we make the internet standards hand all this power back to the browser users, then Google will clearly just not implement that particular standard. They have plenty of precedent of going their own way, establishing it as the way the web works, and then getting the standards written retrospectively to cover it. (Not singling out Chrome here - most of the major browsers have done this at some point.)
h0p3 6y ago
Your work is fascinating. Thank you for sharing. It's a pleasure to meet you.

minitech 6y ago

> If Google decides to blocklist their own domains for HTTP header modifications, we're fucked. I mean, you could just stop using Chrome if this happened, if you haven’t already. All the other popular browsers would be unaffected, and I’m sure projects like ungoogled-chromium would patch a change like that out.

cookiengineer 6y ago
I'm using Ungoogled Chromium. But let's don't kid ourselves, this is just a temporary solution. There will always be the point where it's impossible to maintain patches and keep up with the cat and mouse game upstream. Also all the other popular Browsers are either based on Chromium or based on Gecko, an engine that has no developers anymore since last year. When I wrote about sustainability, that's exactly what I was talking about.
- Signez 6y ago
  > an engine that has no developers anymore since last year There are still more than a hundred developers working on Gecko.
  - cookiengineer 6y ago
    Are we counting open source contributors or paid developers here? Because I think there's a difference in assumption vs reality here. External contributors work in their free time and are, as I'm trying to point out in my other comment, unsustainable as a work model [1] [2] [1] https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/graph/06b1ac14775250a1e95c0c1324fd7aee8fe5cc57 https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/graph/06b1ac14775250a... [2] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/graphs/contributors https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/graphs/contributors
- ripdog 6y ago
  You're confusing gecko and servo. Servo is an experimental web engine which was being developed by Mozilla to test experimental tech. Recently its dev team was laid off. Gecko is the production engine that Firefox is based on, and it's still under full steam ahead development by engineers employed by Mozilla.
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    The Mozilla Corporation receives nearly all of its revenue from Google. As their market share inevitably trends toward zero (iOS defaults to Safari, Windows to Edge, and Android to Chrome), their negotiating power with Google and other search engines will suffer. The Gecko is drowning.
    - ripdog 6y ago
      Yes, this is a serious issue. However, I wouldn't claim that Mozilla has any negotiating power with Google even today - Google is likely to continue to fund Mozilla in order to stave off potential antitrust action.

yholio 6y ago

This cannot happen on an individual level. We need to take the internet standards writing process back into the hands of citizenry. The hacker ethos is long dead and all technical bodies have become negotiating tables where giant corporations divvy up their turf.

zokier 6y ago
Anyone can write internet standards. Nobody can force anyone to follow any particular standards.
mnw21cam 6y ago
If we make the internet standards hand all this power back to the browser users, then Google will clearly just not implement that particular standard. They have plenty of precedent of going their own way, establishing it as the way the web works, and then getting the standards written retrospectively to cover it. (Not singling out Chrome here - most of the major browsers have done this at some point.)

h0p3 6y ago

Your work is fascinating. Thank you for sharing. It's a pleasure to meet you.