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Can Firefox be forked? It's buildable on various OSes, is it legally possible to pick up the codebase and keep working on it in the spirit of original Mozilla?
by avmich 5y ago
Can Firefox be forked? It's buildable on various OSes, is it legally possible to pick up the codebase and keep working on it in the spirit of original Mozilla?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- PedroBatista 5y agoYes, but the doe tho.. 99% of the time, it's not a technical problem.
- wmf 5y agoThere are various Firefox forks already (the ones I'm aware of are for old OSes) but there aren't enough people to sustain them.
- JPLeRouzic 5y agoWhen Firefox/phoenix was created, it was essentially by two people, Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross, isn't?
- wmf 5y agoFirefox was based on the existing Mozilla codebase maintained by dozens or hundreds of engineers. Likewise, as long as Firefox is actively maintained by Mozilla it only takes 1-2 people to maintain a small fork. But if Mozilla goes out of business and Firefox becomes completely unmaintained all of the forks will also die.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gary_0 5y agoDepending on your definition of "fork", Firefox has been forked in cases like the Tor Browser or IceWeasel. But starting a completely separate organization that could keep its isolated Firefox fork competitive with Chromium would require a massive amount of resources. Mozilla employs hundreds of full-time engineers (although that number is declining).
- coldacid 5y agoI'm running Waterfox, and I've heard good things about Basilisk for people who want/need to keep the old XUL ways alive.
- slapfrog 5y agoYes but not with the Firefox branding.