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> Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, Brave. At least 5. Chrome, Edge and Brave are the same engine > whipping together a simple browser is quite easy Slapping li

> Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, Brave. At least 5. Chrome, Edge and Brave are the same engine > whipping together a simple browser is quite easy Slapping lipstick on a pig doesn't make it a different animal. Yes, there are superficial differences like watching ads in Brave to earn their "coin", but it doesn't make them a truly different/competitive browser.

mike_hearn 5y ago
Similarity of the code base doesn't matter, because we're talking about what sort of things a browser maker who "goes nuts" might do, like trying to switch off SSL or upload everything you type to their servers. In which case it's easy to patch that stuff out and/or just build a new shell around the underlying (fixed) rendering engine. That's the reason browser makers open sourced their renderers in the first place - exactly to help the web be more decentralized. And it works. If tomorrow Chrome blocks a website because it mis-gendered someone, OK, I'll switch to Safari. And if they do the same thing I'll switch to Edge. Etc. In extremis, I'll make my own browser based on the open code and sell it to people who really hate censorship. There are lots of ways to respond to this type of 'attack' but they don't rely on cryptography (I can't think of a cryptographic algorithm that could stop such a thing). Instead it's decentralization that fixes it. That's my point.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  Ah. Now I got you. Agreed
- hiq 5y ago
  > Instead it's decentralization that fixes it. That's FOSS. You can have FOSS using centralized, federated or decentralized protocols, I don't see a direct connection between the two. To go back a little, Moxie's main point has always been about the advantages of centralized protocols vs decentralized ones, not about FOSS vs proprietary software. In practice, he seems to favor (at least for Signal) centralized protocols and FOSS.
  - mike_hearn 5y ago
    It doesn't have to be open source. The same argument applied when most browsers were proprietary, it was just less strong because it was so much harder to create a competitor. There was still competition though, and a decentralized network of servers (you can think of links as edges in a p2p network).

mike_hearn 5y ago

Similarity of the code base doesn't matter, because we're talking about what sort of things a browser maker who "goes nuts" might do, like trying to switch off SSL or upload everything you type to their servers. In which case it's easy to patch that stuff out and/or just build a new shell around the underlying (fixed) rendering engine. That's the reason browser makers open sourced their renderers in the first place - exactly to help the web be more decentralized. And it works. If tomorrow Chrome blocks a website because it mis-gendered someone, OK, I'll switch to Safari. And if they do the same thing I'll switch to Edge. Etc. In extremis, I'll make my own browser based on the open code and sell it to people who really hate censorship. There are lots of ways to respond to this type of 'attack' but they don't rely on cryptography (I can't think of a cryptographic algorithm that could stop such a thing). Instead it's decentralization that fixes it. That's my point.

dmitriid 5y ago
Ah. Now I got you. Agreed
hiq 5y ago
> Instead it's decentralization that fixes it. That's FOSS. You can have FOSS using centralized, federated or decentralized protocols, I don't see a direct connection between the two. To go back a little, Moxie's main point has always been about the advantages of centralized protocols vs decentralized ones, not about FOSS vs proprietary software. In practice, he seems to favor (at least for Signal) centralized protocols and FOSS.
- mike_hearn 5y ago
  It doesn't have to be open source. The same argument applied when most browsers were proprietary, it was just less strong because it was so much harder to create a competitor. There was still competition though, and a decentralized network of servers (you can think of links as edges in a p2p network).