Right, let me rephrase “no Firefox fork worth using has any chance to maintain meaningful existence without upstream Firefox”
I’m sure many forks will go on surviving from scraps if Firefox disappeared tomorrow. But they wouldn’t get anything useful done.
Let me put this into perspective, Microsoft (a trillion dollar company that would benefit enormously from rolling their own browser engine) didn’t have the resources for maintaining a browser engine.
Because a browser doesn’t just needs to keep working, it needs to evolve to adapt to the evolving web. New technologies get developed (webgpu, csp, cors, http3, etc…, some would add AI to the list but I wouldn’t) and browsers need to implement them, and old technologies get improved (faster more secure JavaScript engines, faster document renderers).
These are all things an actively developed browser engine will have to do, and things that a 2009 fork of Firefox receiving less than 10 commits per month by a single developer won’t achieve without getting them from upstream Firefox. But if you need to rely on upstream Firefox then once again you won’t survive meaningfully without Firefox.
Or you can just do the hipster and keep on using a 15 year old browser. Maybe use lynx or w3m to cut on the bloat. Or switch to gopher. You do you, it’s not my job to convince you.
A for-profit company “not having resources” usually means that the product department decided it’s not worth investing. Doesn’t tell us anything about the actual effort required to maintain such a software.
Yes, but you can think for yourself and you and Amy product manager know how much they would benefit (just as much as Google and Apple, other for profit companies of the same caliber) and you know they would have the means to produce such software (just like Apple and Google). So, knowing that they still decided it’s not worth the investment, you can infer that the cost would be immense.
False.
Right, let me rephrase “no Firefox fork worth using has any chance to maintain meaningful existence without upstream Firefox”
I’m sure many forks will go on surviving from scraps if Firefox disappeared tomorrow. But they wouldn’t get anything useful done.
Let me put this into perspective, Microsoft (a trillion dollar company that would benefit enormously from rolling their own browser engine) didn’t have the resources for maintaining a browser engine.
Why is Pale Moon not “worth using”?
Because a browser doesn’t just needs to keep working, it needs to evolve to adapt to the evolving web. New technologies get developed (webgpu, csp, cors, http3, etc…, some would add AI to the list but I wouldn’t) and browsers need to implement them, and old technologies get improved (faster more secure JavaScript engines, faster document renderers).
These are all things an actively developed browser engine will have to do, and things that a 2009 fork of Firefox receiving less than 10 commits per month by a single developer won’t achieve without getting them from upstream Firefox. But if you need to rely on upstream Firefox then once again you won’t survive meaningfully without Firefox.
Or you can just do the hipster and keep on using a 15 year old browser. Maybe use lynx or w3m to cut on the bloat. Or switch to gopher. You do you, it’s not my job to convince you.
A for-profit company “not having resources” usually means that the product department decided it’s not worth investing. Doesn’t tell us anything about the actual effort required to maintain such a software.
Yes, but you can think for yourself and you and Amy product manager know how much they would benefit (just as much as Google and Apple, other for profit companies of the same caliber) and you know they would have the means to produce such software (just like Apple and Google). So, knowing that they still decided it’s not worth the investment, you can infer that the cost would be immense.
Also, all the other points still stand.
See related: pfsense and opnsense.
Its entirely possible for a fork to survive if the cause is supported. Both things can still exist provided there is interest and support.
Switching browsers isn’t hard. For now, personally, I’ll take the fork that isn’t trying to literally be the “yo dog…” meme.