The day Firefox shutters its doors is the day the internet truly dies.
*the web
The internet has so far been doing a much better job surviving as a proper decentralized system than the web.
Comment on The fall of Firefox: Mozilla's once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance
rwhitisissle@beehaw.org 4 months ago
The day Firefox shutters its doors is the day the internet truly dies. Almost every “alternative” browser is chromium under the hood. Google’s next big plan is basically constructing a walled garden around the internet (at least the HTTP part) via complex DRM. Eventually, if you want to access an actual web page, it’ll have to be via a Chromium browser. Hell, even today a shitload of websites I visit on FF just don’t fucking render correctly and I’ll have to fire up a chromium instance just to access them. That’s only going to get worse with time.
azdle@news.idlestate.org 4 months ago
Valmond@beehaw.org 4 months ago
curl -k IP_Address
Open in notepad.
Read.
Thymos@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Hell, even today a shitload of websites I visit on FF just don’t fucking render correctly and I’ll have to fire up a chromium instance just to access them.
Can you link to an example? I remember this from years ago, but haven’t encountered it for a long time.
Hypx@kbin.social 4 months ago
No. This is just a return to the days of the IE-only web. It will be problematic but it won't be the end of the web.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
It wasn’t really IE-only. People sort of could use Netscape, and then Mozilla, and then Firefox. And Opera which wasn’t free.
DarkenLM@kbin.social 4 months ago
Servo is being actively worked on. Maybe it can become a worthy adversary to chrome?
bilb@lem.monster 4 months ago
I thought Servo was basically dead since the layoffs at Mozilla in 2020, but your comment caused me to look into it and evidently funding was found to resume development on it at the beginning of last year. That’s good news! (to me!)
lloram239@feddit.de 4 months ago
The day Firefox shutters its doors is the day the internet truly dies.
Firefox is little more than just a Chrome clone itself. It doesn’t do anything to set itself apport. If they cared about an open Internet they should have put some effort into building it (support RSS, Torrent, IPFS, etc.). If Firefox dies tomorrow, nothing much would change as the rest of the Internet already didn’t care. It might however make room for a browser that actually cares about privacy and an open Internet, instead of just using those words for marketing purpose while still having telemetry by default.
ISOmorph@feddit.de 4 months ago
Do you have examples for the sites that don’t render correctly? I’m genuinely curious since I haven’t encountered that issue in like a decade.
Poggervania@kbin.social 4 months ago
I mean, you can argue that Google actually has a monopoly on web browsers right now. iirc Firefox takes a ton of money from Google, so if the choices are “Google’s proprietary browser” or “a non-Chromium browser backed by Google” (EDIT: unless you’re on Apple hardware and use Safari), then Google comes out on top either way.
Wish we could get another good browser engine that isn’t Chromium, WebKit, or Quantum.
otter@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Ehh
There’s a clear difference between accepting money from an entity and letting it control things and make decisions. Pushing for a full and clear separation from any controversial entity is how projects die.
I’d love for Firefox to be fully funded through small anonymous public donations in an ideal world. As it is, I don’t see an issue from taking Google’s money to do something that most users would do anyways.
If the default search wasn’t google, I’m certain even more users would bail on Firefox. Anyone who does want an alternative search engine is capable of clicking on it during installation.
superb@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Firefox might be able to survive on donations, if Mozilla’s CEO stopped giving herself raises
Zworf@beehaw.org 4 months ago
They don’t even want our money. They just let you donate to Mozilla foundation, which does other projects.
Firefox is developed by Mozilla corporation which is funded by the google deal.
Jack@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
There are worse things than death, like being successful by fucking people over and/or making the biosphere unlivable.
jmp242@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
I’m still sad about the day the real Opera with the presto rendering engine died. And while Vivaldi is getting many of the features and functionality, it’s still a chromium rebuild. I guess it just takes too much money to build your own rendering engine anymore.
clgoh@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Even Microsoft couldn’t do it.
barsoap@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Heck even Google couldn’t do it, they used Apple’s WebKit. And even Apple couldn’t do it, they used KDE’s KHTML. Speaking of KHTML: Konqueror is still around, though they’ve already decided to get rid of KHTML completely and move to one of the forks, development pretty much stalled since 2016.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
And it was so fast, awww. And had a built-in BitTorrent client which didn’t suck balls and didn’t feel excessive.
And all that caching.