Comment by winterbloom
1 year ago
Disagree
It is your device and you are free to not run that code. You can leave
Of course this changes if it is something you specifically fund like government websites
1 year ago
Disagree
It is your device and you are free to not run that code. You can leave
Of course this changes if it is something you specifically fund like government websites
Ah, the good old Internet Libertarian.
If only free and enlightened individuals could, through their choices in a market in which everything is allowed, spawn such a diverse set of solutions, or allow true self-help, that every need is met...
...rather than everything consolidating under a few big players who leave few realistic alternatives, who confront users and customers with conflicting and hard to identify or quantify problems. There might just be 3 unreconcilable goals like:
- not allowing Google/Chrome to own the internet outright - have privacy for oneself and others who don't "opt out" - have a browser that is established enough to work on most websites
and you can't tell me what browser to use.
The same issue is present almost everywhere you look: All products have such massive permutations of health, energy, waste, sustainability, ethicical and economical parameters that making a decision is almost impossible for any well-informed individual, let alone for enough people to steer change in any meaningful way.
If you maintaing this sort of "Libertarian" view, make sure you're not inadvertendly serve the interest of corporations that would like to not be criticized nor regulated.
Mozilla needs to pay their developers. Donations alone don't cover the wages. The way money is divided is rather suboptimal at the moment in my opinion, but most of that money comes from Google, which may be ruled illegal in the coming months if the antitrust case against Google pans out well, leaving a hole where 86% of Mozilla's funding used to be. They _need_ to make money.
Developing browsers is very expensive. Currently, the only people doing that are Google+Microsoft (Blink), the megacorps in it for the ad money, Apple, in it for their own independence, and Mozilla, trying to be a third party. Forks are made constantly by individuals or small teams, and are often lagging behind in quality, maintenance, and security; Palemoon simply cannot keep up with Firefox, KHTML is effectively broken, and even the maintained Gnome fork of WebKit has tons of issues that make it hard to use it as a daily driver.
Everyone wants a super duper privacy friendly browser that only does browser things and preferably only works on their personal requirements, but nobody wants to actually spend time and money to develop one. I hope Ladybird turns out well, or maybe Servo will get revived into a functional browser, but how those browsers will be developed and distributed is entirely up to those browser vendors.
You can use whatever browser you like, but unless you're paying a significant sum for it or are part of the dev team, you'll have to succumb to the terms under which the browser is made available. I'd rather have parties like Mozilla funded by donations or independent government funds than by big tech, but nobody is willing to spend the millions necessary to catch up to Chrome just yet.
> Donations alone don't cover the wages
> but unless you're paying a significant sum for it
In fact, zero donations cover wages, and AFAIK nobody is paying for it, because Mozilla does not provide any way for users to give money to Firefox. You can't blame users for not taking an option that was never given.