15 Years of Forking

> Mozilla: Break free from big tech - our products put you in control of a safer, more private internet experience.

(Adds AI that needs 7 about:config entries to disable, until users roast it enough that they add an off switch.)

> Waterfox: And we still don’t have AI in the browser. That hasn’t changed. The browser’s job is to load web pages, keep your data private, and get out of the way. It seems other browsers have forgotten that.

At some point I think we should just redirect the Firefox funding to Waterfox.

The ads on default search partner is a fine compromise - reality is that projects need money, and if this helps them (and makes it less dependant on donations) then great! As long as the ad blocking happens elsewhere, it is fine.

I need to move back to waterfox again...

I remember using Waterfox when it was new. I moved away from it when Firefox started pushing 64 bit builds natively, and I've stuck with it since then. Recently though it does seem as if they might be going down a dark path, so perhaps I'll consider switching again. I remember Waterfox was hard forked after Quantum became a thing, in order to keep support with XPI - is that still the case?

Adless monetization is a very difficult challenge - something I've worked on many times over the years (compute-monetization, shopping-commission monetization, payment interchange monetization) and it's always been very difficult to compete with ads. I think the waterfox approach of "ads if you're OK with it" opt-in and sane defaults is the better one, but it's very difficult to make ends meat compared to competitors offering full monetization on by default when you're only getting it (and getting less per search) if users opt-in.

Compute/resource monetization is the one after all these years that has done the best at replacing ads as a means of monetization for users, and it requires a very intelligent scheduling system + ethical ecosystem to work (most have just tried running crypto miners that cost users more electricity than they earn).

Had the pleasure of working with Alex while at System1. Great guy. If I remember correctly I got one tiny change merged into Waterfox that's probably since been undone in the years since :-).

Interesting I've never heard of waterfox before. Looks interesting!

I am surprise there is no mention of Librewolf here. The differences of Librewolf and Waterfox is pretty hard to grasp, I am digging a little bit but so far I guess I would say using any of them is still way better than the main alternatives.

Librewolf is, to me, the way better alternative as this is really in the FOSS mindset : a tool for everyone to use and by anyone to contribute. Seeing their plateform alone (Lemmy/Matrix/Codeberg, they also have a reddit community it seems) you can already see this is an other world than Waterwolf's bluesky/reddit/github. To be fair I can understand the SNS part but the github is a big redflag to me.

As usual I can see people that are very probably sincere in their goals not realizing the way they are going will lead to the usual enshitification: company focus, brave dependency, etc.

I note that Waterfox seems to legally originate from UK and it is refreshing to have an ecosystem that is not centralized in 1 country : for the sake of everyone it is better not to rely to much on 1 legislator (see age verification for instance).

That 2019 logo looks fantastic.

The modern logo reminds me of Microsoft Word for Mac 2010 :(

Feels like the real problem isn’t ads, it’s that there’s no widely accepted funding model for open source.

There is no pure browser anymore. The little red hen of Google funds everything, and forks like Waterfox just change a few parts of the UI but still rely on the upstream for all actual browser code. Even Mozilla was bootstrapped by AOL-Time Warner Back in the day. If you look at Ladybird they already have lots of ad companies funding it as well and will demand its enshittification if it gets popular.

20 years a forker?

Sorry, I still can't get over the system1 shit in 2020.

I love how "15 Years of Forking" is right next to "There is no Spoon" on the HN homepage right now :D

whether you use waterfox or librewolf, having anything outside of Blink is the only thing keeping the open web breathing.

Everyone starts out pure but then the lucre calls.

> Waterfox’s approach of allowing text ads on the default search partner page is our own decision for sustainability

"Sustainability" indeed.