Mozilla Labs proposes eternal hell and damnation for FF users

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by acr1965, Jul 26, 2013.

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  1. Dave0291

    Dave0291 Registered Member

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    I'm not certain why, as stated in the last article posted, they are wanting to avoid a so-called arms race. From what I am seeing that race was started some time ago. Also, as much as I consider Mozilla to be a good company, this back and forth stance on privacy in a time where privacy is a hot button topic doesn't paint them in a very positive light. Perhaps this a good example of being careful who you get in bed with. Before Mozilla relied on Google for finances, I don't think they would have cared very much at all what the ad industry thought. It isn't likely to matter if the industry moves away from cookies into more effective and less easily fought tracking though.

    Sometimes it amazes me to think that it has taken a mere 20 years for a wonderful creation that allows us to explore and communicate with the world from our couch, to turn into a battlefield for dollars and privacy.
     
  2. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    Which is an interesting point. When did they become that reliant on Google?

    The Mozilla Corporation ~ Wikipedia

    In March 2006, Jason Calacanis reported a rumor on his blog that Mozilla Corporation gained $72M during the previous year, mainly thanks to the Google search box in the Firefox browser.[8] The rumor was later addressed by Christopher Blizzard, then a member of the board, who wrote on his blog that, "it’s not correct, though not off by an order of magnitude."[9] Two years later, TechCrunch wrote: "In return for setting Google as the default search engine on Firefox, Google pays Mozilla a substantial sum – in 2006 the total amounted to around $57 million, or 85% of the company’s total revenue. The deal was originally going to expire in 2006, but was later extended to 2008 and will now run through 2011."[10] The deal was extended again another 3 years, until November 2014. In this latest deal Mozilla will get another $900 million ($300 million annually) from Google, nearly 3 times the previous amount.[11]
    In August 2006, Microsoft posted a letter on Mozilla newsgroups[12] and offered to open up a new open-source facility at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to Mozilla software engineers. Mozilla responded by accepting the offer. ~ op cit
     
  3. Dave0291

    Dave0291 Registered Member

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    I'm very unfamiliar with all the ways that the company makes its money. I only know of the main Google deal, which I assumed to be their largest if not only source of income. Even if it's still only 85% of their revenue, in my opinion that's being pretty reliant on Google. And it explains quite a bit of their back and forth on tracking. When your, well, sugar daddy is one of the largest ad and data harvesting companies on our planet there is bound to be some influence.
     
  4. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    Well, maths isn't really my subject, but 'only' 85% means that over three quarters of their revenue is from the big 'G'. That's a big slice of the pie. ;)
     
  5. Dave0291

    Dave0291 Registered Member

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    There is always choosing another browser, but those options are drying out if we stick to the subject of privacy. I would think Chrome would be the last place to look, and Microsoft isn't much better. What I am really curious about are all the forks of the Mozilla offering. What will happen if Seamonkey, Cyberfox and others don't care for the direction Mozilla is heading? Will they further differentiate themselves from Firefox with more homegrown changes, or will they simply stay with an older release and perhaps just patch it up with security fixes for as long as they can?
     
  6. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    I'm not so sure that you could describe SeaMonkey as a fork. It is more a relative of Fx & ultimately a descendant of the Mozilla Application Suite & Netscape Navigator/Communicator. I think that as long as there aren't too many core changes the SeaMonkey Council can keep an up-to-date version of Gecko in SM without huge change. I am not sure how this bodes for security patches but the SMC have fixed patches in SM sometimes before they have been even implemented in Firefox. I am not really qualified to speculate more. AFAIK the SeaMonkey Council are pretty dedicated to keeping SM as close to its original intention as they can but at the same time implementing the most modern security fixes.

    As to the other Fx forks I really can't say. I ran Waterfox for a while but these days if I'm not in SeaMonkey I'm in Maxthon.
     
  7. Dave0291

    Dave0291 Registered Member

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    Seamonkey was indeed a bad example, once I went back and researched the project more. I don't recall having ever used Maxthon before, though I know of its existence.
     
  8. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    Well, SeaMonkey has a huge commonality with Fx, so they are very similar. I can easily swap some folder files between the two. Usually the plug-ins folder or toolbar bookmark folders.

    I used to use K-Meleon (another Gecko-engined browser) a lot a couple or three years back. Unfortunately Mozilla's rapid release cycle essentially stopped any real further development after the last stable release of 1.5.4. on 5/3/2010. I think many K-Meleon users actually transferred to SeaMonkey. K-Meleon was older than Firefox & I was saddened to see it atrophy like it did.

    I've been using Maxthon for around three years now, on & off. Its internal adblocker could be a bit better but as a browser it is customisable, fast & functional. It has loads of extras as standard so I only normally use a couple of extensions. I have three (Maxthon Flag, Flash Block & Remove Social Media) at the moment, which is a bit of a record for me on Mx. I am not sure how secure it is compared to Chrome but it is far better than Safari for Windows was & has its own flash player. Give it a spin & see what you think.

    At the end of the day I originally downloaded Firefox 2 when I discovered IE 7 was painfully slow on a laptop I owned. Firefox was a revelation to me in those days. It was lean & mean & transformed my laptop. I was so grateful I never even considered any other browser than Fx until Firefox 3 was released. I had a few problems with it crashing & IE7/8 just wasn't a realistic option. So I tried a few other browsers. SeaMonkey seemed to be the best of them, although I liked Opera as well. As choices seem to be dwindling unless you really want to use Chrome, & Opera 18 doesn't seem quite fully baked to me, it seems odd to me that SeaMonkey is looking like the most viable Gecko-engined option again.
     
  9. BoerenkoolMetWorst

    BoerenkoolMetWorst Registered Member

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    Do you know if FF addons work normally in Seamonkey? I always thought so, but I recently read in an addon's changelog that they added support for Seamonkey so apparently it's different than I thought.
     
  10. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    Many Fx add-ons have been coded for SM. You have to download them from the SeaMonkey add-ons page though if you are running SM.
     
  11. BoerenkoolMetWorst

    BoerenkoolMetWorst Registered Member

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    Thanks, about 50% of my addons are available for SM, so I hope that will improve or that there'll be a good FF fork keeping true to the origins but still having security updates.
     
  12. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    NoScript, ABP, Flagfox, QuickNote, RequestPolicy, Quick Translator, Add-on Update Checker, Session Manager, SmoothWheel, WikiSearch & Tab Clicking Options all work for me in SeaMonkey & Firefox.

    You really need to install Disable Add-on Compatibility Checks 1.3 though. Ignore the caveat: Not available for SeaMonkey 2.22.1
     
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