First focusing on AI and now this, already cancelled my donations, do we have a good fork to move to?
I’m not planning to move anywhere tbh.
Mozilla is almost 100% financially dependent on Google right now, if that funding goes away then so will Firefox, the Gecko engine, and likely all the forks. With all the layoffs happening in the industry, we can’t rule out Google shareholders looking elsewhere to cut costs too, such as the massive subsidization of Mozilla. The little we can do is allow Mozilla to find other sources of funding that are optional for users IMO
Yes, stuff like pocket is garbage. But at least Mozilla allow you to turn it off, which is more than can be said for Google: on Android devices manufacturers have to pay a hefty “fee” just to allow users to remove the Google search bar from the launcher. As a user you can get around this by installing a custom launcher, but as a manufacturer, you will not get Google certification: no SafetyNet (Play Integrity DRM, required by Banking apps), no Widevine, and Google will block GMS & their other apps on your product.
Regarding AI, mozilla’s memorycache is completely local (runs on the user’s machine) and does not call out to any servers. The new translation feature is the same. The only exception to this that I’m aware of is the AI helper on MDN, but the target audience of that site is already in a position to determine whether that is a useful feature or not.
That bugzilla page says they targeted version 122 for this change. I have Firefox 122 on my PC and when I look at the about:config page, that setting is still set to False. I think y’all are freaking out about a very small thing.
If you use Firefox, and you check your about:config page and you see true for that setting, then just change it to false and go about your day.
Or are we all just talking philosophically about this?
I remember the last few versions of Netscape Communicator had a “Shop” button.
This was the sign that Netscape had lost the browser war and was giving up.
I remember the Amazon icon on Ubuntu. It is why I initially gave up on Linux after the first install…like WTF I don’t want Amazon in this new to me OS.
Is there a picture of what this actually looks / would look like? Honestly, although it is going down a bad path, it isn’t actually all that surprising. Firefox already has sponsored address bar suggestions by default.
If you don’t use the “review checker” feature, which I didn’t know existed until now, you will be unaffected by this change.
Librewolf on PC.
Mull on Android
librewolf is a fork of firefox, without firefox librewolf also gonna die
and same with Mull.
That’s not how forks work. A fork can exist independently of its upstream.
True, but you really think firefox forks would have the resources to keep up with security updates and such? Mull for one is a fork that only changes the default privacy changes and nothing more
By being a fork it wont die, but its true that its just a few folks running builds of mainstream work mozilla is doing
Pale Moon is the only independent fork that I know of that doesn’t depend on gecko or ff
Librewolf
I’ve been hearing good things about waterfox
Maybe I’m too much of a goof but I haven’t noticed any ads and I haven’t found any way to turn them off either. Is this only in the desktop version or is it also in the mobile version? Normally I just use the mobile version.
Interesting… What would people shitting on other browsers for offering OPT-IN ads do now?
Oh, wait. Mozilla can do no wrong /s
Nothing to see here.
Don’t they already do this with Firefox Suggest?
