this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
219 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
59980 readers
3967 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
LibreWolf is a very decent Firefox fork. Open Source is great because bad CEOs can't really threaten the source code.
Not saying this one is bad though — I have no idea. The last one was raking in $7 million/year which is less than ideal for an open source project.
Most of the time this is true, but for browser engines it's different because of their sheer size, complexity, need to adhere and collaborate with others to form web standards, need for security experts, day one vulnerability patches, etc.
If Mozilla dies, LibreWolf can't just pick up the slack. They die too. Volunteers alone can't run a modern web engine, it takes hundreds of millions per year to upkeep.
There's a reason why we're down to just Google, Apple, and Mozilla. Nobody wants to foot that bill unless they have a damn good reason for doing so.
It's probably more expensive to maintain a browser engine than a full operating system at this point.
I'll never understand why Microsoft dropped their engine. They can afford to develop it and it would've been a great advantage vs Google. I mean, it wouldn't have helped open source folk either way, but I just don't get why they dropped it.
Yeah, I was hoping MS could make a competent engine with a fresh start. I wouldn't even be mad if it was Windows only. Now Edge is just another Microsoft L
What makes it a great advantage vs Google?
Because they now have to go along with most things that Google says. They're reliant on Google now, they have to do what daddy tells them.
Add to that, they've conceded any sway in setting web standards, granting Google more control to push the web in the direction that benefits Google and harms competition.
Perhaps we should take the clue and - if we also see clues of Mozilla enshittifying - switch globally to an easier internet that's also easier to program for. Something like Gemini (the post-Gopher thingy, not Google's latest fad) for example, where I take it maintaining a browser is nowhere near the same order of magnitude as complex.
I wish more distro's packaged librewolf. I know there's an appimage and such but I prefer native tested packages where possible.