See also https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/floorp-going-closed-source/52783
Edit: They claim they will make that part open source too, eventually, and it is due to behavior of another browser: https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp-core/issues/62
Edit 2: They just open sourced the private repository 7 minutes ago, 2024-03-24T12:39Z
Besides Tor, I’m yet to see a Firefox fork that makes sense
Even LibreWolf, which is just a Firefox with different configuration by default, I think should be just config files.
I really want to see browsers saving configurations and data in a simple file formats, like QuteBrowser do.
You cant remove pocket and telemetry without recompiling. That’s why its not just a config file.
There are admin overrides for those, I use them.
You may be looking for Betterfox.
In Firefox, you can use the user.js file to create any overrides you want.
Librewolf, their devs seem hella inactive but their builds are automated. Tbh I would prefer a working arkenfox more. Made my own softening and install script but its pre-alpha and I will likely rewrite it again in some time.
Check out Mullvad Browser. It’s created in partnership with the Tor Browser, but optimized to be used for the Clearnet. You don’t need to use Mullvad’s VPN with it either.
Personally I use Waterfox because of its built-in theme preferences, e.g. auto-hiding the tab bar and sidebar headers.
Is Waterfox still owned by the advertising company?
No, (Captain Obvious,) and I never really got the fuss around that in the first place.
You don’t understand why an ad company owning a “privacy focused” browser is a problem?
I can check the commits.
Do you? Genuinely, not trying to snark. I see this point lots, but Im skeptical that people actually do.
As a dev, I read plenty of commits, and the idea of voluntarily prodding through commits on a FOSS project is just not happening. I’d rather just trust the dev, and the community to pick through the code in my place. The obvious issue being, what if everyone also does that.
In fact, sometimes! Sometimes I check GitHub’s difference between tags and open commits with commit summaries too vague on the first page. Yeah, it’s pretty much just a basic scan, but since it’s open source I don’t think they’ll be brave enough to do things too nefarious and hidden, which like the bystander effect you’ve said, I feel like will come to light anyway. Hell, someone somehow managed to find furry porn in Thorium.
The relevant, 2023-07-03:
I am happy to say that Waterfox is independent again.
Icecat, a Firefox fork without Firefox’s privacy issues (telemetry).
Out of curiosity, in which ways are telemetry privacy issues and how does Icecat solve them in a way in which NextDNS doesn’t?
By default Firefox collects data and sends it to their server, which Icecat doesn’t. I don’t want having to use another service like NextDNS to protect me against the application that I want to be able to trust because I’m using it for a lot of personal data.
From the mozilla website itself:
Identification:
When Firefox sends data to us, your IP address is temporarily collected as part of our server logs.
And then the data that I don’t want to share with other entities:
Interaction data includes information about your interactions with Firefox such as number of open tabs and windows, number of webpages visited, number and type of installed Firefox Add-ons and session length, as well as Firefox features offered by Mozilla or our partners such as interaction with Firefox search features and search partner referrals.
Technical data includes information about your Firefox version and language, device operating system and hardware configuration, memory, basic information about crashes and errors, outcome of automated processes like updates and safebrowsing.
Even without NextDNS, what data is it that’s being collected that’s so bad?
Every website and app sees your IP address and has done since forever. Intersections like number of tabs, number of web pages, installed add-ons are how features are developed and resources assigned.
You can turn off the sponsored links.
Technical information is again, good housekeeping.
Did you ever watch House MD? Remember how he used to say everybody lies and so would look for hard evidence? That’s telemetry. They need to know what’s happening in order to make the best browser possible, because the alternative is just doing what the people who shout the loudest want and that didn’t work out too well for them.
There’s certainly a trade-off by not having Telemetry, and I prefer privacy over some “slightly better development”. It is not necessary for good development.
Websites collect information, but I expect that in a public space, and also aggregating information across websites isn’t so easy. However, I have higher expectations for my web browser. When something is installed on my laptop, it’s like my house, and I don’t want anything to access my private space without permission.
Even worse, Firefox has it implemented as Opt-Out. Telemetry by default and without asking the user isn’t good practice. At the very least, they should give users a choice before enabling it. Yet, they collect everyone’s IP address and other information at least once when you start up Firefox for the first time. This doesn’t deserve my trust.
I don’t want to play a game of ‘what do I need to opt-out for privacy’ with an entity that I need to trust. Why would I use Firefox if Icecat gives me the level of trust that I need. It’s a personal choice.
To be honest, I find your standpoint immature, naive, ignorant and selfish. But there’s clearly forks that cater to your mindset, so enjoy them.
Privacy always comes at a cost. We are all different and have varying preferences based on our experiences and perspectives. Deciding how much privacy one wants to give up for convenience or other benefits is a personal choice. There’s no need to judge others for that decision. To each their own.
This sounds like immature project drama. I’ve seen it before where there’s a large, professionally maintained product and people make forks to add small changes and then different forks start fighting with each other over because it’s their features and they don’t want other forks to incorporate them. You should probably just avoid Floorp if possible.
Damn, guess I go back to regular Firefox
Try Mercery for a boost in performance of about 8-20% dependent on machine: https://thorium.rocks/mercury
Or for better security/privacy try LibreWolf: https://librewolf.net
Normal Firefox has telemetry and poor default settings but is still feature rich if you take the time to config.
My small concern with Librewolf is getting security updates quickly. Cool project though. As I understand, the team has been better about quickly patching security vulnerabilities in recently months too.
[2024-03-23T09:29:01-0400] [ALPM] removed floorp-bin-debug (11.10.5-1)
[2024-03-23T09:29:01-0400] [ALPM] removed floorp-bin (11.11.1-1)
awful name
I think you mean a great name
Nah they got it right the first time.
I’ll take “didn’t get the point of FOSS” for $3.14.
What the heck.
Feels like what happened to Emby to me.
(hugs Jellyfin)
eli5?
It’s an open source browser based on Firefox with additional features and configuration tweaks.
Except they recently made part of it proprietary and hid the source code for that, so most other people cannot actually build the same one.
They claim they will make that part open source too, eventually, and it is due to behavior of another browser: https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp-core/issues/62
They do say that
They will be using a different repository with a different license for some of its new features
“different license” suggests to me it might be a proprietary/fauxpen source licene, since this is explicitly being done to punish a fork.
It may be. The person saying that has contributed artwork but is not the maintainer. It is a bad look though. It sounds like they want to build the next release in secret so the fork can’t release features first.
I wonder if it’s Midori
Yeah. The maintainer said in their blog post they’re looking for a license that lets people read the code but not fork it. Isn’t that just standard American copyright?
Edit: Looks like they went with CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International). So not an open source license and one that CC themselves recommends not using for software.
Huh, that’s very valuable context.
The Firefox part is open source, but now some of the stuff they add to it is closed source. Similar to what Vivaldi does by having the UI closed source but the other parts open source.
It’s somewhat open source but now we don’t know what’s actually going on under the hood, they could stick anything they want in that private section and we’d never know what. Not necessarily a red flag on its own, but no longer proper open source, just another app.
Some time ago, a bunch of really smart people wanted to be able to modify software, so it can never be broken since they can fix it. Thus began open source, which is having a piece of software tell everybody exactly how to make it. Meanwhile, many companies don’t want people to modify their software, usually because they don’t want people easily competing with them and bankrupting them due to creating a better modification. Such software that isn’t open source is termed “proprietary”.
Floorp was one of these open source softwares. Some ambitious Japanese people modified Firefox, added some features and customizations, and named it “Floorp”.
Recently, these people decided, for whatever reason, to stop the public from being able to access some of the materials and configurations for making Floorp. They did this by creating a new “warehouse” to store these materials, sealing off the access to it, and replacing the original location of the now proprietary materials with a note that tells you the location of the warehouse you can’t get in.
(Hopefully that wasn’t confusing…)
Thanks for the edit and link to discussion, I am a FireDragon (Floorp fork) user and it seems like this issue is in hand and I’m not going to be concerned for the moment.
What are some things you like about FireDragon that make you use it over others?
I use Garuda Linux and FireDragon is maintained by the same people so it’s been customised to have the same look. FireDragon was previously a fork of Librewolf (another fork of Firefox I have always liked), so I just switched over to FireDragon to try it out. I’d also used Floorp in the past and really liked that, so to have FireDragon and Floorp become one was really nice. FireDragon is nifty and has the privacy focus that LibreFox has. Garuda Linux is also a really nice distro and a lot of care and effort has gone into it - it also has a Plasma version for gamers… which is lovely for me. It’s late and this is a dreadfully rambling answer… but hopefully you get the idea (roughly!) 😅
Does Plasma make games run better somehow? What makes the Plasma version of Garuda “for gamers”?
The main thing is that Plasma 6 comes with some HDR support and it is possible to have it in some games now as well as in some apps like mpv that also have HDR support.
As for the Garuda Gamer version of the distro, it comes with a bunch of gaming stuff preinstalled and a Garuda Gamer app which makes it really easy to install gaming related apps, emulators, and hardware support for controllers, rgb, and all that kind of thing. It’s just all handled very well and would make a nice distro to recommend to gamers who might want to make a switch to Linux from Windows, mainly because things are made so easy - which is nice for an Arch based distro because you have access to yay without it being overly complicated.
This blog from the maintainer makes it clear they have no interest in open source other than to advertise their own skills
Well that’s kind of a shitty thing to say about someone without backing it up with some specifics.
What specific passage from that blog post makes you think that?
The purpose is to learn how to publish code that cannot be used for forking as open source.
.
I have to obligate the folks to choose whether they want to pay me or help me code.
.
…it was not beneficial to me.
.
…new to gaining good visibility through open source,
I do agree the name is stupid, but I love the browser!
Bro, imagine putting “Floorp Developer” in your CV 💀
No worse than all the tech startup names tbh.
