With the enshittification of all-things-Google, a lot of us have left Chromium-based browsers for Firefox. But still, over the last 15 years, Firefox has gone from 30%+ market share to about 6% now.
With the big backlash against them over the last week, I’ve seen a number of people advocating for Librewolf and Waterfox – Firefox forks focused on security and privacy – but if Firefox loses what little revenue it has left, what will become of the forks if Firefox dies?
They die. Full stop.
Not even Microsoft had the strength to maintain a browser engine, that’s why they moved Edge to Chromium, they gave up.
Maybe if all the forks merge into a single project, and if that project becomes part of some foundation like the Linux foundation or most likely freedesktop, and if some folks from big tech companies get paid to work on it full time (probably google would, for obvious reasons, but it wouldn’t be enough), and if distros start shipping that in place of firefox, and if for some reason the less tech savvy get to know about this project…
…Then if all of that happens, forks might have a chance of still existing.
This is how most big open source projects (like Linux, gnome, mesa, etc) thrive. With the catch that while most tech companies have some stake in Linux and friends, no company other than google has any stake in Firefox existing.
I’d say the more likely version of that scenario is not all the forks merging, but them all collaborating on a common base project from which they each can still produce their own spin.
but them all collaborating on a common base project from which they each can still produce their own spin
This is viable because this has already happened in gaming.
https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher
Lutris, Heroic, Bottles use this in their backend.
I really hope that the forks coordinate for this to happen, soon, if not yesterday.
Maybe a group that keeps track what is to be done if Firefox development stops or if Mozilla folds or somehow abandons Firefox. Things such as:
- how to take over development from Mozilla
- the minimum that needs to be done to keep up to the standards
- the minimum that needs to be done to keep the (base) browser on par in performance with Chromium (and the others, such as Servo)
- coordinate developers and other people involved in the project
- manage donations and funding
Maybe I’m imagining some sort of a cooperative formed by Firefox forks with the main aim of keeping Firefox alive despite of (or after) Mozilla.
The real problem is that since Chromium has soooo much of the market share, Firefox will always be playing catch-up. If Google decides to go full rogue and ignore W3C specs entirely and make up a bunch of their own shit, that devs then start to use because why not since the majority of their userbase use a chromium based browser, then Firefox can easily be taken out.
But microsoft is garbage company so that doesn’t say much. They’ve been trying to remake their settings page for more than a decade and it is still shit.
They all die. To maintain that codebase millions of moneys are needed every year and dozens and dozens of devs working on it full time. There’s a lot of boring and hard work that will never be replaced by some indie hackers working on their free time that needs to be done.
I read millions of “monkey” instead of “money” and was trying to understand if you were insulting browser developers or implying that thousands monkeys could to do the same work as a developer
People are right that they’d die. They’d die or be irrelevant or so full of security holes that many sites would block them on principle of protecting their users.
The reason why they might die sooner rather than later with the corporate and (western) government led seizure and lock-down of the open internet is that a company like Google could introduce a slew of new web standards and just completely overwhelm any devs trying to carry on the work of keeping the code alive. They could in other words bury it in a couple years with a mountain of complex new standards and possibly regulations (another thing big companies love doing when they capture the regulatory agencies is use them to keep out the little alternatives by burdening them with things they with their money and huge size can easily bear).
But whether that happens or whether even with security incidents it struggles on for 4-5 years the open web is at that point doomed. It’s doomed short of some very large and powerful actor deciding to take up the mantle. Once upon a time the EU might have wanted to do that but all the talk of chat control, all the desire for anti-piracy crackdowns, etc it’s not going to be the EU. If I had to make a guess if there is any chance it’s that China or some massive Chinese company does it. But I wouldn’t count on it. However they’re the only ones with anything to gain at all really who might entirely for their own reasons want to create a browser stack entirely free of the west’s control and might open source huge chunks of it to the point open source devs could do the rest.
Normally I would say community forks have the power to continue the project. However, in this case I think chrome / safari would eventually add enough new features that Firefox forks can’t add quick enough. Mozilla at least has some power in pushing the direction of web-standards, which these forks would lack, as well as the larger development team and some corporate usage of the browser which Mozilla has. I also don’t see the smaller development community keeping up with security issues found in the browser, particularly pertinent for corporate marketshare and individuals with a stricter threat model (journalists, dissidents, etc.)
The only other factor, is whether Firefox dissapearing would officially create impetus for an anti-trust case against Google. I doubt so under the current American presidency, but I could see the EU being concerned (even if they lack the power the US has to force the company to split). If something were to happen here there would be substantial change in the browser market, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful of this happening.
Who isn’t to say that the forks will just simply branch off and be self-sustainable? See, that’s the beauty of open source and the licenses of which these things operate under. It would suck if it was as close-sourced as Windows is because if all of the forks functioned off of the licenses something as Windows operates under, we wouldn’t have choice.
Without lots of money, it’s not doable reliabily
Because web browsers are stupidly complicated and expensive to maintain. The only real competitor is google who has infinite money to maintain the chrome superiority and you need resources to maintain safety, fix bugs, and adhere to new standards, which get every time more complex (also thanks to google that doesn’t want competitor). You need a lot of budget for that.
The chances are some new foundation/non-profit will be created to fund its development.
It’s either gonna be great like other community-oriented project (like FreeCAD, Blender, or KDE), or corporate-centric that prioritize industry needs (O3DE, OvertureMaps).
Though, there’s Servo and Libweb as potential future replacement. Servo is managed by Linux Foundation Europe. Libweb is managed by Ladybird Browser Initiative and so far have structure like other community FOSS project, like Blender or Godot.
Honestly, people are overreacting to the ToS changes. Mozilla haven’t actually changed what they’re doing; they’re just removing text they legally can’t include since the definition of “selling data” varies by jurisdiction. It doesn’t always mean literally selling user data. California is very strict about it for example.
My opinion is there will be a new Firefox, whether using gecko or servo. Hell, I’d start a new foundation myself if required.
Hell, all Mozilla need to do is to remove
about:configto kill the forks. Due them being Firefox with a user.js (sometimes also a CSS Theme).
