Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.I wouldn't choose either if it means going against everything my project was built on.
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Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.I wouldn't choose either if it means going against everything my project was built on.
Seems like people are treating Firefox like it’s Chrome in here.Just stick with Firefox...
If I could choose between 1.5 million falling in my lap and keeping my integrity vs 3 million falling in my lap and being a hypocrite with no backbone, I'd choose the former without hesitation every time. Since both are unimaginably huge amounts of money.Problem is he probably didn't have a choice in the matter. The company was looking to buy it for a premium price probably. Given they are an advertising company and are generally disliked by the people using the product, you can pretty much guarantee that there is no way there wasn't a clause in the contract that nothing could be disclosed till after the sale went through. I know I wasn't happy with the news, I also feel a bit betrayed, but I can't say I don't sympathize. Put it this way, I don't know how much he was offered, but if someone wanted to buy your product for $3 million and keep quiet vs $1.5 million and you don't have to keep quiet till the sale goes through, which one would you choose?
Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.
This has nothing to do with "being on a high horse" and everything to do with not being a selfish, money-grubbing hypocrite - particularly in "tech".
You don't start a project based on privacy to then go around and sell it to an adfirm especially without informing your users before the sale.
So you're psychic and are able to read his mind to know exactly why he did it?
I don’t understand the confusion either. What he did is slimy.I don't care why he did it - only that he sold a browser-fork founded on privacy to an adtech firm.
It's really quite that simple.
Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.
Seems like people are treating Firefox like it’s Chrome in here.
Rather take the money than less or no money and still have the high opinions of reddit posters. Where will those posters be when I need them? Money for me too, more free time to spend with family and hobbies then.
Yes, there's this bizarre concept called having principles.
principle's don't pay the bills.
That would be pretty sweet.Wouldn't it be nice if the bank just paid off your mortgage because they thought of you as a good person?
Principals don't pay bills.
principle's don't pay the bills.
PRINCIPLES.
It's not even that he sold out. It's the fact that he was sitting in the grass like a turd waiting for people to step into the trap.Sure it was his project and he was able to do what he wanted with it, I don't think anyone is disputing that item. That doesn't exempt him from criticism. A privacy oriented company selling out to an advertising company that is diametrically opposed to the original and existing (up until point of sale) products values warrants a level of criticism IMO. Just because something is legal doesn't make it a moral act.
Waterfox is once again independent. Project founder Alexander Kontos posted a blog earlier this month announcing that he has taken back control of the Waterfox project from System1, and says he will be making changes to the code base to enhance security and privacy in the coming months. This was the best fork of Firefox, so I'm glad to see it happen.
https://www.waterfox.net/blog/2023/07/03/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox
Just like that everything back to normal? I don't think so. Why would I trust him that he is not going to throw users under the bus again without even giving a heads up?Waterfox is once again independent. Project founder Alexander Kontos posted a blog earlier this month announcing that he has taken back control of the Waterfox project from System1, and says he will be making changes to the code base to enhance security and privacy in the coming months. This was the best fork of Firefox, so I'm glad to see it happen.
https://www.waterfox.net/blog/2023/07/03/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox
That is indeed good news, but still, the fact that they sold out to a company doing the exact opposite of what the project was founded for (privacy) on the DL without telling anyone still makes me question if I'd ever trust them again.
If they were willing to betray their users in the past, what's to stop them from doing it again?
Trust, once broken, is difficult to regain.
Just like that everything back to normal? I don't think so. Why would I trust him that he is not going to throw users under the bus again without even giving a heads up?
Yeah, I would never trust Waterfox again.
Check out Basilisk if you want a browser based on the old Firefox. It's like Palemoon, but a little more fun.
Looks like at least one chromium browsers will NOT use googles web integrity which by the looks of it is a nightmare.This is probably deserving of its own thread, but I'm not sure how widely known it is around here. What I'm referring to is Google's Web Environment Integrity (WEI) API, and it's something that everyone should be concerned about. Below are a couple of links for those who haven't heard of WEI, but the topic is receiving a lot of coverage from many different sources. Note that the Wikipedia article has very little content at the time of this writing, but that may soon change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
Please use Firefox, or at the very least a non-Chromium-based browser.
Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.
For those who don't want to look it up, Google's WEI is basically denuvo for the web, anti tamper tech that prevents the end user from modifying pages, as in no more ad blockers or no-script for you.
Of course sold under the umbrella of "It's for your protection, bro"
Of course sold under the umbrella of "It's for your protection, bro"