Waterfox browser sold to ad company...

LurkerLito said:
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?
Click to expand...
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.
The only way I'd feel sympathetic if it was this deal or no deal. But we'll never find out since he signed this deal. I don't think if he said no to keeping quiet they'd have just left the table. I mean they probably threatened to do that, but that's shrewd negotiations 101.

Besides he did say he wanted to do a blog post about. Now if the deal had a no disclosure agreement that's a lie. If it didn't have one, then why didn't he post about it? Either way he's not being honest, so gets zero symphathy from me.
 
Last edited:
vegeta535 said:
Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.
Click to expand...

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.
 
schoolslave said:
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.
Click to expand...

So you're psychic and are able to read his mind to know exactly why he did it?
 
I dunno, after years listening to the self-entitlement by the tech community over a free product, I think I would get over the guilt OK.
money-gifs-zombieland-1.gif
 
vegeta535 said:
Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
Darunion said:
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.
Click to expand...

Same, and to anyone here talking about morals in a capitalist society, well you better go vote and do something about it.
 
TordanGow said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
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
 
Armenius said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
Armenius said:
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
Click to expand...
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.
 
Never heard of Waterfox. Haven't thought of using anything other than Brave for the last couple of years. Speaking of which, laptop is fully Brave but phone is only partially moved over. Gotta get that finished.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
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.
Click to expand...
M76 said:
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?
Click to expand...
1337Goat said:
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.
Click to expand...


Hey, remember how we told you we were privacy focused and then sneakily sold ourselves to a company that wanted to harvest your data without telling you?

Well, were back, and privacy focused again!

We won't betray you again, for realsies. Pinky swear!

As a great man once said:
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.. hehe, ain't gonna fool me again!"
 
Last edited:
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.
 
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"
 
If you use a browser made by an advertising company, I'm not sure what to say.

But yeah, if it gets traction, ack. I'll still use Firefox, and if the site doesn't work, I'll send them support tickets.
 
I actually once used Waterfox extensively as my main browser, although this was very long ago. At some point I moved to Basilisk, although currently I'm now using Firefox. Just too many incompatibilities with the modern web. I had used Waterfox simply because I thought it'd be interesting to use a fork of Firefox. That's half the point of open-source, so I figured I ought to leverage the power of open-source and just use an alternative. I doubt that using one over another had any real-world benefit, although I do remember that Waterfox was proud of its 64-bit version, back when that mattered.

But then Firefox and Waterfox changed their entire plugin framework. I switched to Basilisk because I loved all the old-world Firefox plugins, and Basilisk was the only version insistent on keeping those plugins functional. However, although it's become too archaic to use as a daily browser, I still keep Basilisk around and use it every now and then if I need that sort of functionality. It really does have a lot more customizability than modern Firefox does, but of course at the cost of security. The entire point of Basilisk is to maintain the ancient plugins that made Firefox the original amazing browser that everyone knows it for. Try it out, and check out some of the power of those old style plugins. They really gave you a ton of control over the deeper parts of the browser, in a way that I can't do today. Everything is much more locked down.

I think the fact that Waterfox tried to make money by selling out to the worst type of company is an incredible endeavor, and it's not necessarily wrong to try to do it. Taking advantage of your users in order to allow them to be subjected to any form of marketing is indeed a functional form of harvesting money, but it carries with it the equivalent baggage, on a moral level. I would simply not use Waterfox if you apply morality to technology, and just use Basilisk instead if you wanted an "alternative browser."

Basilisk's most current history is that it was eventually shutdown by the original maintainer, the same as Palemoon's owner, but then by a miracle, it was bought up by someone who swore to maintain vigilance and keep it updated for security and feature updates. So to this day, it still gets updates.
 
Well this is awkward. I still use Waterfox because I absolutely hate the modern Chrome-wannabe style of current Firefox. I completely forgot that it got sold to an ad company. 😅 Shit... Time to look for a new firefox based browser, something that does not try to hide everything for "sleek look" which I so despise.
 
ElementDave said:
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.
Click to expand...
Looks like at least one chromium browsers will NOT use googles web integrity which by the looks of it is a nightmare.

https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/31/brave-browser-wont-support-googles-web-environment-integrity-api/
 
vegeta535 said:
Get off your high horse. It was his and he could do what he wants with it.
Click to expand...

There is definitely something to be said for having principle's that cannot be bought at any price.

I would argue that people who don't, people who can be bought are terrible people.

If there is any price, no matter how ludicrously large at which you would sell out your principles, then you are simply a pathetic human being.

A decent human being cannot be bought at any price.
 
M76 said:
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"
Click to expand...

I had not been keeping up on this. This sucks.

I think it's time we burn down the internet and start over with base protocols that are pro user at the expense of everything and everyone else, and have security and privacy at its core from the ground up.
 
Last edited:
M76 said:
Of course sold under the umbrella of "It's for your protection, bro"
Click to expand...
🤣
I'm not quite sure why, but the thought of Google calling me "bro" almost caused a major keyboard incident. That should be Google's new motto. The long-expired "don't be evil" left a vacancy in their site design for a new one. Each letter could even be a unique web font or image for extra-extra redundant tracking of... protection, as long as it conforms to that cutesy artistic style characteristic of Google. I feel safer already. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top