this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Free and Open Source Software

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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

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago (17 children)

Besides Tor, I'm yet to see a Firefox fork that makes sense

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You cant remove pocket and telemetry without recompiling. That's why its not just a config file.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

There are admin overrides for those, I use them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

You may be looking for Betterfox.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

In Firefox, you can use the user.js file to create any overrides you want.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Personally I use Waterfox because of its built-in theme preferences, e.g. auto-hiding the tab bar and sidebar headers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is Waterfox still owned by the advertising company?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

No, (Captain Obvious,) and I never really got the fuss around that in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

You don’t understand why an ad company owning a “privacy focused” browser is a problem?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

The relevant, 2023-07-03:

I am happy to say that Waterfox is independent again.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Damn, guess I go back to regular Firefox

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

[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)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

awful name

I think you mean a great name

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Nah they got it right the first time.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'll take "didn't get the point of FOSS" for $3.14.

What the heck.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Feels like what happened to Emby to me.

(hugs Jellyfin)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I wonder if it's Midori

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Huh, that's very valuable context.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

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...)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

What are some things you like about FireDragon that make you use it over others?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This blog from the maintainer makes it clear they have no interest in open source other than to advertise their own skills

Preparing for a New Beginning for Floorp

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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,

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Bro, imagine putting "Floorp Developer" in your CV 💀

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

No worse than all the tech startup names tbh.

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