I quit Firefox a month ago. Too much work to seal up anymore. You wake up and there’s sieve opened in settings after an update with no announcement of coming breach. I can’t believe people give money voluntarily to Moz.
All it’s duties (no accounts just surfing) went to Mullvad–the AUR -bin.
Never looked back and don’t miss it.
The irony is not lost on me that if FF gets financially gutted that means the forks will be too…but I’ll ride 'er til she bucks me to borrow a cowboy saying.
Is this the Mullvad Browser you are referring to use instead of Firefox? I currently have the Mullvad VPN.
without the vpn
You do know that Mullvad (both the VPN and the browser) wouldn’t be possible without Mozilla and Mozilla’s Money, do you? I mean, yeah, they are shady and such, but regarding the browser producers they are the lesser shady one of the two. Praising Mullvad and “hating” (don’t take that wording too serious, don’t mean to offend you in any way) Moziila in the same context just seems… absurd?
Actually, I want to comment on this a bit, but first, some backstory.
I was on the Telegram group of this distro. In general, I found the place a bit more… out there, but that’s the nature of an instant chat messaging app. The one thing that made me leave and not want to come back, though, is an interaction with someone, proclaiming that Mozilla sends ALL of your web history to Google because there are some connections being made to cache servers. Everybody online says that these are for Google Safe Browsing, a feature I honestly believe that is good, even for more tech savvy users. This guy upheld his point strongly, though, saying I should check Wireshark. I did. It showed encrypted connections to cache servers, likely to download the Google Safe Browsing list locally and run a checkup on it before you enter a website. I tried to explain to the guy that:
He upheld his position and probably still does to this day, seemingly oblivious to the fact these connections likely mean nothing.
Many people hate Mozilla. I’m sure there are good reasons for it, but at the same time, many look at Brave as the good guys and I don’t see it. By default, Brave shows you crypto ads on new files. They have a rewards program that requires you to see ads in exchange for crypto currency, an extremely fickle and unstable “technology” at best. You have crypto BS built-in. You can disable them, I agree, but that doesn’t change the fact the only other private option in terms of browsers is developed and maintained by a for-profit company.
If you hate Mozilla, wouldn’t you hate for-profits companies more? Or does a non-profit have to spend money in a different way than for-profit?
Big Picture Mode has entered the chat:
We need to get our governments to fund open source software using our tax dollars. And just like that, most privacy concerns (both online and offline) disappear.
Let’s get a bit political: both companies and governments are required to be kept in check constantly. Where the stakes for messing up are real, people will take more consideration for their actions, thus leading to actions that might seem less impactful, but that build overtime in the direction that most want to. In a world where someone has complete power, there will not be consequences towards them. That leads to erosion of trust and erosion of rights towards the ones on the receiving end of the power barrel, which leads to issues like the ones we see today everywhere.
As much as I prefer open source, it is and it will be a futile exercise. Some level of proprietary action, in a market controlled to be as fair as possible, where consumers choose not based entirely off feelings but knowledge of their use case, benefits and downsides of each choice they have in front of them, leads to competition, and this is where companies have to innovate and bring something new to the table in order to stay competitive. That’s good for us, but requires a lot of moving pieces coming together and working in ways that benefit this ethos. This is nearly impossible on scale, sadly. I’m hopeful that it can be done, but it will require a lot of rethinking on the behalves of a lot of different people, something which I don’t foresee happening any time soon.
Everything circles back to education, to how we teach ourselves and our children and our elderly of the systems we have put in place, as a species, both consciously and unconsciously, which requires a great deal of self-awareness, something that I feel like people miss more and more, myself included, with each passing day.
Fact.
Fully agree with this.
You’re saying that companies/individuals/projects funded by governments, billions of dollars monthly, cannot sustain a competitive and innovative market?
yeah, I said that exactly about 1/4" above your reply. In fact you quoted me realizing your question, but didn’t know I had already answered your question before you asked me.
Or something 
Many people just seem hateful in general. Every little thing sparks outrage while these people produce nothing and provide nothing of value. They also seem to have little respect for the people who do. We already only have two, maybe three options depending on what you consider usable. Even less options in other technological areas.
I think I was watching an LTT (Linus Tech Tips) video where he mentioned being tired of being angry and that is where I’m at now. I will try to make informed decisions, but I’m not about to sit here and be mad over every little thing and scream and shout this defeatist, doomsayer, bs that seems to have taken over every faucet of online discussion.
100% I prefer to spend my energy elsewhere.
Unfortunately, there is little to no incentive for the majority of governments to support open source especially with regards to privacy applications - if anything the opposite is true, with the erosion of privacy taking place almost universally.
Just look at the propagation of “* EYES” intelligence sharing agreements, conveniently arranged so that alongside sharing of general intelligence members can truthfully claim not to be carrying out any potentially illegal, warrant-less domestic surveillance (because another country in the network is doing it for them as an international entity, while they return the favour 
)
Back on topic although coincidentally related - I have recently discovered Metadata Cleaner, which has unfortunately recently stopped being maintained but is currently still working fine over here. Hopefully someone else forks it and continues developing it should it ever break.
The ultimate incentive humans can get from open source is paving the way for utopia.
Of course, there’s also saving governments tons of money, software freedom and sovereignty, etc.
However, the thing that actually blocks this, IMHO, is that humans (in general) want to always be competing and feeling better than each other. In a utopian world, the only competition would be sports, games, etc. — not “I have a bigger house”, “I have more money”, etc.
Individualism, the by-product of capitalism, has made us only care about bettering I.
There are times when I get angry at some of the people I personally know who could influence thousands to make better decisions. But they keep dragging their feet, almost as if they are waiting for Adobe, MS, etc. to do something so unforgivable that they are forced to make changes.
For me, such companies have already done unforgivable things. But I guess it’s similar to the content of this video. People grow up being used to a version of privacy based on when they are born. They don’t compare it to how things were before that.
NO! I guess I wasn’t expressing myself correctly. It can work, no doubt, but I believe having governments give out funding for open source projects AND providing fairer rules for everybody will lead to better choices for us all around. Software isn’t the only thing governments have to spend money on, so splitting the cost will, in my opinion, make them more willing to do this and be better for us in general.
Or force companies to develop open source software if they want to work for the public sector, as they did in Switzerland.
Pretty much the same thing. If your government is forced to fund and use open source, then companies are forced to convert to open source automatically.
But agreed.
Anything to add to your topic? Seems the discussion is taken over by some other users talking about governmental support for open source, only here ?
That’s already partly very political, and only in one direction.
Topic is: Firefox, mullvad and open source software
What per example is about the fact that most open source is build on self-slavery of developers working only for some very little money? Spending their time to maintain ?
EndeavourOS is still setting Firefox as the default Browser, that’s not because we do agree with mozilla foundation at all, but about Firefox itself the one last standing non-chromium based browser.
We saw the same/similar controversial about chromium before people went away from using chrome or even chromium Browser to alternatives using the same source.
The real problem for open source is payment for developers, and second also the communities around the projects, they should be supportive and willing to understand, learning and have an open and inclusive discussion, without this general condemnations we see all over the communities nowadays.
My question that I would like to throw in here: Is Firefox no longer acceptable? Does the development of Firefox follow guidelines that endanger our security?
I saw news about the situation that firefox is getting money from google, to set google as default search option in its browser, and there will maybe a decision soon that forbid google to do this in the future, what could cause mozilla and firefox will be in real trouble on the money side.
This in itself shows the situation “open-source” can run into too… Bad on two sides and only good on one thing… getting money in to pay developers.
Yes, Firefox is acceptable because if it isn’t, you got no one left.
Mozilla has to find a way to somehow pay its staff, even if they’re a non-profit. I do wish they will begin to lean more heavily on donations than buying other companies/non-profits or doing deals with Google, but at the same time, who’s left if Mozilla goes down? Random people on GitHub making Firefox based browsers that are even more inconvenient than Firefox already is? Brave, with their crypto ads and built-in crypto bullshit? Mullvad, who uses Firefox for the bones of their browser? There is no one in the browser business market who isn’t, to some degree, a bit shady. It circles back to politics, really, but I won’t go into it.
Needless to say, I am frankly annoyed by this constant race for privacy. Seriously, I just want to use the internet as privately as possible without sacrificing a lot of convenience.
This would be one of my biggest worries of all. I surely don’t want my tax dollars going to this. Governments have by all statistics been incredibly poor users of tax dollars for any and everything they’ve tried to fund historically. No entity historically has ever done less with more than a government.
And with a number of governments trying to outlaw and break encryption for things like texting, etc, and some outlaw VPN’s and even TOR, that trend would only continue making privacy infinitely MORE concerning, not less.
I would 100% disagree with this entire statement based on history.
It’s becoming far more difficult for folks to have self-awareness and individuality when we’re being taught and force fed things that are the opposite of that all day everyday - for instance:
The more people that have this opinion and the more accepted it is, the more we just become just another number working at the expense everyone else.
Funded by the citizens* government has no money without taking it first. And then if they are using taxes to fund it, it’s no longer competitive as they have made themselves the player. Innovation will be at whatever they deem is relevant because there will be no other overseer. The table is turned except replace google with X government entitiy and your money instead of the money from other businesses/marketing corporations.
I 100% agree.
Utopia is something that is different to everyone.
I definitely don’t want to live in this Utopia place you’re describing. I absolutely get up every morning for me and my family. Not for someone else. I value everyone’s time as equal. I don’t think someone else is entitled to my time. That’s for me and my family.
I mean, it’s mostly all google money now anyways, and they pretty much only pay it due to anti-monopoly laws. What we need to figure out is how to get people and young people to value privacy again in a world that generally values things like instagram and tictock and things that make your life LESS private like doorbell video cameras and smart devices. Posting meals and tweets about getting a haircut. Covid made people more “private” by necessity, and people are craving to feel part of things, and a few years ago, it was going to the pub and doing dumb things with friends. With friends. With friends did not mean playing WoW in separate rooms with people you’ve never met. Not even forums like this, which are great for some things, but after you power off . . . you’re alone.
I’ve got some ideas on ways to do and change things. Most are very simple. The giant unbelievable elephant in the room is though. . . how do you combat “free” and more importantly, how do you get people to care about privacy again. A few people here and there isn’t going to change the view of world. We need a massive shift in the entire culture of humanity, and in a way that overwhelminingly everyone needs to agree on. Looking at how polarized the world is, I’m not going to say it’s impossible. . . but I don’t know if this ship gets corrected before a massive upheaval of the world first.
Donate to the causes you care about (I donate to GrapheneOS for instance). Don’t allow dogma into your communities. Value freedom and privacy. Don’t fool yourself.