Iceweasel: Telemetry acceptible for Firefox trademarks?

[PulkoMandy]

@kallisti5

This is a fair sentiment. My conflict is we need to grow our userbase,

Because of what? To please our shareholders?

And the next question: at what cost? Allowing Mozilla to spy on our users?

@kallisti5

Eventually though you gotta just “pay your taxes and check your email”

How is a non-branded version of a Mozilla browser less good at this?

@kallisti5

People like namebrand things they’re familiar with. It’s why 95% of folks run Chrome, and like 5% run Chromium. (those aren’t real numbers, but you get the idea)

That’s why the same 95% run Windows. Maybe Haiku should offer them an installation of Windows to go with their Firefox then. Surely adopting new users will be easier, if that’s the goal.

I would rather target the 1% of users who agree with our vision of Haiku: an OS that doesn’t get in your way, doesn’t spy on you, and lets you use your computer as you want.

On our side that means:

• distributing iceweasel (no tracking) in haikudepot
• upstreaming our patches to firefox
• letting Mozilla decide if they want to ship an official download of Firefox for Haiku and how they distribute it

By the way, I think right now we have the worst option: as far as I know, the current Iceweasel has the name change, but I’m not sure any of the tracking and telemetry code was removed?

[VoloDroid]

@PulkoMandy

who agree with our vision of Haiku

Just from this thread alone, it’s clear that there’s no single vision of Haiku, even among the long-standing developers.

[nephele]

@PulkoMandy

By the way, I think right now we have the worst option: as far as I know, the current Iceweasel has the name change, but I’m not sure any of the tracking and telemetry code was removed?

As I understand the actual telemetry is non-functional. But other stuff like opening mozilla pages by default is still therd.

[KENZ]

@PulkoMandy

By the way, I think right now we have the worst option: as far as I know, the current Iceweasel has the name change, but I’m not sure any of the tracking and telemetry code was removed?

Sorry I have not been done ensuring there is no tracking or telemetry code automatically working by porting process.

I will open a PR to remove current iceweasel from haikuports. Excuse me I was lazy not checking this hard requirement on HaikuPorts before publishing on HaikuPorts.

I could be lazy not porting telemetry earlier. But it was also out of my interest to remove search and remove any tracking or telemetry.

[VoloDroid]

@KENZ

I will open a PR to remove current iceweasel from haikuports. Excuse me I was lazy not checking this hard requirement on HaikuPorts before publishing on HaikuPorts.

Please don’t remove the Iceweasel port! There’s no tracking/telemetry requirements in HaikuPorts policies. What people wrote above are their personal opinions and preferences, not the official policy, at least for the time being.

HaikuPorts Policies

@KENZ

I could be lazy not porting telemetry earlier. But it was also out of my interest to remove search and remove any tracking or telemetry.

You are not lazy, you were working on what’s important to release it. I believe many Iceweasel users would prefer you to focus on stabilizing the port and fixing the issues. At the end of the day, it’s OSS, if people don’t like telemetry and can’t wait for it to be removed, they can always create PR to remove it themselves.

[PulkoMandy]

@KENZ

I will open a PR to remove current iceweasel from haikuports. Excuse me I was lazy not checking this hard requirement on HaikuPorts before publishing on HaikuPorts.

There is no need for that. There is time for discussion and improvements, and we will see what to do.

Personally I’m not so worried about it (especially as I have not installed Iceweasel yet. Maybe it’s the job ofthe people most worried about it to do this research and removal of telemetry.

I’msure you have a lot of important things to do on your list already (and so do I). Maybe we can agree on a general direction to go, and then have the discussion and plan on how to get there. It could take years or maybe never happen. With Haiku I have learnt patience and to work on things for the long term. Adding and removing and then re-adding the recipe and package is not a good use of efforts, and having it available let people use it and find if it works well or not

[KENZ]

OK I see I don’t need to do that. I am happy moving to another repo if many people in the community hate having in the HaikuPorts repo.

But it is easier if there are community shared repo to host non-privacy-audited packages like debian nonfree repo.

[x68k]

Branding is not the reason why Haiku has a small user base, and branding will not fix it. Actually making the OS usable is the only way that can work.

[waddlesplash]

@KENZ

I could be lazy not porting telemetry earlier. But it was also out of my interest to remove search and remove any tracking or telemetry.

The search is less of an issue because people know how to change the default search engine and it’s rather obvious that search queries are going to whatever the search engine is. It might be nice to change but it’s not as important as telemetry.

Haiku itself does have a little bit of telemetry (in HaikuDepot), but it’s entirely opt-in. I think if we do make a policy for HaikuPorts it should be for opt-in telemetry only. But as stated before, no such policy exists yet, so we can wait until things are stabilized more and the telemetry is disabled by default.

[roiredxsoto]

Good day,

Looks like deactivate Telemetry and Data Collection in Firefox is not that hard.

There is Waterfox and Librewolf if we want telemetry, data collection deactivated by default and security/privacy increased settings by default too. Can be done in standard Firefox also just by tweaking settings (it’s not rocket science).

Actually, if I raise all security/privacy settings in Firefox (also Brave, Chromium) most sites don’t render properly, have connection issues… therefore, for certain tasks I run Chromium inside a Jail (firejail). I don’t know any alternative to firejail in Haiku at the moment.

For the comments in this thread it seems that Firefox is not the right web browser to port. Looks like Chrome should be the one…

As long as telemetry and data collection can be disabled by the user, and the web browser has security and privacy settings, any would do (Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf, Brave, Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Opera,…)

I understand that, for coherence sake, those who complain about Firefox telemetry and data collection don’t use any Apple products, Google products, Microsoft’s, Huawei’s,… don’t use Tiktok, Zoom, Whatsapp, and the like…

Great work with that port though! Kudos!!. It’s nice to use Firefox (or Iceweasel) on Haiku.

Regards,
RR

[_AP]

Why not both IceWeasel and Firefox? Then you can say “we have Firefox” and also have the browser that has some privacy invading stuff stripped out.

Would this telemetry include what kind of system people are running? Maybe that’s a good thing if you want people interested in the OS.

If going the Chrome route, I would look into Brave. Like chrome, but with a lot of privacy-invading stuff stripped out.

[kallisti5]

@PulkoMandy

Because of what? To please our shareholders?

To attract more users and developers. More users running Haiku daily, the more users excited about Haiku, the more potential developers and contributors.

@PulkoMandy

And the next question: at what cost? Allowing Mozilla to spy on our users?

This is kind of a bombastic statement. I was pushing for the opposite. Having Iceweasel and Firefox in our repositories at some point (allowing users to choose).

@PulkoMandy

How is a non-branded version of a Mozilla browser less good at this?

It’s perception. “Haiku running Firefox” is going to excite a lot more potential users than “Haiku running Iceweasel”. It shouldn’t matter to users… but it does.

@_AP

Why not both IceWeasel and Firefox? Then you can say “we have Firefox” and also have the browser that has some privacy invading stuff stripped out.

Yup. that’s what i’m asking for (at some point) . I agree with the sentiments of a lot of people in this thread. We have been in a catch-22 for a long time. Companies won’t release Haiku binaries because Haiku’s not popular enough, Haiku won’t be popular until it has foundational apps that 95% of the public demand for a functional OS (like “Firefox” / “Chrome”, etc). Thus me proposing having a Firefox package in our HaikuPorts repos (next to Iceweasel).

Keep in mind… All the major Linux distros do this.

@KENZ

I could be lazy not porting telemetry earlier. But it was also out of my interest to remove search and remove any tracking or telemetry.

Please don’t take any of this as criticism. It’s not at all You’ve done an absolutely amazing job.

This all started with me wanting us to be able to offer a Gecko browser with the Firefox Trademark (attract users, newsworthy, etc).

After some positive discussions with Mozilla, it was presented that we would need to ensure telemetry is running before using the “Firefox” trademark. Thus this thread, and thus folks start (rightfully) banging the privacy drum.

One final little note. Haiku, Inc. doesn’t decide any of this. It’s the users. I’ve given my opinion in this thread, but that’s not the opinion of Haiku, Inc. The position of Haiku, Inc. was a contact point to work with Mozilla. (which we did, and got the unknown (to us) requirements to use the Firefox trademark).

[kallisti5]

@_AP

Would this telemetry include what kind of system people are running? Maybe that’s a good thing if you want people interested in the OS.

No idea. It’s whatever Mozilla collects on every other platform. They say it’s anonymous. Here’s what I could find.

[ilfelice]

Would this telemetry include what kind of system people are running?

[Starcrasher]

Actually, how many sites are working better if you tweak user agent? Isn’t the good thing, if an Haiku version of FF is available on Mozilla site, that more webmasters will be aware that Haiku needs consideration?
If we take that from another point of view, what will be easier to maintain?
If they don’t include working telemetry will Haiku patches be accepted upstream?
If patches are accepted, won’t it be easier to apply patches from other sources to (partially or not) disable telemetry?
Also I think that somehow, it is better to warn of a non working thing than let users hope and disappoint them, especially when they are new. If telemetry isn’t working, will there be some sites denying access to their services?

[Master199]

I would love it if we had an official Firefox port. This would give the project a lot more attention. In my opinion, there is no need for further variants.

And its always one of the first things people look for in HaikuDepot (IF they find HaikuDepot ).

Besides, I don’t understand this excitement. This discussion about telemetry in Firefox is 10 years old and all the aspects that are now commin up here were already clarified years ago.

To switch off telemetry, just visit about:telemetry and switch it off with one click. If you are not sure whether this is enough for you, visit about:config and check the settings as shown here. And if you forget to switch it off, Mozilla deletes all the data after 30 days after receiving the farewell ping.

If you really want to learn more about Telemetry & Firefox, just have a look at Mozilla Data Portal and the documentation, it’s really interesting.

[win8linux]

@kallisti5

After some positive discussions with Mozilla, it was presented that we would need to ensure telemetry is running before using the “Firefox” trademark.

@kallisti5

We work on up-streaming our work, and offer both Iceweasel (minus telemetry, etc) and Firefox in the repos.

Right and it is prolly not sustainable in the long-term to keep Haiku-specific patches downstream when the main project has laid out a path towards upstreaming a port. For the sake of both brand recognition and long-term maintenance, it would be a good idea do what Mozilla requires in order to use the Firefox trademark and eventually make the port officially recognised and maintained. This would not only decrease the maintenance burden, but also make it more comfortable for other downstreams (Librewolf, Waterfox, etc.) to also officially support Haiku, especially those who do remove telemetry.

Unless proven otherwise, most downstream Gecko-based web browsers will prolly not accept code to enable an entirely new OS platform that upstream Firefox doesn’t support. Testing and maintaining all that is a lot of effort, accounting for changes both in Haiku and Firefox. Asking for Haiku support from the likes of Waterfox, Floorp, and others is a significantly easier task if their upstream (read: Firefox) already does.

[x68k]

@kallisti5

Companies won’t release Haiku binaries because Haiku’s not popular enough, Haiku won’t be popular until it has foundational apps that 95% of the public demand for a functional OS (like “Firefox” / “Chrome”, etc).

There is demand for these browsers because they have the speed, the features, and they don’t crash all the time. Most users want to actually use their OS, not just tinker all day. So the demand is for the functionality, not so much the names and logos.

[kallisti5]

I think we have the path on this one. Focus on Iceweasel, get it stable. Worry about Firefox branded version later.

I’d rather all the folks involved focus on fixing our few remaining bugs in Iceweasel (and getting their hard work upstream) instead of worrying about the Telemetry stuff building.

[PulkoMandy]

@win8linux

Right and it is prolly not sustainable in the long-term to keep Haiku-specific patches downstream when the main project has laid out a path towards upstreaming a port. For the sake of both brand recognition and long-term maintenance, it would be a good idea do what Mozilla requires in order to use the Firefox trademark and eventually make the port officially recognised and maintained

That’s fine:

• Iceweasel distributed in Haikudepot, no official branding, telemetry disabled by default, work in progress patches, etc
• Firefox, downloadable from Mozilla website, with the advertising for their services (pocket, mozilla vpn, whatever AI assistant they are working on now) and telemetry as they want it

that’s my opinion, and what makes most sense to me. But since I don’t work on the firefox port and also am only one of many people running Haikuports, it’s not necessarily a final d cision.