Thanks for reaching out to Mozilla. From the last discussion where I suggested to ask Mozilla about the requirements for Firefox name usage, I got an impression that no one was really interested in that idea. Glad to know I was wrong.
Situation is getting worse: Mozilla introduce EULA in addition to existing MPL open source license that is required to be signed by user to install official Firefox distribution. It require user to “Give Mozilla Certain Rights and Permissions” related to data collection, sending to 3rd parties and uncontrolled use by government.
It is time to stop use Firefox…
Personally, I would be perfectly ok with a stable and polished Iceweasel. Nobody sane enough likes telemetry, even though it is optional in Firefox.
However, Mozilla’s telemetry is nothing compared to what others do, including operating systems for computers and the most popular one in cellphones (not mine). Also, people worried about brand recognition and Haiku-specific maintenance have a point. So I would say, if Firefox for Haiku would ever be a thing, we can reluctantly accept telemetry enabled by default, if and only if it is absolutely necessary to use their branding. First things I would do in that case is to disable telemetry, increase privacy to “strict”, and set Duckduckgo as the default search engine - things I would do in Iceweasel as well. As long I would be able to do that, I am ok with Firefox, since its availability in Haiku could potentially be a good thing.
Disclaimer: This is info which I’ve heard from other packagers of Firefox elsewhere. This is not legal advice.
It should be noted that this applies only to builds from Mozilla themselves. Packages made by third-parties that are approved for Firefox branding (such as most Linux distro packages) are not subject to this EULA, since the EULA won’t be shown.
What this means for Haiku is that an official Firefox package distributed by Mozilla from their website is subject to the new EULA, however a Firefox package approved by Mozilla for branding in HaikuDepot will not be affected by the EULA.
not yet …
My vote is for IceWeasel
All the “news” outlets already reported on firefox on Haiku, despite us calling it Iceweasel proper. So let’s continue that course, no telemetry, polish it up a bit. And keep The name and branding like it is.
That’s not cool by Mozilla. I would expect such from the likes of Google and its Chrome EULA.
It gets even better: they’re deleting the “we won’t sell your data” promise from their source code:
So, yeah, that’s pretty bad, I would say.
I havent really followed this topic, and I apologise if this has already been mentioned, but how about publishing both IceWeasel and Firefox. So we get branding as well as no telemetry, win-win
Ouch. It is a bit poor netiquette to pile on suggestions without reading the context; the context you just missed and replied to is that mozilla is becoming increasingly hostile against data privacy… and requires that for the firefox name.
So no, this isn’t a win-win at all.
Agree. I was on the fence due to the benefits of the Firefox trademark. However, this latest shift shows:
- Mozilla as an org is taking a new hostile position to privacy.
- The telemetry which I was giving Mozilla the benefit of doubt on is now pretty suspect.
With the above, I personally no longer wish to peruse using the Firefox trademark for our port. Lets brand as IceWeasel (or maybe use LibreWolf?)
We still have to play nice with Mozilla to try and get our patches upstream though (unless a legitimate Firefox fork happens as fallout)
As a side note, LadyBird is making strides as an independent alternative. It also has Haiku support front and center which is nice.
IceWeasel is still more mature and stable though.
It doesn’t.
Thise instructions were added by @nipos It seems.
The build script already refuses to run because we are root, and even after that There are problems with vcpkg (which seems to be some wierd C++ package manager from… microsoft)
Edit: I don’t doubt this can be ported, but that will need some effort. Moreso if you don’t want the qt backend.
I added support to SerenityOS Ladybird before it was forked off to another repository and added more third-party dependencies.
The original Ladybird within the SerenityOS repository is still more or less maintained and needs only the Qt6 libraries that we already have,nothing else.
I still try to keep it working and when I last tried it a few weeks ago,it still worked using my latest patchset from October that I published in my thread about the port: My progress at porting Ladybird, the SerenityOS Browser
I expect the forked Ladybird to add more features and become more useful over time,compared to the SerenityOS version,but it may also be more difficult to port and I decided not to invest time into that variant,as I’m not super happy with some of their decisions (the M$ vcpkg thingy being one of them)
I heard there’s a web engine called WebKit that works nicely and is easily portable and actually willing to support Haiku, maybe we should take a look at that?
But Iceweasel works much better right now. Making proper WebKit port (with WebGL, WebRTC, video playback etc.) need significant effort.
No, It doesn’t. The only “problem” is people chasing “yet another” browser engine to port as a clutch instead of pooling ressources.
Pulkomandy Is doing a good Job keeping haikuwebkit where it is now, and @Zardshard and me are working to port to webkit2.
Really, jumping in and picking a pet pieve to work on is not that much effort.
At this point, taking firefox or chromium and removing the spyware and keeping up with upstream seems like a bigger task than just working on haikuwebkit.
I am open to give pointers to anyone who wants to contribute to haikuwebkit, and maybe even mentor some stuff.
I replied specifically to a post about Ladybird.
Yes, it does and practice clearly demonstrates it. WebPositive is being developed for more than decade and it still can’t play YouTube videos. Porting WebKit require a lot of effort to implement platform-specific interfaces while porting existing browsers like Epiphany or Firefox is mostly fixing build errors.
Epiphany compiles almost without patching. Firefox was ported by Kenz in a short timespan (and me for Wayland support).
people chasing “yet another” browser engine to port as a clutch instead of pooling ressources
There are no “pool of developers” to whom Haiku Inc. can command what to do. There are various contributors with various skills and goals that do that they want in their free time.
Porting another browser do not reduce resources on working with WebPositive because it is completely different work and skills.