
Basilisk web browser - bovermyer
https://www.basilisk-browser.org/
======
jchw
Why? Sorry but the page doesn't explain it and I can't imagine for the life of
me why you would want pre-Servo Firefox.

~~~
mike-cardwell
It's all about the change to extensions isn't it? Some people just couldn't
let it go.

~~~
jchw
I still find that absurd. People actually want extensions and add-ons that get
full access to their computer, can manipulate pretty much any of the browser
functionality, and has been known in the past to be abused? (See noscript for
example.)

I will admit when I first began using Chrome some years ago I found extensions
to be woefully incomplete. But even where integration is worse, I'm super glad
about the approach taken with WebExtensions for exposing functionality. It
gives a reasonable bound on what extensions can do, and it provides a nice API
that is stable.

~~~
shabble
Has Noscript abused its capabilities as an extension in the past? I can't
think of (or immediately find) any suggestion that has, but now I'm curious.

~~~
jchw
They sure have!

[https://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-
users](https://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-users)

To be clear, they intentionally interfered with Adblock Plus for ages, causing
a cat and mouse war between the two. Eventually they went too far and there
was an apology issued. It will probably be hard to actually find much
information about this as I imagine the noscript developers want to keep their
reputation cleaner. As far as I know the extension no longer attempts to
interfere with Adblock extensions.

~~~
shabble
I did also just find
[https://liltinkerer.surge.sh/noscript.html](https://liltinkerer.surge.sh/noscript.html)
as well. I thought most of the controversies have been the
commercialisation/hostile takeovers of the various (ad|u)block (pro)?
extensions, but seems not.

~~~
jchw
The painful reality of internet monetization right now is reading this article
to the end only to see horrid clickbait article links right below it. Maybe
not as bad as malware, but it really is hard to not be jaded these days.

Edit: I just noticed this was Disqus doing that. So the author of the website
isn't even responsible for this and probably makes no money from it. Wow...
Hard to trust anyone anymore.

------
jccalhoun
I wish the creator and users of Pale Moon luck but I just see using this old
version of Mozilla to be a loosing battle. As time goes on it will be harder
and harder for basically a one person program to keep up with new features.

~~~
mrnhmath
Its platform, UXP, isn't a merely old version of Mozilla-sourced code. It has
its own development in the past 10 months, and if you're curious, do a diff
between mozilla-esr52 and UXP.

------
dotdi
How does this differ from Pale Moon? Are the developers/maintainers now
working on 2 different browsers?

~~~
deelly
From
[https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18801](https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18801)

Basilisk exists "to demonstrate and make use of the [UXP] platform," according
to Basilisk's Github site. Moonchild and/or Tobin (can't remember the exact
posts) said here in the forum that it will continue to exist, essentially as a
perpetual beta, because it will continue to be used to demonstrate the
capabilities of the platform.

Pale Moon will continue to exist, and is currently in the process of being
ported to UXP. That will eventually be released as Pale Moon version 28. Once
this version of Pale Moon has been released, Basilisk will continue to exist
as a separate browser. And Pale Moon will also continue to exist as a separate
browser.

~~~
mrnhmath
Just a heads-up, Pale Moon 28.0 was released on August 16.

------
AndrewStephens
I first came across Basilisk when I noticed a stage user agent in my website's
access log - my site gets so few hits that this stood out. I noticed that
Basilisk didn't ping the beacon I use for my hacked-together visitor analytics
system - I guess this could be considered bug or a feature depending on which
side of the tracking divide you sit.

------
projectramo
My main question set for browsers these days is all privacy based:

1\. Does this collect anything?

2\. Does this prevent collection?

\-- does it have a vpn option? \-- does it have ad blockers? \-- does it
prevent tabs from talking to each other? \-- does it do something clever with
cookies?

~~~
JeremyBanks
“Does it have a VPN option?”

Isn’t asking to be MITMed a contradiction of items 1 and 2?

If you're using a VPN, it should be one you've carefully chosen and
individually trust. We shouldn't be encouraging browser vendors to build a
first-party mass-surveillance tool.

------
leadingthenet
Why, though?

~~~
na85
From the article:

>Basilisk is primarily a reference application for development of the XUL
platform it builds upon, and additionally a potential replacement for Firefox.

~~~
hawski
Now I would like to know more: why XUL? How is it different than the last
time?

I think that this site is not yet ready for wider consumption.

~~~
sethhochberg
My interpretation is that this is mostly a project for the die-hard users who
lost support for niche extensions they really liked when XUL left mainstream
Firefox... it reads mostly like they intend to maintain it as a time capsule.
"No different from last time" is exactly the main selling feature.

~~~
johannes1234321
XUL ist not only used in browser Add-ons. There are special purpose desktop
applications written using it.

This is a project my former employer did some 10+ years ago, but I have seen
different other such things. For some time I also used XUL as an UI library
inside the browser. Quite powerful and relatively close to native UI which is
important for some.

[https://blog.mayflower.de/64-Is-XUL-the-next-hot-topic-
after...](https://blog.mayflower.de/64-Is-XUL-the-next-hot-topic-after-
AJAX.html)

------
oscargrouch
I know its off-topic, but this remind me about some things, now that Firefox
is taking the heat and losing more and more market share..

First about that famous Joel Spolsky post warning about software rewrites
using Netscape as an example. Then the fact that Firefox have waited too much
to create a multi-process browser which was really a needed rewrite to really
catch up to Chrome.

If my memory doesnt fail me, Chrome was launched in 2008 and Firefox came up
with the multi-process only 4 years later, in the end of 2012.

And then theres this rewrite of core pieces in Rust, that i'm sure was great
for Rust language and community growth, but i dont think it was a good move
for Firefox, because it take a lot of effort to stabilize the core pieces,
specially while at the same time refactoring a compiler in the middle.

Rust turned out great, with a great performance, but what if it didn't?

Or maybe i'm being a half empty glass kind of person, and Firefox were
actually turning out to the same faith, and at least a good tech, Rust came
out of all this mess?

~~~
em-bee
rust was purposely created for the firefox rewrite.

so yes, rust is the good thing that came out of the goal to improve firefox.

also i seem to remember mozilla exploring multiprocess firefox earlier, but
finding that it took more work to get ready.

with all the complaints i have seen over the years about the firefox c++
codebase i am not surprised that this wasn't a trivial task.

------
michaelmrose
" This browser is created and maintained by the team behind Pale Moon..."

These guys [https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-
wip/issues/86](https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86)

How about not.

~~~
cweagans
You know, I just read that whole thread, and I don't see a problem. Maybe they
were being jerks about it, or maybe some of that nuance was lost in
translation. However, software licensing is a legal issue and legal issues are
usually places where you don't want any ambiguity about intent and expected
results. I don't think directness is necessarily a problem in this situation
(think of how a cease and desist letter from a lawyer would read - it's not
gonna spend a lot of time padding your ego).

~~~
chrisseaton
How can you possibly think that ‘You will revise your...’ and ‘I will not be
as educational next time’ is an appropriate way to speak to someone? That set
the whole thing down the wrong path from the start. What a waste.

~~~
cweagans
Again, I think the translation barrier may have been a big part in the
specific phrasing even if they were intentionally being blunt. I don't speak
dutch and can't say definitively if that's the case, but I have spent a lot of
time working with people who's first language it not english, and they can
certainly come off as harsh at times when they don't mean to.

In this case, it is _entirely_ possible that "You should revise your..." was
the intended meaning. I don't think that "I will not be as educational next
time" is bad if one is defending a license, especially since the license is
pretty clearly written and distributed with the software. There shouldn't have
been a need for the maintainer to explain the problem in the first place, but
since they were kind enough to do so, I think it's entirely reasonable to say
that the next interaction on this topic will not be amicable (to me, that
sounds like getting lawyers involved).

Yes, it's very direct. Yes, it's probably a little too far toward outright
dickishness. But that's their prerogative as the holders of the copyright, and
they have to enforce it as they see fit.

Nintendo does the same stuff and people get annoyed by it, but at the end of
the day, it's their right to protect their property.

~~~
chrisseaton
Here's how it could have all been different:

> Hi, thanks for looking at packaging Pale Moon. Unfortunately the way you're
> doing it doesn't comply with our licence for these reasons ... Can you
> please make the following changes ... otherwise you won't have permission to
> distribute this build and we'll have to ask our lawyers to get involved if
> you did so.

