

Should Mozilla Fork Firefox? - dreemteem
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2967&blogid=14&utm_source=ycombinator&utm_medium=sb&utm_content=rplant&utm_campaign=sb

======
sp332
Firefox doesn't have feature creep. Memory and CPU usage is down, startup
times are down, and the awesome bar is not bloated (it's nicer then Chrome's
and just as fast). They've promoted lightweight Personas over full themes[0],
and the new JetPack project aims to reduce the complexity of extensions[1].
Firefox 4.0 will continue the trend of faster, more user-friendly Firefox
releases[2]. What are these people talking about?

Also, there is already a "hothouse of new ideas" run "alongside the main
branch of Firefox," it's called Mozilla Labs[3]. Personas has graduated from
Labs into main Firefox already.

[0]. <http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/>

[1]. <https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/>

[2]. [http://beltzner.ca/mike/2010/05/10/firefox-4-fast-
powerful-a...](http://beltzner.ca/mike/2010/05/10/firefox-4-fast-powerful-and-
empowering/)

[3]. <https://mozillalabs.com/projects/>

~~~
pwhelan
I could see them forking to manage threads and processes differently. Tabs are
managed by thread in Firefox whereas by process in Chrome. I prefer the look &
feel of Firefox, which is why I use it, but when Firefox crashes (usually
because of a plug-in) the whole thing goes down, not just that page. Not a
trivial change, but certainly worth trying out imho. It would likely win back
market share too.

~~~
sp332
The next minor update, 3.6.4, will have out-of-process plugins.

~~~
pwhelan
Not what I meant. "The Mozilla platform will use separate processes to display
the browser UI, web content, and plugins." [1] -- I don't like this idea
myself as it creates odd inter-process communication. Each tab thread will
need to contact the UI, web content, and plugin thread. To me, it makes more
sense to have each tab be its own process.

Threads don't provide a real advantage here. The executable is loaded once as
the OS is smart enough to share the binary, common libraries are loaded once
(using mmap), both processes and threads need their own stacks. However, by
splitting loads as they have, if any of those 3 main processes fail,
everything dies.

1.) <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes>

------
ianb
I joined Mozilla just a couple months ago (and honestly I personally was using
Chrome a lot before that -- I'm not on the browser team). From what I've seen
talking to people I feel like what the author promotes is what's already been
happening.

The internal decision process for Firefox has been moving to the UI team,
which has been identifying improvements they think are important or easy, and
those improvements are getting priority. That's a clear user-centric decision
process.

As for forking Firefox, it's not something being done explicitly and it's not
a clear team, but people are playing around with ideas along those lines and
the culture is very open to that process. Jetpack actually has some basis in a
split like that (then being brought back to the mainline).

No fault to the author, these things are by no means obvious (and I myself can
only claim to have a vague sense of what's going on)... but I feel more
optimistic the more I know about how decisions and experimentation is done at
Mozilla.

Sometimes Firefox people come off as very defensive... which I find a little
off-putting, but I think it's also a matter of avoiding panic. It would be
really stupid to make a long bet on some radical redesign of Firefox, but if
you embrace a self-sense of impending irrelevance you can make some really
stupid mistakes.

------
stcredzero
Chrome targeted IE, but it turns out that Firefox is the weaker browser in
terms of user "loyalty." Even though Firefox is a better browser, many of IE's
users are there because they don't know the difference and don't care, hence
they are immune to the attraction of features and design. More of Firefox's
users do know the difference, however.

It might be nice if there was one fewer rendering engine. Then again, if
Microsoft keeps being its good old self, there may be some benefit from
strength in numbers.

------
silkodyssey
The competition between firefox and chrome is friendly competition. They're
both opensource browsers that follow web standards so we aren't losing much by
chrome gaining market share at the expense of firefox.

If it were losing ground to internet explorer that would have been another
issue though. As a result I don't really see the need for a fork of firefox.
All they need to do is just focus of making a great browser. We're all
fighting on the same side.

~~~
vog
Chrome is only free software if you build it from source
(<http://code.google.com/intl/de/chromium/terms.html>). If you use their pre-
built executable (as most people do), different terms apply
(<http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html>).

Also, the license isn't everything. It is also important which entity controls
the official version of a software. It makes a huge difference whether the
decision process is designed for transparency, or whether you can only audit
the produced code commits afterwards.

So instead of forking Firefox, it might be a better idea to _fork Chrome_.

That way, we'd have an independent version that's regularily checked (and
fixed) by persons outside of Google. And we could also provide a free binary
to which Google's strange terms doesn't apply.

(It would be interesting to see how Google reacts on such a fork. Will they
insist on their term and try to apply them to the sources, or will they keep
Chrome being free software?)

~~~
Perceval
> _a better idea to fork Chrome. ...an independent version that's regularily
> checked (and fixed) by persons outside of Google._

We already have this. It's called SRWare Iron.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron>

------
goodness
Well, I would like to see Chrome-like private browsing in Firefox. I don't
like the whole shutdown the browser to go in to private mode thing. I often
use private browsing mode in Chrome to log in to the same site with multiple
accounts. For example, when my wife to log in to GMail while I'm still logged
in. Hopefully this is on their radar. I also like how every text box in Chrome
is resizable. Not sure if those things really warrant a fork.

I also in principle like Chrome's process per tab idea. But in practice, I've
never actually found myself killing off an individual tab. Usually when I have
browser problems, it's in Windows and it's an I/O issue that tends to make the
whole OS unresponsive.

------
zppx
I'm a Mozilla user since before the Phoenix (later Firebird, later Firefox)
came to existence, I began to use the Mozilla Suite (now SeaMonkey) since
2001, and I do remember how the small Phoenix team produced feature after
feature in question of weeks compared to the much larger Mozilla Suite team,
something that Mozilla lost after the 1.5 Firefox release, maybe this is the
Microsoftification of the Mozilla Corporation, maybe this will come to happen
to Chrome and the WebKit in the future, I just think Mozilla needs to divide
development in subsystems with no set of desired features to be included in
the next release, and them merge them when they are complete and stable,
giving greater autonomy to developers of each subsystem, something like the
Linux kernel and its various subsystems.

For the tl;dr folks: Mozilla is just too centralized these days.

~~~
Perceval
They are moving to a more 'agile' style development. The Lorentz release
(originally 3.6.2 now 3.6.4) is supposed to be the first release in which new
features are just shipped without waiting for a major point release.

[http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/3860226/Mozilla-
Fi...](http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/3860226/Mozilla-Firefox-Gets-
More-Agile-with-Lorentz.htm)

------
nfnaaron
skip everything but the last three paragraphs.

------
tszming
Mozilla should fork chrome.

