
Idea for a new browser product - e15ctr0n
http://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11529
======
ygjb
Wow.

\- Mozilla made architectural changes to address limitations in Firefox that
inhibited the pace of improvements

\- We didn't like the changes Mozilla was implementing

\- We forked Firefox to revert the changes

\- We spent years insulting Mozilla engineers for the changes they were making

\- We realized that we can't implement changes because of architectural
limitations

\- We are going to re-fork Firefox from a later version

\- We still think the Mozilla engineers don't know what they are doing

\- This is a totally new browser product and a fork of Goanna, not Gecko!

I am a huge Mozilla fan-boy, and an ex-employee, but come on, this is just off
the wall silly.

~~~
J_Darnley
Mozilla engineers do not know what they are doing. If they did they would not
be planning on removing all existing extension, they would not have listened
to the designers and implemented australis, they would not be trying to make a
chrome clone.

~~~
reitanqild
I wouldn't have phrased it that way.

I have removed my fair share of malware from _other_ peoples machines though
and I have yet to observe that Firefox extensions has been the attack vector a
single time.

For that reason I do find it puzzling that they want to irrevocably destroy
their single biggest advantage (in my and many other vocal supporters eyes):
real, USEFUL extensions. (Even Lastpass has to add an extra binary to my OS to
fully work under Chrome IIRC.)

Also while I should mostly not say much about design I do find it odd that so
many projects attempt to look Mac OSX and I think it is the same frustration
some people have with Firefox starting to look like Chrome: not everything the
big boys do is necessarily better.

------
jokoon
I don't really know what kind of browser they want to make, but if I would
make one, I'd add some p2p networking on it, like IPFS or a minimalist databse
that runs on a DHT. The end goal would be to have your data hosted and
automatically spread on clients, instead of servers. Currently I can't really
name a p2p platform which has some usable interface, where you can share
content like the web allows it. There is zeronet, but I'm still waiting for a
browser all in one package to make it usable.

p2p is the future... (and don't tell me about websockets, they're not true
p2p)

------
taspeotis
The title of this submission has been changed now, but it was originally "Pale
Moon may drop Firefox codebase and write a new browser from scratch". Which
does not seem to match the post:

> the idea has come up to make a new browser product, re-forking from a later
> point in the Mozilla source tree

~~~
galistoca
The current title doesn't seem to match the post that much better either.
Clicked to see what awesome new idea about a next generation browser I will
encounter. Was not quite what they were talking about.

~~~
ygjb
See my other comment in the thread.

Palemoon lacks the resources to drive a modern browser fork. Rather than
trying to maintain the current fork they have, the proposal is to either
rebase, or create a new fork (or some other definition of "re-fork" that I am
not able to parse).

The irony in this is that the reason they need to do this is because they were
deeply unhappy with the changes Mozilla was making to correct technical debt
due to the age of the codebase. Those changes allowed the features to be
implemented that the Palemoon devs are lamenting in the post.

I would also like to take this moment to bang the security drum and remind
everyone that Palemoon has been developing new browser features for 6 years,
while taking up some, but not all, Mozilla security fixes, without a security
team of their own. Read into that as you will, but also consider how
successful people have been in forking Chromium (or just grab a bowl of
popcorn and read through
[https://twitter.com/taviso](https://twitter.com/taviso) if you don't know the
history).

------
neals
This is why I like open-source and the community we are creating with it. If
you don't like something or if you don't agree, start making changes right
away.

Don't like what it has become? Change it again.

Between all the flaming going back and forth, we still respect each other and
work on making the world a better place, one line of code at time.

------
dkuntz2
What even is the purpose of the Pale Moon browser? Their entire website can't
give me any concrete reasons why someone would rather use this over Firefox.

~~~
superkuh
As a user I can can explain. I was unhappy with Mozilla implementing a walled
garden for their extensions. I am not an extension dev but it's a rare month
where I don't pop open an xpi and edit something to my personal preferences.
In a walled garden I can't do that. They are taking control of the browser
away from me.

Their choice to implement the W3C's disasterous digital rights managment
technology in the form of EME was too much. At the very minimum including this
DRM in the browser opens up any devs or researchers trying to port to other
platforms/OS to legal liability and attack.

Additionally Mozilla's choice to bake in bloatware like Pocket is very
unpleasant. Basically every time I do a fresh install of Firefox I have to go
through a long series of config to de-bullshit it (ref:
[https://gist.github.com/haasn/69e19fc2fe0e25f3cff5](https://gist.github.com/haasn/69e19fc2fe0e25f3cff5)).

Palemoon is more Firefox than Firefox these days.

------
anonbanker
If anyone remembers the Netscape 6/7 days, Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox was a
breath of freh air from the bloated mess that Seamonkey had become. All that
was needed was for Blake Ross to write a new, lighter, UI for the thing.

Someone should just make a UI for servo, and release it for people. It's
probably as good as Gecko was when it was first shipped in Netscape's
products, considering the rapid development.

------
wodenokoto
Can someone provide a bit of context? Reading the post I'm confused if this is
by a mozilla engineer and what the product is, or what Gonna is.

~~~
hga
Pale Moon is a fork of Firefox. Goanna is their current and quite new
rendering engine: [http://betanews.com/2016/01/26/pale-moon-adopts-new-
goanna-b...](http://betanews.com/2016/01/26/pale-moon-adopts-new-goanna-
browser-engine-fine-tunes-interface/)

~~~
dkuntz2
I mean, it sounds like it's basically just a fork of an old version of
Gecko/SpiderMonkey, because it looks like it definitely doesn't have the same
latest standards support that current versions of Firefox have (based on the
Pale Moon website).

Which, as an aside, I think is hilarious, because they claim standards
compliance as one of their biggest features.

------
CelticSuperhero
So, they have issues already with implementing Promises and handle the older
less complicated technology wise seen engine 24 - and they are seriously
thinking about forking a much later code base and try to keep their old ui,
remove Australis, DRM and so on?

Sounds totally unrealistic. This product will be dead on arrival.

------
vonklaus
I have never heard of palemoon before but I agree with these points but not
the conclusion.

Probably to some extent that prescription makes sense however it can never be
successful. Search can never be decoupled from the browser. It just can't. I
keep twitter spamming Brendan Eich with this for the Brave project.

Guy is way smarter than me.

Created the language I use sloppily.

Has more credibility, team, ect than I ever will.

However, I still think I am correct. No one gives that much of a fuck (within
reason) what UI you wrap around Google.

To palemoon. Please build a search engine. I have only tracked a few teams
working on this. Probably could get a 1 year headstart before this becomes
"hot".

~~~
PhilipA
More competition in the search engine market benefit us all. I don't like the
power that Google posses over Mom & Pop stores. Don't like it, they can just
block it and they can just close.

