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Note that out of these, the PaleMoon browser ( https://www.palemoon.org https://www.palemoon.org ) is the only real "hard" fork of Firefox. The others are all "

Note that out of these, the PaleMoon browser ( https://www.palemoon.org https://www.palemoon.org ) is the only real "hard" fork of Firefox. The others are all "soft" forks of Mozilla Firefox in that they all just customise some existing settings as defaults or customise the UI or integrate their own extensions of Firefox and rebrand it. The PaleMoon team however forked even Mozilla Gecko ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software) ), the browser engine that is at the heart of Firefox to create the Goanna browser engine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goanna_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goanna_(software) ) that now powers the PaleMoon browser and the Unified XUL Platform (a framework that can be used to create multi-platform desktop applications with web technologies). Another "hard" fork of Firefox Gecko is the Servo browsing engine ( https://servo.org/ https://servo.org/ ) though no browser application has been built on it yet.

causi 3y ago
Gotta admit, being able to actually customize the UI/theme like the old days is awfully tempting. God I miss "Night Launch".
johnny22 3y ago
it's hard to call servo a fork. its more like a ground up rewrite of a browser
- kiliancs 3y ago
  It's just incorrect to call it a fork. That Mozilla started it doesn't make it a fork of Firefox.
- webmobdev 3y ago
  You are right. Perhaps the right word is port - a rewrite of Gecko with Rust, instead of C++?
  - Narishma 3y ago
    I don't think it's a port either. It's a new engine. I don't think it uses anything from Gecko.
xcdzvyn 3y ago
I'm not trying to cause trouble, but it's also worth noting the PaleMoon people have stirred a fair amount of controversy in their time. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16318820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16318820 (they later described this incident as "resistance from the BSD community to adhere to normal free software development practices") - https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/pexate/pale_moon_developers_abuse_mozilla_public_license/ https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/pexate/pale_moon_... - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16504 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16504
- squigz 3y ago
  That is just completely opposed to the spirit of FOSS. A really sad way to treat contributors like Feodor, but a very effective way of ensuring I'll never use that fork
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Luckily the guy behind nearly all of the drama (Tobin) was kicked off the team a year or two ago. It's beeen smooth sailing since.
    - zaphirplane 3y ago
      The maintainer came out swinging and backed the guy that opened the issue. Doesn’t sound like one person is the bad apple
      - superkuh 3y ago
        True enough. It was sort of a LoTR Wormtongue and King Theoden situation. While Tobin was around Moonchild made some terrible choices. It's much better now.
    - squigz 3y ago
      That is good to hear, but still, as another responder pointed out, the primary maintainer didn't handle things much better - although if he had, funnily enough, at least one of the incidents would've been resolved with a lot less reputational damage Also, I find it slightly amusing how often they bring up the legal aspect of these licenses. They're not wrong, of course, but are they really going to hire lawyers to go after someone like Feodor? At most maybe they'll get it removed from Github and other platforms that care to respond to such requests? > You think trademark law is a joke? Personally, yes :)
cmcaleer 3y ago
It's really unfortunate that the Pale Moon team are also totally unlikable, which is probably among the reasons why usage has dropped off since it was in vogue in the early-mid 2010s. This[0] issue in a WIP repo for OpenBSD always reminds me of the line in The Big Lebowski "You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole". It's fascinatingly hostile for little cause and a non-trivial amount of reputational damage. All in the name the vitally important cause of er... making sure there's not an implementation of Pale Moon that doesn't fully fit their license in a WIP repo. I suspect that they don't attract the best contributors, given how hard they seem to be to work with. [0]: https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86 https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86
- O1111OOO 3y ago
  > It's really unfortunate that the Pale Moon team are also totally unlikable, which is probably among the reasons why usage has dropped off since it was in vogue in the early-mid 2010s. I'm not sure that's the reason. Regardless of feelings users may have toward developers, they'll still use the best tool for the job. I used Pale Moon on an older computer because none of the modern browsers performed well, including FF. I was well aware of some of the drama. (Likewise, I raged against Microsoft for years before I made the switch to Linux. So many other examples) When Mozilla went Quantum, it's performance was so good, it was able to replace Pale Moon. I wrote a thing about this here in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367536 I'm thinking that over the last 4 years (since 2019), many users have upgraded their hardware and the need for Pale Moon - as a lighter browser alternative - has simply diminished.
- NBPEL 3y ago
  Yeah, some of the devs and mods scared people away, say "Tobin", it got better but there's still a few left.
diath 3y ago
Pale Moon is also inherently less secure due to Goanna sticking to single process mode.
- superkuh 3y ago
  And inherently a far less ram using browser. I do 500 tabs in under 3GB. By also not implementing all the useless attack surfaces like DRM, Integrated PDF reader, WebRTC, and friends it avoids many of the exploits which make modern browsers like FF and Chrome insecure. Overall it probably balances out. Especially since PM users are likely to have JS execution disabled by default (like I do).
  - fabrice_d 3y ago
    It's pointless to say things like "500 tabs under 3GB" without knowing what's loaded in these tabs.
    - skinkestek 3y ago
      Can you think of any realistic tab set that would result in Chrome or Firefox using as little memory?
      - fabrice_d 3y ago
        I'm not the one that should prove anything here.
        skinkestek 3y ago
        My point is that if you cannot create a single tab set that beats what GP mentioned in your preferred browser then his browser still uses less memory. That said, none of this is scientific so I will leave it here.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      Well, it's not Facebook, Twitter, Discord or the like. I'll to you that. It's mostly actual websites written in HTML (like HN). But even with no websites loaded if you tried to open 500 blank Chrome tabs you'd run out of RAM. That's just the nature of per-tab many process browsers. And 500 is just my actively loaded tabs. I have another 500 suspended.
mminer237 3y ago
Another hard fork is Basilisk (https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ https://www.basilisk-browser.org/), which was originally developed by the folks behind Pale Moon but is now independent.

causi 3y ago

Gotta admit, being able to actually customize the UI/theme like the old days is awfully tempting. God I miss "Night Launch".

johnny22 3y ago

it's hard to call servo a fork. its more like a ground up rewrite of a browser

kiliancs 3y ago
It's just incorrect to call it a fork. That Mozilla started it doesn't make it a fork of Firefox.
webmobdev 3y ago
You are right. Perhaps the right word is port - a rewrite of Gecko with Rust, instead of C++?
- Narishma 3y ago
  I don't think it's a port either. It's a new engine. I don't think it uses anything from Gecko.

xcdzvyn 3y ago

I'm not trying to cause trouble, but it's also worth noting the PaleMoon people have stirred a fair amount of controversy in their time. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16318820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16318820 (they later described this incident as "resistance from the BSD community to adhere to normal free software development practices") - https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/pexate/pale_moon_developers_abuse_mozilla_public_license/ https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/pexate/pale_moon_... - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16504 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16504

squigz 3y ago
That is just completely opposed to the spirit of FOSS. A really sad way to treat contributors like Feodor, but a very effective way of ensuring I'll never use that fork
- superkuh 3y ago
  Luckily the guy behind nearly all of the drama (Tobin) was kicked off the team a year or two ago. It's beeen smooth sailing since.
  - zaphirplane 3y ago
    The maintainer came out swinging and backed the guy that opened the issue. Doesn’t sound like one person is the bad apple
    - superkuh 3y ago
      True enough. It was sort of a LoTR Wormtongue and King Theoden situation. While Tobin was around Moonchild made some terrible choices. It's much better now.
  - squigz 3y ago
    That is good to hear, but still, as another responder pointed out, the primary maintainer didn't handle things much better - although if he had, funnily enough, at least one of the incidents would've been resolved with a lot less reputational damage Also, I find it slightly amusing how often they bring up the legal aspect of these licenses. They're not wrong, of course, but are they really going to hire lawyers to go after someone like Feodor? At most maybe they'll get it removed from Github and other platforms that care to respond to such requests? > You think trademark law is a joke? Personally, yes :)

cmcaleer 3y ago

It's really unfortunate that the Pale Moon team are also totally unlikable, which is probably among the reasons why usage has dropped off since it was in vogue in the early-mid 2010s. This[0] issue in a WIP repo for OpenBSD always reminds me of the line in The Big Lebowski "You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole". It's fascinatingly hostile for little cause and a non-trivial amount of reputational damage. All in the name the vitally important cause of er... making sure there's not an implementation of Pale Moon that doesn't fully fit their license in a WIP repo. I suspect that they don't attract the best contributors, given how hard they seem to be to work with. [0]: https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86 https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86

O1111OOO 3y ago
> It's really unfortunate that the Pale Moon team are also totally unlikable, which is probably among the reasons why usage has dropped off since it was in vogue in the early-mid 2010s. I'm not sure that's the reason. Regardless of feelings users may have toward developers, they'll still use the best tool for the job. I used Pale Moon on an older computer because none of the modern browsers performed well, including FF. I was well aware of some of the drama. (Likewise, I raged against Microsoft for years before I made the switch to Linux. So many other examples) When Mozilla went Quantum, it's performance was so good, it was able to replace Pale Moon. I wrote a thing about this here in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367536 I'm thinking that over the last 4 years (since 2019), many users have upgraded their hardware and the need for Pale Moon - as a lighter browser alternative - has simply diminished.
NBPEL 3y ago
Yeah, some of the devs and mods scared people away, say "Tobin", it got better but there's still a few left.

diath 3y ago

Pale Moon is also inherently less secure due to Goanna sticking to single process mode.

superkuh 3y ago
And inherently a far less ram using browser. I do 500 tabs in under 3GB. By also not implementing all the useless attack surfaces like DRM, Integrated PDF reader, WebRTC, and friends it avoids many of the exploits which make modern browsers like FF and Chrome insecure. Overall it probably balances out. Especially since PM users are likely to have JS execution disabled by default (like I do).
- fabrice_d 3y ago
  It's pointless to say things like "500 tabs under 3GB" without knowing what's loaded in these tabs.
  - skinkestek 3y ago
    Can you think of any realistic tab set that would result in Chrome or Firefox using as little memory?
    - fabrice_d 3y ago
      I'm not the one that should prove anything here.
      - skinkestek 3y ago
        My point is that if you cannot create a single tab set that beats what GP mentioned in your preferred browser then his browser still uses less memory. That said, none of this is scientific so I will leave it here.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Well, it's not Facebook, Twitter, Discord or the like. I'll to you that. It's mostly actual websites written in HTML (like HN). But even with no websites loaded if you tried to open 500 blank Chrome tabs you'd run out of RAM. That's just the nature of per-tab many process browsers. And 500 is just my actively loaded tabs. I have another 500 suspended.

mminer237 3y ago

Another hard fork is Basilisk (https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ https://www.basilisk-browser.org/), which was originally developed by the folks behind Pale Moon but is now independent.