Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.
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@oblomov @cstross @jwz Consider that Mozilla being cooked has a few decades of history.
Back around 2007ish, I was working with a few folk who either came from or later went to Mozilla. Anyhow, some of them were involved with the XHTML 2.0 spec.
Which was finished.
But then got ditched.
Because Googleites insisted a "living spec" was the right thing, which can only be implemented by whoever throws the most money at it, and we now have HTML5 and a browser engine monopoly.
And Mozilla?
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@jwz It feels like someone needs to pull a Firefox on the Mozilla Foundation like Firefox did on the original Mozilla browser when it had lost its way.
Take the core technology of Firefox & fork a non-AI browser that is focused on the web. That's what a large swath of people want. Then let the downloads do the talking.
Firefox "won" because a lot of people were using it. Web developers loved it.
Make a browser that people fall in love with because it works and is fast & reliable without AI.
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IIRC the WHATWG was set up before Google had its own browser (I think it was Mozilla + Opera + Apple at the time?) and it almost made sense, although there was no reason to ditch XHTML 2.0 altogether. What really drives me mad is that EVEN IF one could consider the XEvent and XForms interface to be suboptimal for the kind of “dynamic” web that was being pushed (possibly by Google behind the scenes) that was really no reason to throw away the whole of XHTML 2.
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IIRC the WHATWG was set up before Google had its own browser (I think it was Mozilla + Opera + Apple at the time?) and it almost made sense, although there was no reason to ditch XHTML 2.0 altogether. What really drives me mad is that EVEN IF one could consider the XEvent and XForms interface to be suboptimal for the kind of “dynamic” web that was being pushed (possibly by Google behind the scenes) that was really no reason to throw away the whole of XHTML 2.
There are still so many features that had been introduced there (client-side includes with fallback, “everything is a link”, etc) that are still sorely missing 8-(
I wonder if there was also a growing dislike for XML in general behind this choice? (hurr durr namespace confusing). It's ironic that we have to thank MS for pushing for the little support of XML in browsers we still have (and they are now working on removing 8-/).
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@csstrowbridge
lots of browsers are just #chromium with a hat on. 🤠 ( #vivaldi, #brave, ... )there are good independent browsers like #lynx and #offpunk, which can run on #android in #termux. even though they're terminal apps, scrolling and clicking works.
#librera on #android can be used for reading web sites too, even though it's not a browser as such.
then use an eat-shit browser only for the parts of the web that requires you to eat shit (run #javascript).
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@czauner @csstrowbridge The problem with that being that they need to release & relicense their source code before allocating any amount of trust to them is even remotely on the table.
@lispi314
Fair point, but as we all can see in Mozilla's example: A license and public source-code means shit.And I for sure have better things to do than walzing through an entire Browser-Sourcetree.
It boils down to: What do you value more? A license-culture-war, or the absence of forced-on AI-slop?
Well, if the licensing is more important to you, then you can either a) swallow the AI stuff or b) write your own browser.
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@lispi314
Fair point, but as we all can see in Mozilla's example: A license and public source-code means shit.And I for sure have better things to do than walzing through an entire Browser-Sourcetree.
It boils down to: What do you value more? A license-culture-war, or the absence of forced-on AI-slop?
Well, if the licensing is more important to you, then you can either a) swallow the AI stuff or b) write your own browser.
@czauner At the moment, I'd be more inclined to moving fully onto Nyxt & webkit (despite the *many* issues I have with webkit).
Ideally, Servo would reach sufficient completion for wrapping into Nyxt and we'd have a browser with superior user-empowerment to literally everything else. -
Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.
That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon.
Mozilla is cooked.
@jwz imagine a lot of useful stuff that could be done with that
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@czauner @csstrowbridge Same goes for @zenbrowser, which is Firefox based.
I haven’t used it much, but I think I will take a closer look in the near future.Yes, but as far as I know, they just 'disabled' the AI-Stuff.
whatever that exactly means. I'm seriously too old to take any Browser onto a test-drive.
But I'm somewhat bewildered that there not more Browsers out in the wild with a hard 'no AI' stance. As there is definitely a market for these in Data-sensitive environments. Companies might even pay subscriptions to get 'we do not transmit anything to AI-Clouds' in writing as CYA for rules & regulations stuff.
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There are still so many features that had been introduced there (client-side includes with fallback, “everything is a link”, etc) that are still sorely missing 8-(
I wonder if there was also a growing dislike for XML in general behind this choice? (hurr durr namespace confusing). It's ironic that we have to thank MS for pushing for the little support of XML in browsers we still have (and they are now working on removing 8-/).
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Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.
That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon.
Mozilla is cooked.
@jwz that’s why their CEO is worth so much: Brilliant business leadership!
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@jens @cstross @jwz IIRC the WHATWG was created in 2004, but Chrome is from 2008. I think Google might have been putting pressure on Mozilla & Opera to push for the whole “web app” angle because of their forays into Gmail and Maps that started around that time. When Chrome was first released the WHATWG and the W3C had already been armwrestling on «who gets to decide what HTML is» for one or two years, and with Chrome entering the fray the W3C basically gave up.
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Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.
That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon.
Mozilla is cooked.
@jwz Pocket 2.0 except this will probably kill firefox for power users.
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@jens @cstross @jwz IIRC the WHATWG was created in 2004, but Chrome is from 2008. I think Google might have been putting pressure on Mozilla & Opera to push for the whole “web app” angle because of their forays into Gmail and Maps that started around that time. When Chrome was first released the WHATWG and the W3C had already been armwrestling on «who gets to decide what HTML is» for one or two years, and with Chrome entering the fray the W3C basically gave up.
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@oblomov @cstross @jwz The line is straight when you know the route it took, seemingly coincidental otherwise.
But as the HipCrime Vocab defines "coincidence": you weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on.
And, err, though I'm in danger of exhausting my quote quota, the proof is in the proverbial pudding.
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@oblomov @cstross @jwz The line is straight when you know the route it took, seemingly coincidental otherwise.
But as the HipCrime Vocab defines "coincidence": you weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on.
And, err, though I'm in danger of exhausting my quote quota, the proof is in the proverbial pudding.
@oblomov @cstross @jwz As you will note by some research, in April 2005, so before the publication of WebKit, there was already discontent in the KHTML community in how Apple was developing WebKit as a fork.
How can that be? They complied with the letter, but not the spirit of the GPL. https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1001
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@oblomov @cstross @jwz As you will note by some research, in April 2005, so before the publication of WebKit, there was already discontent in the KHTML community in how Apple was developing WebKit as a fork.
How can that be? They complied with the letter, but not the spirit of the GPL. https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1001
@jens @cstross @jwz yeah, this is also something I tried pointing out on the subsequent rapid expansion of Chrome. Everybody was saying «relax, (the core) is free software». Which matters very little when the only thing that truly matters is who controls the platform. FLOSS is not immune to the dangers of monocultures (or of corporate control for that matter).
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@oblomov @cstross @jwz As you will note by some research, in April 2005, so before the publication of WebKit, there was already discontent in the KHTML community in how Apple was developing WebKit as a fork.
How can that be? They complied with the letter, but not the spirit of the GPL. https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1001
@oblomov @cstross @jwz by the way, @lisamelton might have some views.
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