If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it’s even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?
My take: No other browser is sustainable without advertising. Orion looks to be that guy, but we will see. We’ve already seen many other browsers stop development, like Mull and LibreWolf, due to lack of resources. Firefox itself is on the chopping block with Google potentially being forced to sell Chrome. We’ll see what Kagi is able to manage with Orion, though releasing it with pretty much all the features one could want for free doesn’t appear promising. I think taking a “private advertising” approach is the best we’re going to get. This makes Brave sustainable.
The CEO is a dick, no doubt, but they pretty much all are, and every browser has it’s drawbacks.
As far as the useragent, I kinda agree with Brave on that one. Sites want to be crawled by Google but they will block anyone else, which obviously creates an anticompetitive environment in an industry that severely needs competition.
As for the fingerprinting, I kinda get it. I’m sure some users were turning on strict protection and then complaining about the browser not working properly and ultimately ditching it while complaining to others. That being said, even with “standard” fingerprint blocking, Brave is the only browser I’ve used on CoverYourTracks and it returned “you have a randomized fingerprint”. I’m not any sort of tech genius but I think the folks at EFF are and I trust them.
Wait, what?
Two things:
When did Librewolf stop development?
On funding, they say in their FAQ:
Librewolf seems to very consciously not looking for “resources” from advertising or donations, or etc. The only resource they seem to want is motivation.
Which I think is one of the big issues with OSS projects - many are based around a very small number of people being motivated to work on something for free. And it dies if that stops.
I think that having expectations and funding to continue is important, like you say.
But I’m still confused about what you mean by the “resources” comment re: Librewolf.
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/issues/1906
“Hey all, I’m on the LibreWolf team, and it’s true that since the departure of @fxbrit the project has taken a total nosedive when it comes to keeping up to date with Arkenfox and settings in general. We’re still making releases, but settings did not get updated.”
“As @threadpanic said, since fxbrit left we have been in a kind of “maintenance” mode in terms of settings. Mainly because we are really only three people left”
“LW since fxbrit left/died/who-knows has gone to shit - I worked with him behind the scenes to make the right choices and while he would do his own analysis, we always agreed, and his voice influenced them. Now they don’t know what they are doing, and in fact have compromised security and make really stupid decisions. Same goes for all the other forks - really dubious shit going”
Exactly.
“Resources” can refer to many different things, in this case it is motivation/prioritization.
Oh SHIT. I had a feeling since months, as an end-user, that something wasn’t going well. But damn, i did not know that was that bad.
Thanks.
No browser is sustainable without money because
I don’t understand your point.
A Web browser is a complex piece of SW that needs to provide many, many, features and work with great performance. Therefore you need a large team of experienced developers (full-time and maybe volunteers) collaborating on the development and testing. This is cost in labor and infrastructures (servers, storage, internet connection, hosting of platforms, etc)
One such feature that is a must-have is playing videos, from YouTube, Netflix, Prime, Twitch and what have you. Most widely spread video codecs are proprietary, you need a license to implement the decoder and these licenses are expensive. H.264 is one such codec, very widely spread across many content and platforms. You wouldn’t want a web browser that lacks the ability to decode H.264 videos. There are many such codecs that are considered essential, and this cost a lot of money in total.
In conclusion, this is an argument as why developing a web browser costs money and requires a sustainable financial plan, even though it is open-source and developed mostly by volunteers.
My personal opinion: advertisement sucks. I don’t want it anywhere in my life. I would prefer to pay upfront for my web browser if it come to this.
Yeah, no, I understood all of that. I think we all do. I’m just not sure why you felt the need to explain it?
[email protected] is supporting your argument.
Oh. Okay.
Since when did LibreWolf stop development? First I heard of it, and concerning if accurate.
I was just reading about it in another thread that I don’t remember. Not really “stopped” per se but one of the major devs left and the remaining have admitted they’re not able to keep up. I’ll go and see if I can find it again and I’ll edit this comment if I do.
I remember they saying the were too swamped to take on an Android version after Mull dev stopped, which is not the same as stopping. Mull actually stopped development, LibreWolf didn’t - they should not be mentioned in the same sentence like that.
I linked the thread above.