New gecko based browsers are rare nowadays but this one is especially unique to me because it is more than just “firefox with tweaks” like a lot of the ones I’ve come across. The UI is different, it’s working on custom settings, a new more powerful sidebar, a new theming system, and potentially IPFS/Dat support further down the line. It’s very early in development but it’s still impressive as it is.
If you can’t use Gecko because Mozilla is financed by Google, and also can’t use Blink because it’s developed by Google, with what browser engine does that leave you?
Also aren’t you the person who recommends Vivaldi a lot? Vivaldi is a Blink/Chromium, which is developed by Google. I’d rather use the engine Google has less control over
Vivaldi is also proprietary. Seems hypocritical to not even consider Firefox because Mozilla while recommending closed source code.
Like, I don’t particularly like what Mozilla has been doing either, but to say it’s as bad as Google is a massive exaggeration. Google once stole Americans’ healthcare data and got off away scott free.
It is a common mistake to think that FOSS = Privacy and Security, is not more or less than any other software, the purpose of FOSS is another (All the APIs of Google, Facebook, Amazon and others are FOSS and included in many of the other OpenSource apps). The privacy and TOS of each software is governed by the legislation of the countries of origin, so it is always advisable to read them carefully. In European products, such as Vivaldi (Iceland) and others, for example the French browser UR, the European regulations regarding privacy and conditions of use are valid, regulations that do not exist or only poorly in American or Chinese products, such as Opera. But this does not help me, if I use a browser, created in the EU, such as SeaMonkey, when it uses US servers to synchronize the data, those from Google or Mozilla. Besides, Google has removed Chromium Browsers’ ability to use Google servers for sync, forcing them to use their own servers (Vivaldi always had them), but all FF forks continue to use Mozilla’s servers.
Ok but it’s still worse because it isn’t FOSS. The argument you always repeat about “FOSS doesn’t mean it’s private!” does not change the fact that FOSS makes it more trustworthy. That’s a fact you can’t change.
No one is claiming FOSS automatically makes something more private. FOSS means you can read the source code and verify it. That’s literally all there is to it. And it’s not some kind of secret or anything, it’s just the definition of FOSS.
I’d still rather use the software that’s FOSS. I’m not even using any of the features which may give Mozilla any data like Sync.
If Vivaldi is so great and private because it’s an European product, the more reason to make it FOSS. The point of FOSS is to be able to verify what the program is doing. If Vivaldi is so private then why isn’t it FOSS so I can check? You have no argument against that apart from “FOSS isn’t always good” which isn’t really an argument against FOSS.
It is not because of the forks, which surely have nothing to do with Google, but because of the synchronization problem, in the case of FF and forks, if they use Mozilla servers, that if it is related to Google. Vivaldi has its own servers for synchronization, end2end encryption and, although it carries Google APIs by default, it allows the user to deactivate them in the configuration, if they do not need/want them. This is what is not possible in Mozilla, which is financed with Google APIs, which in Vivaldi is not the case. Like Mozilla, it has income from sponsors, whose links and search engines are present in the default browser (none of them from Google), but it allows the user to remove them if they do not use them. This is the difference. It does not have to do if it is Blink, Gecko or even WebKit, there is no more to choose from, since no one has developed a new engine in 20 years, because it is the most complex part of a browser and of those there is, Blink works best with new web formats, because of this is the most used, include MS now use Blink. Dot Browser can be a good alternative, but only if it use own servers for Sync.
You can host your own Sync server or disable it if it bothers you.
https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver
They even provide a script here to delete data already uploaded to Mozilla’s server.
https://linux.pizza provides independent sync server.
I never use Sync, you can’t trust anyone. I use self hosted xbrowsersync.
Blink is developed by Google, which is way worse than being financed by Google. At least you aren’t giving Google more market share. The worst thing that could happen to the internet is a Google web monopoly with blink (and chromium).
Btw vivaldi has been proved to be invasive with user privacy. It’s proprietary software, so if you really want privacy you should avoid it at all costs.
I believe in web engine diversity and right now the only option that we have is Gecko so we have to support Mozilla, even if it’s making some wrong decisions, it’s still way better than Google which is the biggest advertising corporation on earth.
Any monopoly is wrong, but this is irrelevant in matters of the engine, as is also irrelevant who developed which engine or browser code, TOR and the Onion network was developed by the US defense and the NSA. The problem is much more complex and is to avoid the interference in our lives of large monopolies and develop techniques that can deal with them, the code used does not matter, if it does not carry the APIs that include Google, Facebook, MS or Others unrelated. It does not help me if I have to pay for my own server whose reliability I do not know or have to install my own server, which I also do not have, to get away from Google, Mozilla or any other American or Chinese server in the case of Opera. An exotic browser with an experimental engine that does not work on half of the pages I visit is also useless. I am served by an encrypted and secure and reliable synchronization that does not belong to any large company, but to a European cooperative, which even coincides with my political beliefs regarding the organization. I have other browsers, even FF forks, but these I use without sync and I have tried practically all existing browsers and I have stayed with Vivaldi for a simple reason, it is by far the most advanced and best I have ever tried, apart from the reasons that I mentioned before.
How do you know it’s encrypted and secure if you can’t look at the sourcecode?
You can proof it. If your lost your password, you can’t recover your data, because Vivaldi don’t has access to your password, nor at your data, that is the price of privacy. Not like in other sites with the option to recover your password. Apart in which server you can see it’s source code? The part of closed source in Vivaldi is refered to the UI and not user related. Vivaldi knows in which country I am, the OS I use and the version of Vivaldi I use, same statistic data which colect also FF, no privat data nor browser history or tracking, like Chrome, Edge or Opera. A good tool for test websites is Blacklight, you can add it also to your search engine list
https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=%sThat would only verify, that the data they sent you on that first request was encrypted with your password. And that only if you monitor the requests being made.
You can’t verify that the correct binary and/or script is running and that the server isn’t compromised thats true. Thats why people design “zero trust” applications. If you only ever send cyphertext to the server it can’t read anything without the key. If vivaldi was open source you could easily verify that that’s the case. Because it’s closed source you are forced to reverse engineer their binary if you want to be sure. Their EULA forbids this.
5% of the code referring to the UI is protected, the rest is OpenSource and everything is open for auditing. There is nothing hidden regarding privacy or user. What’s more, the modification of these codes by the user is even tolerated and explained in detail in the forum, where there is a sub-forum about it. Precisely Jon von Tetzchner, the founder of the Vivaldi cooperative and certainly not a stranger, has made his opinion very clear about the practices used by Google and the tracking of users, which he totally rejects.
Why?
No it is not. They try to disallow you from doing it in their EULA, even though they know that you are absolutely free to do so in many legislations. (“except as permitted by applicable law”)
Maybe you could ask him about his opinion on the shady companies they do business with?
But you are claiming Firefox forks are related to Mozilla. That’s what I’m basing my response on.
What if they don’t use Mozilla servers? Privacy browsers like LibreWolf have all that stuff stripped away.
If that was your point you should have stated that before. Your previous comment only says:
which makes no sense because forks don’t have to contact Mozilla if they want to.