For years I've thought of creating a "paid" Firefox fork that is _just_ Firefox rebranded, but otherwise the exact codebase. The money brought in would be used to pay an open source developer to work strictly on things intended to be sent upstream to the Mozilla Firefox. If nothing else, it would prove whether or not people are willing to pay for Firefox.<p>The problem with Firefox currently is the organizational structure; the way that they need to monetize; the fact that you can't pay for Firefox development. The problem with forks is that they are all "Firefox plus this" or "Firefox without that".
Zen looks like Arc Browser, but Firefox-based and open-source. Exactly what I'm looking for!<p>The UX pattern for tabs in Arc is amazing. No, it's not just "vertical tabs". It's an innovative blend of the concepts of bookmarks and open tabs. Sort of like files: they can be open or closed, and live in a folder hierarchy.<p>But the development of Arc stopped half a year ago (except security Chromium updates), with a well-working Mac version, but Windows version which is barely usable and no Linux support. The creators decided to focus on some sort of "AI agent" browser.<p>So I came looking for alternatives that would be cross-platform, have working adblockers, and preferably be open-source. There are some "Firefox transformation" projects like ArcFox, but they are clumsy to set up and usually only copy the general look, not the actually useful features like nested folders. There are extensions like "Tree style tabs" but they work a different way than Arc.
I recently did this exercise as well. There are a lot of browsers not mentioned that you can find here,[0] but there's one big missing one imo.<p>The Tor browser is forked from Firefox to support the Tor Network. On top of the actual tor network it's filled to the brim with novel and unique privacy enhancing features. Mullvad (the VPN company) recently did a partnership with Tor to create the Mullvad Browser.[1] It's exactly the Tor browser but without the onion protocol part. Instead it just has all the anti-fingerprinting and privacy enhancing features.<p>I ended up going with that browser as it's the strongest privacy-focused Firefox fork option<p>[0] <a href="https://alternativeto.net/software/firefox/" rel="nofollow">https://alternativeto.net/software/firefox/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://support.torproject.org/mullvad-browser/" rel="nofollow">https://support.torproject.org/mullvad-browser/</a>
> The Floorp project is a much newer entrant.... According to its donations page, donors who contribute at the $100 level may submit ads to feature in the new tab page<p>So if I get it right, people can 'donate' money to floorp project in exchange for service (advertisement).<p>Like when I go to the grocery shop and I make a donation, in exchange I get back home with a pack of beer.<p>I didn't know I was donating so much, my dumb ass thought I was just buying stuff. Got to put that on my Tax sheet.
The ecosystem of forks is currently healthy but what concerns me is a lack of Firefox browser support leading to lagging in standards support over time as the browser goes out of fashion for ideological or marketing reasons that this article touches upon.<p>All forks depend on a strong Firefox base and no fork seems to do heavy lifting in terms of web standards, or as a prioritized feature. Instead, they focus on enhancing UX or adhering to open source ideals, but this does little to improve the core browser. :-/<p>It remains to be seen if we’ll have a new Phoenix moment out of Firefox…? Or does that future belong to Ladybird?
> Waterfox is a browser that began in 2011 as an independent project by Alex Kontos while he was a student. It was acquired and then un-acquired by Internet-advertising company System1. Its site does not, at least at the moment, have enough specifics about the browser's differences and features to compel me to take it for a test drive.
Are the others that much more descriptive in their features on their website?<p>IMO Waterfox being around for 14 years warrants a bit of a closer look as to why it’s still around after so long…
I read in a few places that LibreWolf's anti-fingerprinting features are breaking websites. One person complained that their meeting got scheduled incorrectly because the browser was messing with the user's time zone (for privacy reasons).
The biggest issue with forks, which is pointed out in the article, is Mozilla still does the heavy lifting. None of the forks have the resources (and probably interest) to fully fork Firefox and make it their own codebase to maintain.<p>Personally, I like LibreWolf and Mullvad browser. Hopefully they can keep up to date well into the future.
The problem with Firefox forks I have:
- you don't know when they are gonna keel over and die.
- non-existent support from distro package repositories. Void Linux for example has an understandable policy of not providing Firefox and Chromium forks. I really don't wanna install them from appimages or fatpak.<p>I have found using firefox provided by my distro with something like arkenfox to be a decent medium but it sucks that this is required in the first place. I wonder if distro repository maintainers try to package Firefox with better defaults but I don't know how to look for that.
If Mozilla needs additional funding, I'd much rather contribute to the project with an "opt-out" subscription plan (say for $20/year) to help support the project without giving away personal data. The author correctly points out that these forks are dependent on Firefox's continued upstream development; however, having this option would provide people with the choice to support the project without giving up personal data, and Firefox and its forks could continue to be sustainably developed.
The browser engine landscape presents an interesting paradox: we have an open specification, yet multiple implementations with their own quirks and incompatibilities. This seems to undermine the very purpose of standardization.<p>Consider our current situation:<p>- The spec is largely influenced by the same big tech companies that develop the engines<p>- Major engines (Blink, WebKit, Gecko) are all open source<p>- Significant engineering resources are dedicated to maintaining compatibility<p>What's the actual benefit of this redundancy? In other domains, we often consolidate around reference implementations. While I understand the historical and theoretical arguments for implementation diversity (preventing monoculture, fostering innovation, avoiding vendor lock-in), I wonder if these benefits still outweigh the costs in 2025.<p>I'd be interested in hearing perspectives on whether maintaining multiple engines is still the optimal approach for the web ecosystem, or if we're just perpetuating technical debt from an earlier era.
I've been using zen lately mostly for the combination of "essentials" + "workspace" tab management scheme. I love having a space for tabs while also having a spot to pin stuff like email and bluesky which doesn't necessarily fit into one category or other.<p>Admittedly I haven't tried many other options, except sidebery which was good but not quite there for me.
If you're rich you should consider this a menu. Chrome is about to be split from Google which will be a soft reboot that could go badly or really well, but at the least will lead into an awkward period for them. Alternatively, they won't be split, which will create public anger and likely true accusations of quid pro quo, and possibly a tiny bluesky-sized stampede to alternatives.<p>Chrome will be told they can't pay Firefox for nothing anymore, and Firefox will reply with a not-uninstallable crypto casino or something (why are you complaining, you can turn it off by simply changing 6 unintelligible about:settings, hiding the banner with CSS, and blocking the telemetry and auto-updates at your router...)<p>Grab one of these, and run a TV commercial for a week or two. You'll get 20% market share in a couple months. Hire all of these fork developers, and let them keep running their own projects as forks of yours. Pick up people who get laid off from Firefox.<p>Zen and Floorp look interesting, and <i>librewolf.overrides.cfg</i> is new to me. Making Zen your main sell for marketing purposes, but also distributing LibreWolf for people who prefer a classic setup would make sense. Or if you speak Japanese, replace Zen with Floorp.<p>If you think you can do better than Mozilla, here's your chance! One day we'll be explaining to people that Apache Firefox is unmaintained buggy garbage, and that when old people say "Firefox" they mean Zen.
> The Floorp project is a much newer entrant. It is developed by a community of Japanese students called Ablaze. Development is hosted on GitHub, and the project solicits donations via GitHub donations. According to its donations page, donors who contribute at the $100 level may submit ads to feature in the new tab page—but the ads, which are displayed as shortcuts with a "sponsored" label, can be turned off in the settings. I've been unable to find any information about the project governance or legal structure of Ablaze.<p>So a group of contributors, presumably upset about Mozilla making "user-hostile" changes like displaying ads in the new tab page, create a fork of Firefox, and then solicit donations for their fork using the <i>exact same</i> revenue model?
In Firefox, you can choose a local html file as your home page, but not as a new tab page. This is allegedly because of some security concerns. Using extentions allows for a limited workaround where the page needs to be re-imported each time it is edited.<p>The surprising part to me is that the same applies to the forks too.<p>If opening a local file for the home page not a security concern, why should it be for the new tab page. I understand that giving local files access to extensions could lead to issues, however, it should not need an extension to use a local file as a new tab page.<p>Note: I maintain my bookmarks in a local html file, which I make into my home page, new tab page, across browsers, and then sync this file across devices using Syncthing.
I've tried using LibreWolf on MacOS but there's a few annoying bugs.<p>HN has a really small text size for me and I usually read HN at 120-133% text size. LibreWolf does not remember this setting on per-site basis and even opening HN-to-HN link in a new tab doesn't preserve text size and I need to increase text size constantly.<p>In addition, posting images to Bluesky doesn't work. Every attempt results in an image of proper size but consisting of only vertical lines. For this, I need to fall back to Firefox or use Safari.<p>Even if the first of above problems is a "feature", the latter is definitely a bug. I haven't filled a report yet. But for now, I'm planning to test Zen.
There's an article about insecurities in Firefox (<<a href="https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html" rel="nofollow">https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...</a>>), which is a few years old now, but it made me curious as to whether it actually is better to run a Firefox fork, like Librewolf; Firefox itself; or a Chromium fork like Ungoogled Chromium.<p>Unfortunately I don't really understand the implications about the security issues and I don't know whether any of the issues have been solved, so I don't know how to evaluate the security risks versus the privacy risks.
I'm generally happy with the "original" Firefox. Just wished it played better with KDE Plasma, especially on Wayland. It ignores the window decoration settings among other things.
Not released yet, but honorable mention to ladybird: <a href="https://ladybird.org/" rel="nofollow">https://ladybird.org/</a>
I switched to GNU IceCat about a week ago, following the ToS / privacy changes in FF. I have never used chrome, and never will on principle, in fact I now use zero google services, or best I can. Disabling webfonts / google fonts has been interesting. Anyway, IceCat is growing on me, once I figured out how to gradually enable bits of js for the sites I frequent (not many left at this point). I have a physical aversion to adverts, so I feel better that my limited browsing data is not being sold by mozilla. One thing I havent yet worked out is enabling webGL in IceCat, since I want to get back into my Zig/wasm/WebGL stuff soon.<p>I'm interested if HN has stats for visitor browser-agent, but also for account-holders. Since I wonder how many users actually switched in the last month, or if it was all just huff and puff.
Haven't seen this mentioned yet, not a fork but a suite of configs and mods for Firefox.<p><a href="https://codeberg.org/celenity/Phoenix" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/celenity/Phoenix</a>
Interesting discussion! It's true that many Firefox forks focus on UX and privacy, but as some have pointed out, they still rely on Mozilla for core web standard updates. It would be cool to see a fork that really pushes the boundaries of web tech, maybe incorporating some Rust-based engine components for better performance and security. Has anyone experimented with Servo in a fork? Also, the mention of the Tor browser is spot on - it's a privacy powerhouse, but perhaps not for everyday browsing. I wonder if a fork could combine the best of both worlds?
IMO no real need for anything but Firefox Beta and Nightly now. A bit faster, faster features. Finally, native vertical tabs. Fully functioning Ublock origin. Browsing life is good.
I like the idea of using a Firefox fork, but one thing in particular keeps me tied to Firefox - my Firefox account and the sync feature.<p>I make heavy use of bookmarks and switch between devices frequently. Manually keeping those synced would be a bit of a nightmare.<p>Assuming that Firefox forks can use Firefox extensions, I imagine I could get around this problem by using some kind of bookmark extension. I don't know what options are available for that, though.
Seamonkey needs more love. The best one for me, does not try to be "modern" - keeps the interface unchanged and only updates real functionality.
I've been using Zen since it's first public release and I must say, the development peace is simply incredible!<p>It's rough around the edges sometimes, but the quality of life features are chef's kiss:<p><Ctrl + Shift + C> to copy the current webpage, workspaces, even an easier profile manager (just like chrome's).
This recent Mozilla stuff has got me wondering if one could fork Firefox, strip out the AI/adware code, then sell the binaries. How much would people pay (who would pay for a web browser)? Just Firefox, minus the crap. Would it generate enough revenue to cover the maintenance costs? Etc, etc.
Gnu IceCat for me with Privacy Badger and libreJS. I would pay 10$ every month for Gnu IceCat, the <i>ONLY</i> firefox fork with no telemetry.<p><i>the ONLY webkit based zero telemetry browser is Kagis Orion</i>
> Mozilla's actions have been rubbing many Firefox fans the wrong way as of late<p>Just wait until they discover that the web doesn't allow arbitrary browsers anymore, due to a certain "security" company doing deep inspection and blocking anything that isn't Safari, Firefox or Chrome.
I held off for a long time and tried to find multiple ways to "make Firefox work" and eventually just gave up on that. There are multiple ways to preserve the rights of web users and Mozilla isn't doing a great job there, so stop trying to save something that isn't working and redirect those efforts into something that will.
It is an indictment on the state of the web that regardless of Mozilla's missteps, Firefox remains the best choice for a secure, open-source web browser that isn't another chromium reskin.
Microsoft, a company that competes directly with Google, thought it was a good idea to use Chromium as a base for Edge. Why doesn't Firefox switch its efforts into improving Chromium for users instead of reimplementing so many pieces?