I really enjoy seeing new projects, especially now with Mozilla's updated TOS, but this project's page really bothers me!
Why include a feature comparison table with browsers like Chrome and Edge, but leave out Firefox? Your project is built on Firefox, and you even borrowed half of its name. Attribution matters. If Mozilla were to shut down Firefox and all its users left, would Waterfox even survive?
You're absolutely right but attribution is still the core issue here. I clicked on the page because it seemed like a promising alternative to Firefox, and I expected the focus to be on how it differs from Firefox. Instead, I was surprised to see Firefox completely ignored, especially when the project is clearly built on its foundation and even borrows part of its name. It feels like a missed opportunity to acknowledge the very platform that made Waterfox possible in the first place. Transparency and credit matter, especially in open-source projects.
You aren't wrong, at all, but as mentioned I have run into issues with this in the past. I don't have enough income for the rigmarole Mozilla would put us through, even though I attempted in the past.
Thanks for keeping Waterfox alive despite Mozilla's hurdles. The feature list is great, exactly what people need when looking for a Firefox alternative. Putting it on the homepage would help a lot. Appreciate your work!
OOC, what's the nature of development? Is it the case that this browser is a set of patches you maintain on top of Firefox trunk, or do you have to do some surgery every time Firefox makes a release? Do you try to keep up with Firefox releases?
They aren't hiding the fact that they forked, so it's not dishonest. Nobody really expects a fork to never merge again from upstream. The point of it is increased privacy as opposed to improving the browser fundamentally anyway. I don't give a fuck if they do or don't say "we still merge from upstream btw" (and they did hard fork at some point, so I highly doubt they even try to keep up). This isn't a mere rebranding of Firefox to steal credit.
Yeah, reading this page with no mention of Firefox feels a bit weird - I was asking myself the whole time what the relationship is. All I needed was something saying "a privacy-preserving fork of Firefox" or similar to put that to bed so I could concentrate on the rest of the content.
Thank you for maintaining this, glad to see it's still going. It was funny to see Mozilla fumble their policy update while apparently trying to be vague.
I see your headline features are anti-tracking, private tabs, and container tabs, but do you still do any performance optimizations beyond Firefox, either in code or by compiler?
Ah, I see you mention this for 6.5.0:
"We have now bumped the “tuned” CPU code generation to match Skylake2 processor instruction sets. This should result in better performance if you have an Intel Skylake (or equivalent AMD processor) or better."
Do you continue to see some measurable performance improvements in WF over FF thanks to compiler optimizations?
Why include a feature comparison table with browsers like Chrome and Edge, but leave out Firefox? Your project is built on Firefox, and you even borrowed half of its name. Attribution matters. If Mozilla were to shut down Firefox and all its users left, would Waterfox even survive?