I'm happy with this. Some extensions are so important they should be integrated into the browsers themselves. NoScript, uBlock Origin, uMatrix and Privacy Badger should just be standard browser features.
That would give the browser owners control over ad blocking behaviours, while they rely on funding from companies which sell ads. That's not a great situation for the users. The authors providing an unopinionated API for plugins is much safer.
You're absolutely right. Though the problem is the conflict of interest, not the idea that these things should be browser features.
The truth is everyone trusta these particular extensions and so they should have more privileges and deeper integration. For example, Google's new extension APIs actually make a lot of sense: they allow extensions to do useful things without actually looking at user data. This is a big improvement and it should be imposed on all extensions on their store. It's just that uBlock Origin is so important that it shouldn't be subjected to these limitations. That's why I say it might as well become a browser feature.
Indeed, it also raises the question: Why do we pay for something like MS Office but not for a browser?
I think I'd pay 50/year or so for Firefox.. Even if Chrome is free. In fact I already donate about half that. But the point of course is getting a lot of people to do that so they can achieve independence from Google.
I wouldn't pay for a browser, they all track me, or try to, and experiment on me, and extract personally identifiable information which I am told is "anonymized" but you'd have to be a complete moron to believe that.
I'm already paying with all the data Mozilla and Google extract from me. In fact, they should pay me. I haven't asked for or wanted any of the new browser features which have appeared since, say, 2001. They all serve somebody else, not me.
Yeah, what's up with these experiements? Sometimes I run htop and notice lots of Chromium processes with field-trial-id parameters. Don't think I ever signed up for this!
I am also actively looking for a way to fund Firefox.
I have donated to the servo project under the Linux Foundation and I'll possibly pay for Firefox VPN when it becomes available if I know the money goes into the corporation and not the foundation (yep, weird, but the corporation is where the browser gets developed. And money only goes from the corporation to the foundation, so if I want to support the development of the browser I guess that's how it has to be.)
but if they are already taking money from Google, why should I donate to Firefox?
IMO companies that aren't getting direct money from ad businesses deserve my donations more.
There's no guarantee that reaching independence from Google will stop Firefox from getting Google money, disabling features that made Firefox different or cutting jobs.
Most of their revenue comes from Google (for providing it as the default search engine in the browser) because they can't get enough revenue from donations to pay for their work. If they got enough money from donations, they wouldn't need to rely on Google's spare change.
Do you realize that 0 donations go to Firefox development?
Firefox development is done by Mozilla Corporation (that doesn't accept any donations, AFAIK). A part of their earnings are given to their owner, Mozilla Foundation, that you are suggested to donate to, and it may not be a bad idea, but it does not finance Firefox development in any way.
Or they can just cripple the APIs so extensions don’t work as effectively anymore. Kind of what happened in practice with Safari (although this was not malicious).
I'm not because without extensions that now you think they should be standard browser features actually existing you may not even have imagined about those features in the first place.
Or to put it in another way: browser developers cannot imagine every possible use case that may come out of browsers nor are always the best judges of what is important and what not. It is just a matter of limited human imagination. The combined imagination of all potential extension authors is much greater than the combined imagination of whoever makes decisions about the features in a single browser - and extension authors do not have to convince anyone about adding those features in the browser, they can just throw them at the wall (users) and see what sticks.
For a similar see X11 vs Wayland and how the latter has to make application-specific extensions for functionality provided by programs written using functionality the former provided since practically forever.
> I'm not because without extensions that now you think they should be standard browser features actually existing you may not even have imagined about those features in the first place.
I agree. I'm not saying we shouldn't have extensions. The entire ecosystem should be healthy, varied and with a low barrier to entry. I'm saying some extensions turned out to be so incredibly important that they really ought to be installed by default for every user. The only thing that stops uBlock Origin from being a browser feature is the fact it is an extension.
I installed uBlock Origin not only in my own browsers but also in the browsers of every single computer I have ever used. Sometimes people even comment on how much nicer the whole web browsing experience has become and they can't explain why when I ask them. People also seem to magically become immune to malware since malicious ads are no longer being shown and malware domains are being blocked.
When an extension has such an immensely positive impact on your users, browser developers need to recognize that fact and integrate it into the browser. At the very least they should ship the extension with the default browser package.
There isn't a very wide gap between builtin and "we bundle this extension by default" - which was always an option. The difference would have been marginal if Mozilla wanted to make it so.
Open source has an advantage when it sets itself up as basic infrastructure that can be tailored to many roles. It is notable that Brave, being started by a CTO from Mozilla with extensive experience in Mozilla, went with Chromium as the browser base for whatever reason.
Maybe if Firefox hadn't damaged its extension ecosystem instead Brave's niche could maybe have been done with extensions. Who knows. The former userbase has been delivering powerful votes of no confidence against Firefox for a decade now.
> There isn't a very wide gap between builtin and "we bundle this extension by default" - which was always an option. The difference would have been marginal if Mozilla wanted to make it so.
I was just warning people. Depending on something like umatrix that also uses "lists" that aren't being updated should at least be known about. I wouldn't recommend using it without combining it with something like noscript or ublock (depending on how aggressive you are).
I'm very worried about this, to be honest. There doesn't appear to be anything even remotely close to a proper replacement for uMatrix. The thought of going back to the relentless spyware that is the web today (without uMatrix) is literally scary.
Someone here (long-ago thread) suggested uBlock Origin but it doesn't come anywhere near the functionality of uMatrix.
I'll continue using uMatrix and it continues to work perfectly but if Mozilla ever breaks it with incompatible changes, I'm at a loss what to do. Keeping fingers crossed it works for a long time.
I'd be happy to pay substantial money for something like uMatrix.
uBO static filters work fine as a replacement for most uM rules, except that you have to write them by hand instead of the convenient table UI that uM had.
The first three lines disable a whole bunch of things on all websites, then the fourth selectively re-enables some of them (@@ are exception rules) in 1p cases. Then for each web property I have a section that selectively re-enables more things for that web property's domains (exception rules with a domain= filter).
Eg the first rule in the GH section says that github.com is allowed to make websocket and XHR requests to s3.amazonaws.com. If that line wasn't there, the very first line's rule would've blocked it.
Notice that 1p JS appears to be enabled by the fourth line, but I actually have dynamic rules to prevent JS by default, unless enabled per site:
The reason I do this with dynamic rules instead of static filters is that uBO has the ability to simulate noscript tags on websites where it disabled JS, but it only does that when JS is disabled via the `no-scripting` dynamic rule, not when it's disabled via static filters.
The only thing that uM does and uBO doesn't is cookies, so I still use uM for that.
