I know it's in bad taste to complain about downvotes on HN, but why is this downvoted?
It's a legitimate question, in a realm that many people including in HN's general demographic don't consider.
If someone wants to learn something, why not help them instead of downvoting into oblivion because they don't know or disagree with something you know/believe?
Edit to respond to edit:
The biggest reason I think is that there's no way a fork would survive - the only way that it could would be if Microsoft/Apple/Facebook/$SOMEBODY_WITH_MONEY threw their weight behind it, which is unlikely, because any change which harms users will either help or be neutral to any of these companies.
I think it's the opposite. A lot of the HN demographic has in fact mulled this over time and time again, and has no patience for those who don't account for the possibility that one day, the monopolist will stop being a nice guy when there is every incentive to do that.
I would rather educate than downvote, but downvoting has gotten to be more emotional than based on the site guidelines, so not everyone sticks to that.
(FWIW, I don't give a crap about up/downvotes, I want to engage in a deep discussion.)
Back in the day when it was FF vs. Microsoft Internet Explorer the need for a competing FOSS browser seemed very compelling, but I don't think FF won marketshare on that, rather it won on merits: FF was better than IE.
Today the situation seems different. To me it seems to make sense to let the engine become a standardized component (developed FOSS-style) incorporating work by Google for speed, security, and reliability, and let the diversity and competition happen on a higher, more user-facing level, in terms of policy and politics and UI/UX and so on.
If people wanted features, why was Opera always so niche? It used to be so far ahead in features. I guess Brave today has quite a few features. Maybe Vivaldi.. I haven't looked really.
I think the real issue is that the vast majority of users don't really care about browser features beyond a certain point, a point which all modern browsers have easily covered. You could sit a person in front of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari and they'd barely notice. If there's attachment to a certain brand, it's mostly emotional. Arguing that people should use X over Y is like arguing that they should drink Pepsi over Coca Cola..
It's hard to differentiate a browser in such a market. It's just a window to the web, with tabs and bookmarks and a handful of features. And an adblocker extension, for some 30% of users. Beyond that, it just needs to work and be fast.
> The biggest reason I think is that there's no way a fork would survive
If the fork offers something compelling to entice users then it would presumably survive, otherwise not, but would they save FF then?
The whole problem under discussion here is that FF is losing marketshare. The things that differentiate FF in the minds of the mass consumers aren't directly related to the browser engine. Chrome/Chromium is arguably better on the fundamentals (speed, security, reliability) so why not take their core and implement user-attracting features on top of it?
I think the idea of having competing FOSS browser engines is largely a holdover from the bad old days of Internet Explorer. The main reason that browser engine diversity might be useful is that it makes for a certain robustness in the face of errors and crashes. If everyone is using the same browser then everyone is vulnerable to the same zero-days, for example.
It's a legitimate question, in a realm that many people including in HN's general demographic don't consider.
If someone wants to learn something, why not help them instead of downvoting into oblivion because they don't know or disagree with something you know/believe?
Edit to respond to edit:
The biggest reason I think is that there's no way a fork would survive - the only way that it could would be if Microsoft/Apple/Facebook/$SOMEBODY_WITH_MONEY threw their weight behind it, which is unlikely, because any change which harms users will either help or be neutral to any of these companies.