@rysiek I think supporting igalia and the other forces that work on the @servo project would be the best longer term solution.
Maybe the @TauriApps people would build a browser based on servo at some point.
There are also other interesting new browsers like #ladybird but that seems to be more of a hobby project, even though it's very impressive how much already works, but I think servo is more likely to win in the end as code architecture is important in such complex projects.
servo approach seems to be make a good architecture and implement everything based on standards and tests.
ladybird approach seems to be mainly focused on learning to make a browser with the community and implementing what is needed to make your favourite modern websites and web apps work.
@treefit Then there's several smaller efforts like Dillo, NetSurf, my own, or all the terminal browsers which don't care so much about the popular webapps... Only sites!
@alcinnz@treefit from the browser we can only do so much at restricting bloatware. If your bank forces you to use a 5 MiB JS webapp to make a transfer, they have a lot of power to convince you to choose another browser, sadly.
The problem with forking large projects is that it requires absolutely immense amount of work to maintain the code-base, and that it's really really difficult to get the mind-share and with it — funding.
There are very few success stories. LibreOffice is one.
I kinda want to say we need a serious independent organization that would help fund and at least initially manage forks of huge, important projects that are being failed by their current management.
A large, established organisation would already have the mind-share, and could throw their weight behind a fork in the initial stage. It would also help with funding and solid engineering practices until the fork becomes self-sustaining.
Think of it like Apache Foundation with the difference that software projects would not be supposed to just wither on the vine there.
@rysiek I think there are more forks of (or maybe just browsers with additional features that track) of the Chromium code base than of Firefox.
I also don't think of LibreOffice as a huge success in forking because every time I use it, it takes me several crash cycles before I get the right combination of "do the operation, save, attempt the operation again" to get what I want to accomplish without crashing.
And modern software is so complex, would take days to start on fixing it.
@danlyke show me one independent fork of Chromium?
By "independent" I mean "able to maintain and sustain itself even if Chromium project ceases to exist today". I.e. not just tracking main branch and applying patches — but actually able to fix bugs and continue releasing independently of Chromium.
@rysiek yeah, that probably doesn't fully exist, but Arc and Brave and the DDG browser are probably closer than anything related to Firefox.
We're using WKWebView, but have done some experiments with CEF, knowing we're going there eventually, and felt like we've found some other people at least pushing fixes upstream.
@phryk@rysiek I use LibreWolf. It's basically a hardened Firefox and actively maintained, community driven, is only 2-4 days behind the latest release of Firefox
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