Can’t help feeling the “-Libre” “Libre-“ branding on projects is cursed.
Naming things matters and if FireFox had been called WebLibre or LibreBrowser it would have been far less appealing.
There’s just something lame about it and it’s too many syllables, same deal with XLibre.
Galanwe · 1h ago
> There’s just something lame about it
It's even more lame when you're French.
Joke aside, I agree with you, the "libre" suffix/prefix carries some undertones of "it's going to be old and ugly but open source".
IshKebab · 57m ago
I agree. It's lame, difficult to pronounce, and clearly identifies the project as something that only RMS-level uber-nerds would care about. Terrible name.
1gn15 · 1m ago
Given the current situation on Android, we definitely need more RMS-level uber-nerds!
elashri · 3h ago
I think this should be specified that it is only "Android" Firefox fork.
It is added to the growing list of Firefox forks on Android
- Iceraven
- Fennec
- Waterfox
- Tor
- IronFox
- Firefox Focus (By Mozilla itself)
Any others?
yupyupyups · 2h ago
>IronFox
Judging by the commit logs, the main two maintainers are one anonymous guy (nothing linking his profile to a real person) and some Chinese guy (is he a Chinese national or not?)
Although these may be perfectly well-meaning people, we can't just trust them to maintain something so critical as a web browser.
I fully respect peoples' right to anonymity, but such projects need at least one core maintainer to be an identifiable person, imo. Just to establish trust and accountability in case anything does happen.
I hope this is not taken the wrong way and that you understand what I'm getting at here.
komali2 · 5m ago
I don't necessarily disagree but I was quite easily able to find more information about one of the devs: https://celenity.dev/about/
Yes it's not a name and face, but I can understand wanting to maintain separation between government identity and online identity
I didn't see any others. I'm not quite clear where you're getting this idea that either of these people are PRC nationals either, or why that would really matter. The PRC is huge in the FOSS space, and it's not like I'm a huge fan of the country (I live in Taiwan) but credit where it's due.
mossTechnician · 1h ago
Many of the browsers you mentioned above are basically Firefox reskins with better settings out of the box.
I downloaded WebLibre out of curiosity and can say it's different from those other browsers. I've never seen a mobile browser that lets you run Tor-enabled private tabs, or mobile-friendly multi-account containers. The UI also bears nearly no semblance to Firefox (besides the rendering engine, only the extension management area reminds me of it).
Semaphor · 2h ago
Is it? They say it’s using Gecko + Mozilla Android Components. Which would probably make it similar to FF in many ways, but not a fork. I didn’t look further into it though (as I want FF, especially Mozilla sync)
maelito · 2h ago
Interesting. Just one hour ago, I was removing the Amazon & co links that Firefox imposes to users on the home page.
I was recommending Firefox to my friend to avoid a weather app's ads. Turns out he got ads on Firefox too. Removing them is easy in the settings but not for the general public.
The question though is : where will the funds of WebLibre come ? Implementing a browser is hard. If Firefox continues to drift, who will pay for the development of the engine ?
The .eu in the domain lets me think this is a european project, but I wasn't able to find a "about us" page.
There's maybe a couple dozen forks of FireFox or other Chromium-based browsers out there. Probably more, but certainly enough that this headline made me give a slight eyeroll, thinking "another one, huh? OK, so what's actually different here?"
Who pays for it? Many are FOSS projects, specially where privacy is concerned. Plain old FireFox still tracks telemetry, which is more than some people like. People hate being tracked and having their every thought examined for its advertising potential to the point that people build privacy-focused browsers for free as a public good.
Sometimes donations work as well, like how the Tor project works. But Tor is running servers, so their financial needs are much heavier.
adithyassekhar · 2h ago
I can't set Google as my auto complete provider. It's not on the list.
I was able to set Google as default search engine but had to go to a separate blank search page and type it out.
It would've been nice if Google was in the main list.
Runs a local AI model for suggesting tab and container names. It supports tab containers.
Suggests you to install ublock origin on first step itself.
There's tor, tree view tabs and duck duck go styled bangs synced from a number of repos.
thedevilslawyer · 2h ago
You may be missing the point of this browser.
adithyassekhar · 1h ago
I admit that was definitely tongue in cheek.
But brave is on the front page. Maybe they're better.
I would like to keep my data from bad actors with illegal ops or malware, but willing to sacrifice some to a legitimate corporation with data protection rules set up for a better personalized experience. I guess chrome with ublock origin lite is all I need.
Is this browser exclusively for the .1% that will not even load a google web page?
How current is this still? Asking as a complete noob. I don't expect Firefox's architecture to have changed much, but it's been 3 years, so it could have improved a lot, and there are things I know about that are outdated in this document.
For instance, the two mentioned Linux sandbox escapes [1] involve two things that have disappeared in many setups: X11 and pulseaudio. We now have Wayland and pipewire, which should both be better in this aspect IIUC. The mentioned bug related to X11 was also closed 3 years ago.
Firefox Development is essentially dead. Mozilla fucked us over collectively.
Sure this particular bug has been fixed but Firefox Security is nothing compared to the Millions Google is paying to ensure security. Just the amount of paid, full time eyeballs on chromium security alone makes a huge difference.
Exactly what I was thinking: a modern privacy first proposal may be better suited with starting from chromium, even if it hurts feelings
benob · 2h ago
Even if it's not on topic, that post is quite interesting.
ForHackernews · 1h ago
Maybe all of this is true, but it's a different threat model than I'm concerned with. I'm not that worried about malware exploits, I'm far more worried about software behaving "correctly" in a user-hostile manner.
mightysashiman · 38m ago
I'm curious what kind of reasoning with coming up with such a project, when there are already so many alternatives
attogram · 2h ago
So is trying to compete with Brave browser?
poolnoodle · 2h ago
Not really sure what the point of this is. As others have said, there is already an abundance of privacy focused Firefox forks on Android. I think Ladybird is where the future of user respecting web browsing is at.
Naming things matters and if FireFox had been called WebLibre or LibreBrowser it would have been far less appealing.
There’s just something lame about it and it’s too many syllables, same deal with XLibre.
It's even more lame when you're French.
Joke aside, I agree with you, the "libre" suffix/prefix carries some undertones of "it's going to be old and ugly but open source".
It is added to the growing list of Firefox forks on Android
- Iceraven
- Fennec
- Waterfox
- Tor
- IronFox
- Firefox Focus (By Mozilla itself)
Any others?
Judging by the commit logs, the main two maintainers are one anonymous guy (nothing linking his profile to a real person) and some Chinese guy (is he a Chinese national or not?)
Although these may be perfectly well-meaning people, we can't just trust them to maintain something so critical as a web browser.
I fully respect peoples' right to anonymity, but such projects need at least one core maintainer to be an identifiable person, imo. Just to establish trust and accountability in case anything does happen.
I hope this is not taken the wrong way and that you understand what I'm getting at here.
Yes it's not a name and face, but I can understand wanting to maintain separation between government identity and online identity
Here's another Ironfox dev: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsaky/
I didn't see any others. I'm not quite clear where you're getting this idea that either of these people are PRC nationals either, or why that would really matter. The PRC is huge in the FOSS space, and it's not like I'm a huge fan of the country (I live in Taiwan) but credit where it's due.
I downloaded WebLibre out of curiosity and can say it's different from those other browsers. I've never seen a mobile browser that lets you run Tor-enabled private tabs, or mobile-friendly multi-account containers. The UI also bears nearly no semblance to Firefox (besides the rendering engine, only the extension management area reminds me of it).
I was recommending Firefox to my friend to avoid a weather app's ads. Turns out he got ads on Firefox too. Removing them is easy in the settings but not for the general public.
The question though is : where will the funds of WebLibre come ? Implementing a browser is hard. If Firefox continues to drift, who will pay for the development of the engine ?
The .eu in the domain lets me think this is a european project, but I wasn't able to find a "about us" page.
Who pays for it? Many are FOSS projects, specially where privacy is concerned. Plain old FireFox still tracks telemetry, which is more than some people like. People hate being tracked and having their every thought examined for its advertising potential to the point that people build privacy-focused browsers for free as a public good.
Sometimes donations work as well, like how the Tor project works. But Tor is running servers, so their financial needs are much heavier.
Runs a local AI model for suggesting tab and container names. It supports tab containers.
Suggests you to install ublock origin on first step itself.
There's tor, tree view tabs and duck duck go styled bangs synced from a number of repos.
I would like to keep my data from bad actors with illegal ops or malware, but willing to sacrifice some to a legitimate corporation with data protection rules set up for a better personalized experience. I guess chrome with ublock origin lite is all I need.
Is this browser exclusively for the .1% that will not even load a google web page?
For instance, the two mentioned Linux sandbox escapes [1] involve two things that have disappeared in many setups: X11 and pulseaudio. We now have Wayland and pipewire, which should both be better in this aspect IIUC. The mentioned bug related to X11 was also closed 3 years ago.
[1] https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1129492
Sure this particular bug has been fixed but Firefox Security is nothing compared to the Millions Google is paying to ensure security. Just the amount of paid, full time eyeballs on chromium security alone makes a huge difference.