4mo ago

What happens to Firefox forks if Firefox dies?

With the enshittification of all-things-Google, a lot of us have left Chromium-based browsers for Firefox. But still, over the last 15 years, Firefox has gone from 30%+ market share to about 6% now.

With the big backlash against them over the last week, I've seen a number of people advocating for Librewolf and Waterfox -- Firefox forks focused on security and privacy -- but if Firefox loses what little revenue it has left, what will become of the forks if Firefox dies?

43 comments

They die. Full stop.
Not even Microsoft had the strength to maintain a browser engine, that's why they moved Edge to Chromium, they gave up.
- Maybe if all the forks merge into a single project, and if that project becomes part of some foundation like the Linux foundation or most likely freedesktop, and if some folks from big tech companies get paid to work on it full time (probably google would, for obvious reasons, but it wouldn't be enough), and if distros start shipping that in place of firefox, and if for some reason the less tech savvy get to know about this project...
  ...Then if all of that happens, forks might have a chance of still existing.
  This is how most big open source projects (like Linux, gnome, mesa, etc) thrive. With the catch that while most tech companies have some stake in Linux and friends, no company other than google has any stake in Firefox existing.
  
  I'd say the more likely version of that scenario is not all the forks merging, but them all collaborating on a common base project from which they each can still produce their own spin.
- But microsoft is garbage company so that doesn't say much. They've been trying to remake their settings page for more than a decade and it is still shit.
  
  Bad argument, Microsoft is among the three most valuable companies in the world, when something is important to them they get it done properly (e.g. hyperv is the best made part of windows, because they need it for azure). The settings page doesn't get them money, only nerds care if it's bad, a browser does.
- The dynamics of commercial companies and open source are completely different. Microsoft moving to Chromium was a business decision. They didn't see the value in spending money on a niche browser that didn't give them any leverage. People developing open source aren't doing it for profit or market dominance.
They all die. To maintain that codebase millions of moneys are needed every year and dozens and dozens of devs working on it full time. There's a lot of boring and hard work that will never be replaced by some indie hackers working on their free time that needs to be done.
- I read millions of "monkey" instead of "money" and was trying to understand if you were insulting browser developers or implying that thousands monkeys could to do the same work as a developer
  
  If you have infinite monkeys on IDEs, some subset of 1000 of them will eventually make Firefox.
People are right that they'd die. They'd die or be irrelevant or so full of security holes that many sites would block them on principle of protecting their users.
The reason why they might die sooner rather than later with the corporate and (western) government led seizure and lock-down of the open internet is that a company like Google could introduce a slew of new web standards and just completely overwhelm any devs trying to carry on the work of keeping the code alive. They could in other words bury it in a couple years with a mountain of complex new standards and possibly regulations (another thing big companies love doing when they capture the regulatory agencies is use them to keep out the little alternatives by burdening them with things they with their money and huge size can easily bear).
But whether that happens or whether even with security incidents it struggles on for 4-5 years the open web is at that point doomed. It's doomed short of some very large and powerful actor deciding to take up the mantle. Once upon a time the EU might have wanted to do that but all the talk of chat control, all the desire for anti-piracy crackdowns, etc it's not going to be the EU. If I had to make a guess if there is any chance it's that China or some massive Chinese company does it. But I wouldn't count on it. However they're the only ones with anything to gain at all really who might entirely for their own reasons want to create a browser stack entirely free of the west's control and might open source huge chunks of it to the point open source devs could do the rest.
I would imagine since Firefox is licensed with Mozilla Public License (MPL), that they would be able to continue using the source code and adding additional features and other improvements (as long as they follow the MPL). However, since the base code itself would no longer be getting updates, anyone wanting to continue with a fork would have to fix any bugs and security issues that may be discovered going forward.
- Don’t forget also the need to keep up with new web standards otherwise they will quickly become irrelevant due to not being able to go on new sites and I don’t think that will be possible without another company/foundation funding and taking over the project
  
  Great point! Also, keeping things updated to ensure support with all the other libraries and APIs it may use, supporting new operating systems…
- Firefox’s codebase is of the scale of an operating system. I don’t think people realise just how complex web browsers are. If you took the drivers out of the kernel, Firefox dwarfs Linux.
  It’s not something someone casually just forks and carries on.
  
  Our codebase at work is bigger than Linux (with drivers) and Firefox combined, it gets real wild at scales bigger than a modern OS
All the forks need to make a common engine independent of Mozilla. Pale Moon did it with Goanna and it is shared between Basilisk and K-Meleon as well. The big problem is that any new engine has to beat being filtered by Cloudflare or other WAFs that discriminate by user agent. A bold idea is for all the Firefox forks to rebase off of the new Ladybird engine and abandon the old Gecko codebase entirely.
The chances are some new foundation/non-profit will be created to fund its development.
It's either gonna be great like other community-oriented project (like FreeCAD, Blender, or KDE), or corporate-centric that prioritize industry needs (O3DE, OvertureMaps).
Though, there's Servo and Libweb as potential future replacement. Servo is managed by Linux Foundation Europe. Libweb is managed by Ladybird Browser Initiative and so far have structure like other community FOSS project, like Blender or Godot.
- KDE has two browser that they already maintain. Based on the QtWebEngine. I'd love to see more development on them.
Normally I would say community forks have the power to continue the project. However, in this case I think chrome / safari would eventually add enough new features that Firefox forks can't add quick enough. Mozilla at least has some power in pushing the direction of web-standards, which these forks would lack, as well as the larger development team and some corporate usage of the browser which Mozilla has. I also don't see the smaller development community keeping up with security issues found in the browser, particularly pertinent for corporate marketshare and individuals with a stricter threat model (journalists, dissidents, etc.)
The only other factor, is whether Firefox dissapearing would officially create impetus for an anti-trust case against Google. I doubt so under the current American presidency, but I could see the EU being concerned (even if they lack the power the US has to force the company to split). If something were to happen here there would be substantial change in the browser market, but I wouldn't be too hopeful of this happening.
We really need servo to take off...
Probably the same thing that happened when Netscape died
- It will become Seamonkey?
  
  Better than Seaman, unless you've got a Dreamcast
Honestly, people are overreacting to the ToS changes. Mozilla haven't actually changed what they're doing; they're just removing text they legally can't include since the definition of "selling data" varies by jurisdiction. It doesn't always mean literally selling user data. California is very strict about it for example.
- What? Overreacting to. We store everything you type and will sell it??
  
  Firefox don't store everything you type though.
Most will simply evaporate.
A few will continue to be maintained, but eventually drop off with like one or two slightly stangant active forks.
My opinion is there will be a new Firefox, whether using gecko or servo. Hell, I'd start a new foundation myself if required.
Well I hope someone takes up the source code and continuea to maintain it
Honestly, Firefox would be much better off without Mozilla. A donation model that would fund a small development team that could just focus on making a good browser would work just fine for this.
Hell, all Mozilla need to do is to remove about:config to kill the forks. Due them being Firefox with a user.js (sometimes also a CSS Theme).

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