Re: basilisk-browser
Hi.
On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 08:40:51AM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> > That would mean (in the context of Debian) that one would have to
> > (a) use the Basilisk-bundled libs (generally a no-no in Debian)
> > or (b) use a different name & brand. Yes, we know this story with
> > Firefox/Iceweasel. That'd mean that the packaging effort would
> > be a bit... more interesting.
>
> The main distinction, however, was that in the Debian case, Mozilla
> objected to the backporting of security-sepcific fixes and then
> continuing to call the patched version "Firefox." As I recall, all that
> was before they started offering ESR builds, so every version of Firefox
> was a quickly moving target with at most a few months of support.
It still is, for me at least.
I miss old days where they gave me one Iceweasel version for the
duration of stable release.
> Once the Firefox project started offering builds that made sense within
> Debian's stable release process, the Iceweasel branding could be dropped
> and builds could be included in Debian which both satisfied the needs of
> patching security vulnerabilities and the upstream branding
> requirements.
If only Debian project did something about Firefox privacy settings.
Let's face it - Mozilla are hypocrites. They loudly 'care about users'
privacy', but then force their 'opt-out telemetry' on you.
Debian's Firefox build disables some of the offending settings by
default, but not all of them.
At least at Google they are honest enough to say - 'we will spy on you
and we do not give a f*** about your option'.
> A project that says "you can't even change the build flags" strikes me
> as not especially inclined to display the flexibility that Mozilla
> eventually did.
Moreover, a project is x86-only. How exactly such upstream will react to
patches that, for example, fix segfault/sigill on armhf?
> In fact, since they are so concerned about "disastrous"
> library combinations and insist on their bundled/patched versions being
> used, I find it surprising that they do not specifically dictate which
> compilers are authorized to create branded builds.
Careful, they might be reading this ;)
> > > Does Debian project really needs yet another Iceweasel incident?
> >
> > What the world needs (badly) is more browser alternatives. I'm
> > seeing everything converging towards the dystopia where one huge
> > corporation controls the server and the client. We had that, and
> > it wasn't pretty; nowadays with smartphones, always-on, IoT and
> > perhaps worse, we are far more vulnerable to that (business?) model.
> >
> I agree. I have already begun encountering sites which behave badly in
> Firefox, requiring me to switch to Chromium (and in case Chrome itself,
> uggh). I definitely do not want to return to the bad old days where
> most websites had something like "Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.5+"
> on every page :-(
It's happened already. The catch there is that you need Chrome to
display that 'best viewed in' badge.
Reco
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