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What happens to Firefox forks if Firefox dies? (lemmy.today)

submitted 4 months ago by nothingcorporate@lemmy.today to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

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[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 110 points 4 months ago (15 children)

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.

[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 44 points 4 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 21 points 4 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 14 points 4 months ago

but them all collaborating on a common base project from which they each can still produce their own spin