844
It just keeps getting worse - Firefox to "evolve into a modern AI browser"
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
844 points (93.8% liked)
Technology
77873 readers
4879 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's a good idea to put first. Of course, like do no evil, priorities change, so we'll need to keep a close eye on this.
Transparent is good, but if he things he's going to add value to monetization, he's smoking crack. There's nothing we want from a browser that's not already provided by a plugin.
Nobody wants that. We already had all we wanted from them in trusted software.
I don't know if that is the reason but I wonder if the recent ruling that made Firefox loose on the cash income from Google as a default search engine has them doing a similar type of deal with AI companies, even Google, like, Firefox has a built-in interface for AI and the backend you can choose but the default one is one that some AI company pay a fee to be.
If that is the case I think it is fine, it is like a wink-wink situation, you have to have it enabled by default and with a default provider for it to be worth something for someone to pay for the privilege, and then the users can simply change it be gone with it without affecting the payout. (Unless the pay or renew pay has some metric like use statistics)
Its impossible to exist without money and you won't buy a browser so
You're right, we should be giving money to Librewolf and Waterfox.
Librewolf doesn't actually have their own browser. They provide Firefox with a slightly modified configuration. Your comment is like saying we should give our money to door dash instead of $burger-joint despite door dash having no kitchens no equipment no beef and no cooks.
$burger-joint should have thought about that before making Door Dash the only usable ordering method, cramming AI into their lobby.
You seem to have lost track of the analogy read it again and figure it out.
I think I actually nailed that response, the only way you could see it as lacking is if you were trying to forcefully inject preconceived notions like "local joint good, door dash bad" into a situation where the "local joint" is a corporate entity shilling AI and "door dash" as an open source community project.
You said we should give our money to the privacy respecting waterfox and librewolf. This is laudable but waterfox is a build of old firefox and librewolf is a build of new firefox. Much like doordash is only a way to get burgers from a grill to your door they are not themselves an alternative to $burger-joint librewolf is only a way to get what ls basically Firefox to your machine without the extra crap you don't want.
Even if you support librewolf you won't have a viable alternative browser because they are functionally incapable of making one and there is no reason to believe making one is even their mission. You aren't actually replacing firefox just consuming it in a downstream configuration. Furthermore if they die librewolf and waterfox will absolutely cease to be useful because again they are incapable of delivering a browser the same way supporting door dash alone will leave you without anyone to cook your food.
This is basically bullcrap. There is at this point nothing you even need disable. At such time as it exits it will be probably consist of what a setting in config and a toolbar button to remove so hard. Whine harder.
Either the privacy browsers will use the money to develop the open source GECKO engine thenselves or they will be the sole source of users and therefor both directly and indirectly funding to Firefox: they will have negotiating power.
Currently their biggest contributors are Google and likely some AI tech bros, so that's who they're going to listen to.
Empowering Librewolf and Waterfox is like the Union owning Franchises, if we're still sticking to your absolutely ridiculous analogy.
Btw, your idea that "everything is perfectly fine with waterfox" is outing you as a worthless AI tech bro shilling for corporate. Get lost.
TLDR Version
They can and will continue to make browsers if we fund them. The GECKO engine was open sourced.
Waterfox is a huge POS that nobody should use. Librewolf isn't even a fork its just a build of firefox with things disabled.
Neither has expressed even the idea of developing a browser engine outside of your fantasies. This is literally an idea that doesn't exist outside of your own head.
They can do that because Firefox is open source. If Mozilla disappeared and funding was sent to one of the forks instead, they could hire more developers and maintain it directly. Maybe even hire some of Mozilla's best engineers.
There is no reason to believe that librewolf could ever ever ever replace Mozilla. They have no revenue stream and everything that could get them a revenue stream would make you dislike them as much as you do Mozilla. This is a complete and utter fantasy.
Sure you can. Shits been existing for billions of years.
How many fully open source browsers are there without massive labor or money infusions? Note all the browsers that are essentially chrome with a different skin?