Beware, this is a rant.
It's been a month, or however long it's been since cloudflare websites stopped working.
It seems to me like palemoon is taking a beating and it's devs notice it, but do nothing about it.
The fact that palemoon can't access part of the web does not affect cloudflare in any way.
If we don't do something about it, we're at the mercy of cloudflare, and it seems like they won't fix this.
Sadly, I don't have any web and javascript knowledge to help with patches.
If I could have fixed this, I would have at least tried.
I have 3 ideas that might both not work for whatever reason, but at least they seem reasonable:
1. Implement whatever missing javascript functionality is missing that cloudflare needs.
If you don't know what to implement, maybe ask cloudflare and other browser devs what is needed.
2. Add hacks to circumvent the captcha.
If implementing the proper functionality is too hard, maybe just add enough to make cloudflare happy, even if all other js code using that feature would fail.
Or add whatever hack is needed to circumvent cloudflare, if there is something else that can be done.
3. Switch to the v8 js engine.
This is the most extreme change, but it would fix the cloudflare problem and any other problem with javascript forever.
It might even be easier long term, because then the palemoon devs would no longer need to maintain their js engine, as someone else is already maintaining it for them.
Hopefully I'm wrong about all this, and there is a lot of work on fixing the cloudflare issue going on behind the scenes,
but as I see it, the palemoon devs are sitting on their asses and users are doing more to fix this that the devs.
Some users created an extension to circumvent cloudflare by adding cookies from other browsers. This is far from ideal, but at least it's an attempt.
All I see from the devs, especially moonchild, is them throwing their hands up in the air and saying "we can't do anything, and we shouldn't even be doing anything to fix this".
While they are right in saying that they shouldn't have to deal with this, it's like telling a robber that legally they can't rob you - you will still get robbed.
If the devs don't like reading this, think about it from the point of view of a user.
The last good browser with xul extension support is being killed and those who can do something about it sit idly.
The alternatives are the bloated mess that is chromium or something firefox-based.
I'll pick librewolf to switch to, as that is what I used before switching to palemoon, unless I find something better.
But librewolf, being just a patchset for modern firefox, will suffer from the same bad decisions that plague firefox.
What it seems like the devs don't realize is that even if by some miracle cloudflare fixes this, the message we send is very clear:
"we can easily be pushed around, and those who can do something about it won't. We're a village without guard dogs, thieves welcome."
Palemoon might work for days, months, years, but as soon as someone wants to kill it, we won't put up a fight.
To the devs, please stop ignoring this and do something about it, anything.
Even if it doesn't work, at least try.
It doesn't have to be code, pester those who can fix this at least, ask around, spread the word.
Just don't sit idly and watch palemoon burn.
To all those reading: I'm not just saying "someone else do the work for me".
When I feel I can do something to improve the software I use, I do.
In palemoon, I debugged noscript crashing palemoon and fixed it (I no longer use it, switched to umatrix instead).
In this thread, I found a patch for when cloudflare was crashing. I wasn't the first one to fix that issue, but I still looked into it.
Don't look at the small size of the patches. Any patch I write for palemoon takes me hours to debug, test and rebuild.
Anyone who's tried to debug a large c++ codebase knows how it is.
Librewolf isn't without problems:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=950352
Guess who reported that issue and spent days working on it.
And I to this for plenty of software.
I'm not asking for work to be done for me.
I am willing to help, I just can't do this alone.
And it's infuriating to see the devs sit around doing nothing.
As a side note, if anyone knows good browser alternatives that support xul extensions, please let me know.
