stevepusser wrote: ↑2019-07-23, 03:57
I did just find what might be a Devuan developer forking the packaging from my source a bit back on the OBS, and they did a bang-up job of covering a lot more files than I did in debian/copyright , so I'm going to borrow it for my next build.
That's the beauty of open-source in a nutshell right there, where it's doing exactly what it should be doing. MoonChild forks Pale Moon from Firefox and develops it independently to meet the needs and desires of a group of former Firefox users who perceive Firefox to have gone off in the wrong direction, and presumably to attract other users as well who perhaps have never used Firefox or have no opinion of the changes Firefox made 10 years ago, but who just like Pale Moon as a browser when introduced to it, purely on it's own merits without necessarily having an opinion on the direction of Firefox (Which, of course, Pale Moon isn't, and never will be- for better, for worse, or just neutrally different).
Then, a need develops for a PPA and repo for Firefox for a Ubuntu, and Steve steps up and does what is necessary. After that, someone maintains a version for Devuan to meet another need that the rest of the folks involved with Pale Moon don't have the time to meet, and makes changes to the code that would help it on Ubuntu, and perhaps even other Linux distros and/or Windows beyond, so Steve is able to take the changes he likes and add them into his Ubuntu packages for Pale Moon code to improve it for that platform, and finally if MoonChild feels they'd be relevant to improving the browser on other platforms, MoonChild would have the ability to take what he wants from that code (While not taking what he doesn't) and improve the browser for everyone- all because one guy started doing it for the sake of making the browser work optimally with a relatively small niche Linux distro that forked from Debian to protest Debian's adoption of Systemd (I have no opinion on Systemd, I just have heard that the intentional lack of that is what what makes Devuan different from Debian).
Of course, if Pale Moon were ever to deny permission for changes, that would be their right given the trademarked name and logo, *but* everyone would still have the option of doing what they are doing above, except they would then have to just simply change the name of the program and the the logo, as Pale Moon itself did when it forked from Firefox.
I think that's really cool, personally.
I've read that Firefox has added some code (Or at least had plans to do so at one point) from Tor where they thought Tor's fork of their browser was making material improvements without compromising usability, while of course not adopting those changes that would compromise the Firefox user experience too much (in their view) in the name of privacy, and only make sense for a browser like Tor that is specifically on a mission to enhance privacy and will do so at the expense of usability and such in a heartbeat, because that's their niche. Firefox in theory is pro-privacy (I know that's very debatable, but they advertise that it's part of their mission, so let's just go with it for the sake of a post where it's not that important) relative to the other big players in the browser world, and some of the changes they are forking over probably do help with privacy, but only where they maintain the balance between privacy and usability that Firefox
in theory aims for.
I actually have often wondered why we don't see more "backwards" code sharing in the open-source or free software world. Like, if a fork improves something that would help the original without compromising the mission of the original, it'd be great if more developers would put aside the "Not built here" stuff and adopt it because it makes their software better. Some "improvements" forks make wouldn't work for the project they forked from, because the codes deal with stuff that the fork broke off to protest about their parent software, deal with code that isn't in the parent browser anymore (Or never was), or there is a difference of opinion as to quality of the code in general, but, even so, I'm surprised we don't see more of this (In general, not with Pale Moon specifically). The Unified XUL Platform seems to be a sign that Pale Moon is making an effort on that front, though.