Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

General project discussion.
Use this as a last resort if your topic does not fit in any of the other boards but it still on-topic.
Forum rules
This General Discussion board is meant for topics that are still relevant to Pale Moon, web browsers, browser tech, UXP applications, and related, but don't have a more fitting board available.

Please stick to the relevance of this forum here, which focuses on everything around the Pale Moon project and its user community. "Random" subjects don't belong here, and should be posted in the Off-Topic board.
User avatar
allenwrench
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: 2021-01-31, 02:43

Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by allenwrench » 2021-12-05, 13:54

I am using SeaMonkey/brave/palemoon/lynx/firefox to test browser compatibility but there are too many forks to choose from and make compliant, how do you limit the amount of forking or chaining(spooning) to prevent infinite forks/spoons from happening? I propose a new license to prevent forks until the mainline project has become defunct that way it prevents incompatible forks from happening and issues like palemoon from using outdated firefox code and causing issues with modern sites using modern features... not to mention dealing with orphaned works where you cant reach the rightsholders to add features to the mainline project and therefore lose out on compatibility. I call it the Orphaned Public License where it a sort of anti-forking license, not open source but source available for auditing, and the project will be free to use but limits the amounts of forks in service until the mainline project goes defunct, and then you can use libre licenses like the MPLv2. The idea and theory is that once the product reaches EOL then you can fork it, but not before.

New Tobin Paradigm

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-12-05, 14:02

So you think SeaMonkey is based on Firefox? As well as Lynx? Are you trolling or just fuckin stupid? Orphaned Public License? The fuck are you on about?

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35402
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-12-05, 14:13

Your proposed license will be incompatible with all existing Open Source licenses since it will limit how people will be able to use the source code.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

User avatar
allenwrench
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: 2021-01-31, 02:43

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by allenwrench » 2021-12-05, 14:51

Moonchild wrote:
2021-12-05, 14:13
Your proposed license will be incompatible with all existing Open Source licenses since it will limit how people will be able to use the source code.
but even you were forced to upgrade to the latest version of firefox at some point from 24 to 38 even though you disagreed with where firefox was going so how good is open source if inevitably you have to go with the mainline. Pale Moon is a fork but a soft fork since it didn't really go in a different direction if it still is relying on the mainline firefox for its upstream

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35402
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-12-05, 15:41

You clearly have no fucking clue what we are doing here.
"soft fork"? XD :lol:
So, just because we might still adopt code from a different prong, we suddenly would have no right to even exist?.... Get outta here.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

User avatar
athenian200
Contributing developer
Contributing developer
Posts: 1478
Joined: 2018-10-28, 19:56
Location: Georgia

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by athenian200 » 2021-12-06, 03:56

Well, your new license is pretty much a standard proprietary license. You could absolutely have a proprietary license, but still allow people to inspect your source code while also having it full of copyright notices and admonitions not to redistribute or modify that code, or use it for anything but personal or educational use. And if you hold all the rights, you can relicense it under anything, including MPL or GPL later on if you want. Many companies have simply released their older proprietary projects under an open source license after there's no further profit to be had from it, and they figure, "Hey, what the heck, wanna see what we did? All this code will probably go to waste now that we're not going to get paid to work on it anymore, so... uhh, here it's open source now. Good luck with that whole community-centered development thing, see ya around!"

In other words, a license like that wouldn't have a point, because a proprietary license means the rights holder can decide whether to let the code be viewed or not, under what conditions, and decide when if ever they will relicense under an open source license. Open source license is about giving up some of your rights to control how the code is distributed, and also trying to legally force other recipients of the code to do the same. In other words, open source is actually the one that limits the power of the author. Proprietary license lets the creator do as they wish more or less.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35402
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-12-06, 13:09

This is why I said:
Your proposed license will be incompatible with all existing Open Source licenses since it will limit how people will be able to use the source code.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

User avatar
hujan86
Fanatic
Fanatic
Posts: 194
Joined: 2017-09-27, 06:50

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by hujan86 » 2021-12-07, 06:40

allenwrench wrote:
2021-12-05, 13:54
lynx
You're talking about this? Also, Brave uses the engine Blink.
Avatar's Source: yereverluvinuncleber

User avatar
therube
Board Warrior
Board Warrior
Posts: 1648
Joined: 2018-06-08, 17:02

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by therube » 2021-12-07, 18:57

(Yes, Lynx, last post, currently, https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r33266 ... dge-s-SDSM.)

User avatar
De Kus
New to the forum
New to the forum
Posts: 1
Joined: 2021-12-26, 12:17

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by De Kus » 2021-12-26, 12:41

Well, I have been using Mozilla ever since they had the "Mozilla Suite". I found SeaMonkey as the successor project after they split off Mozilla into Thunderbird and Firefox which I both disliked first, because of the new interface, later for obvious other reasons. SeaMonkey has been keeping up with main Mozilla core development for quite some time, but I feel since they switched to Firefox ESR builds, development is stagnating significantly. Btw. SeaMonkey is using the same Firefox ESR 68 like Pale Moon as far as I can tell.

I can imagine that many developers disagreed with the roadmap of other projects and joined their favourite one, that's obviously totally fine and agreeable so far. Then again from the perspective of the users, they might wish there was, besides some smaller very specialized side projects, one major actual alternative to Firefox and potentially Thunderbird. On the Chrome browser line Brave seems to assume this position. When you look at the Mozilla browser lines, I can understand the OPs opposition. He is explaining the issue from the web developers position, but from the "nerdy and retro" user position, a strong project with pretty recent (let's say in the scope of 6 months and 2 years behind current Firefox builds) core and all features which can be used without compromising security and stability would be the thing to wish for.

In the recent 1 or 2 years however, more and more websites broke with SeaMonkey, Pale Moon seems to have a little better compatibility, but still many "web applications" fail to render certain things. Just to give two examples: On Taiga the left navigation bar is not visible and on Shopware backend some stuff just cannot be saved running into either errors and broken interface, since the client apart assumed the entity to be created and the backend refusing to accept changes on it... since well, it doesn't exist there. I assume both are depend on some broken parts around the recent JavaScript features (I found something about dynamic imports or something like that, not sure if they are related to those two).

Bottom line:
I'd support having less variation and more man power into the "optimal" (intentionally not giving concrete cafeterias to measure that) Mozilla based browser suite, since they are already good as they are... just lacking behind new features more and more.

User avatar
moonbat
Knows the dark side
Knows the dark side
Posts: 4942
Joined: 2015-12-09, 15:45
Contact:

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by moonbat » 2021-12-27, 13:12

De Kus wrote:
2021-12-26, 12:41
same Firefox ESR 68 like Pale Moon
Pale Moon's final rebase from Mozilla code was off ESR 52 or so - way before 57 which was when XUL was ripped out of Firefox.
"One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them and in the darkness BIND them."

Image
Linux Mint 21 Xfce x64 on HP i5-5200 laptop, 12 GB RAM.
AutoPageColor|PermissionsPlus|PMPlayer|Pure URL|RecordRewind|TextFX

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35402
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: Too many forks and spoons/chains of firefox to count

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-12-27, 13:50

moonbat wrote:
2021-12-27, 13:12
Pale Moon's final rebase from Mozilla code was off ESR 52 or so
And even that was a "hybrid" rebase. We didn't wholesale grab all the platform code; just the majority. And a metric shit ton has been added to our code since then in our own development.

Also, don't take the compatibility number in the useragent for anything other than that: it is an arbitrary version number given to websites that has no bearing on our code level or maturity or what "we are based on".
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

Locked