Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

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Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 09:47

I really want to use it, but the new Builds are made by roytam1, of which i didn't hear that good things.
I thought it would be a lightweight Browser alternative to many webkit browsers, but without UXP.

Here is the Website: http://kmeleonbrowser.org/
And the Github: https://github.com/roytam1/kmeleon

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 10:20

I also found the source for the latest version here: https://github.com/roytam1/palemoon27/tree/kmeleon76

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-01-06, 10:31

Undoubtedly it harms the Pale Moon project by being rather blatantly snagged from the original K-Meleon devs and basing it on a very old Pale Moon version, but as long as the source is provided there's no license violation. I also don't really see how well a Mozilla 1.9.2 code base would hold up to the current web, so I wouldn't really expect much usership of it to begin with.
As long as no branded builds are created and/or distributed that violate copyright, I don't see what can be done about this, though. Not like roytam1 cares about respect and i'd prefer not to focus on legal action if I don't have to.
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by moonbat » 2022-01-06, 10:46

Is he basing it off current Goanna builds?
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 11:05

Moonchild wrote:
2022-01-06, 10:31
Undoubtedly it harms the Pale Moon project by being rather blatantly snagged from the original K-Meleon devs and basing it on a very old Pale Moon version.
How so? I am sure K-Meleon Devs would have expressed concern about the inofficial Builds if they weren't okay with them and both browsers cater to specific things.

K-Meleon is for users that want a very lightweight browser that doesn't use webkit.
Pale Moon is for Users that want to extend it with lots of functionality and theme it.

These Browsers and their interfaces are so different that they couldn't even be confused with each other. They also have their own forum for providing support.
Moonchild wrote:
2022-01-06, 10:31
I also don't really see how well a Mozilla 1.9.2 code base would hold up to the current web.
It looks well maintained to me and Bugs get fixed.

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 11:16

moonbat wrote:
2022-01-06, 10:46
Is he basing it off current Goanna builds?
I think its still based on goanna 3.

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-01-06, 12:09

leothetechguy wrote:
2022-01-06, 11:05
How so?
I think actively basing something on Tycho at this time will give people trying out K-Meleon the wrong impression of Pale Moon's current state. It's not kept current but still being released. People will therefore (by reflection) judge Pale Moon based on a state of affairs that is years out of date.
Of course I have no facts to support this opinion, but it seems common sense to me that people will reflect it back on Pale Moon if that is what it is stated to be based on.
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 12:29

Only the github Implies that its based on palemoon, both the forum announcement and the homepage state that it is based on the goanna engine.
Of course that could also imply that palemoon supports the web as badly as K-Meleon because it also uses the goanna engine (just a newer version),
but as stated before the use cases are different and as such many k-meleon users would have not used palemoon anyway.
It is also one of the very few browsers that work on ReactOS (except mypal), so theres that i guess.

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-01-06, 12:32

leothetechguy wrote:
2022-01-06, 12:29
Of course that could also imply that palemoon supports the web as badly as K-Meleon because it also uses the goanna engine (just a newer version),
Exactly. Without being explicit and generally unknown, it'd be easy to assume that Goanna would be much further behind the times than what is the case.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong and people actually understand that they are different when having the same name? Nah, who am I kidding; this is 2022.
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 12:48

At least it clearly states the Goanna Version in use. Maybe just do the same for the Pale Moon release notes?

EDIT: Link to forum: http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.ph ... 31,page=13, the Title gets regulary updated with the Goanna version and Build number

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-01-06, 12:53

Maybe in the future.
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by gepus » 2022-01-06, 13:53

Wikipedia

Summarizing:
- Win only application
- no support for legacy extensions by design
- most (if not all) of its very small user base are WinXP (or even older Win) users, hence based on the outdated Goanna

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 14:02

Summarizing:
- Win and ReactOS application (and Linux using wine)
- no support for any extensions by design but customizable and much more lightweight than any other user interface
- most of its very small user base just want a lightweight Browser, with some relying on it for reactos as the only modern browser, hence based on the outdated Goanna.

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-01-06, 14:55

So are you here to try and promote roytam1's debatable efforts, countering my arguments, or did you actually have a point with all this?
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by leothetechguy » 2022-01-06, 16:07

I just wanted to know if I could use this browser without hurting the pale moon project and defended my decision after thinking it wasn't, because it doesn't take much to realize that k-meleon using the same goanna version (3.5.0) over the course of 3 years means that pale moon uses a newer one. Which also could be easily stated. (either on the k-meleon site or in the pale moon release notes)

I don't want to be seen like a Mypal user supporting non compliant hackjobs that harm palemoon and violate licenses.

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-01-06, 17:41

You using it doesn't really matter :) Use whatever you like.
Your question was about that project's overall impact the way it was worded, in which case my opinion is that it indirectly does impact at least for a certain percentage of the users.

If that wasn't what you meant to ask, then I guess we're done here.
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Eduardo Lucas » 2022-01-07, 04:38

leothetechguy wrote:
2022-01-06, 11:05
Moonchild wrote:
2022-01-06, 10:31
Undoubtedly it harms the Pale Moon project by being rather blatantly snagged from the original K-Meleon devs and basing it on a very old Pale Moon version.
How so? I am sure K-Meleon Devs would have expressed concern about the inofficial Builds if they weren't okay with them and both browsers cater to specific things.

K-Meleon is for users that want a very lightweight browser that doesn't use webkit.
Pale Moon is for Users that want to extend it with lots of functionality and theme it.

These Browsers and their interfaces are so different that they couldn't even be confused with each other. They also have their own forum for providing support.
Moonchild wrote:
2022-01-06, 10:31
I also don't really see how well a Mozilla 1.9.2 code base would hold up to the current web.
It looks well maintained to me and Bugs get fixed.
Pale Moon is for users who want a powerful browser with a sane architecture. I can't say anything about how powerful are roytam forks, because they are not. They have severe web compatibility issues, perform very poorly compared to 64-bit pale moon in web rendering and javascript-heavy applications. most of the time they do not even open at all. Its clear for me, after using most of his forks for two months or something (i really dream of something like seamonkey, just not like that mess he made but in UXP) , that he deliberately cuts and hacks pieces of the code off to make it run in archaic windows xp and early 2000s x86 chips which have not enough instructions and transistors to do the job without using 200W/hour. Windows XP is NOT MEANT for the next 15 years. Windows 7 is mature enough for that. XP is a dead-end and lacks so much stuff it's simply impossible to make things work there that will make the modern web work without chromefied browser hacks (now they don't even have that because china has pulled the plug, likely because it's so hard it hurts their heads), and that's likely why he doesn't uses current pale moon engine and XUL base.

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by moonbat » 2022-01-08, 12:53

Off-topic:
Can never understand the bloody-mindedness of the XP holdouts. There are legacy applications, control systems, billing systems and the like made for very specific use cases that some people may need, on computers that aren't connected to the internet or just running XP virtualized. I'm not talking about them. This is the stubbornness to keep using it as a daily driver on the internet on outdated hardware, when they're better served with a maintained Linux distro that consumes less resources (Puppy Linux is one such, I believe) and which would perhaps be compatible with Pale Moon if they are at least using an SSE2 capable CPU (as in, something less than about 15 years old)
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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by Eduardo Lucas » 2022-01-10, 05:13

moonbat wrote:
2022-01-08, 12:53
Off-topic:
Can never understand the bloody-mindedness of the XP holdouts. There are legacy applications, control systems, billing systems and the like made for very specific use cases that some people may need, on computers that aren't connected to the internet or just running XP virtualized. I'm not talking about them. This is the stubbornness to keep using it as a daily driver on the internet on outdated hardware, when they're better served with a maintained Linux distro that consumes less resources (Puppy Linux is one such, I believe) and which would perhaps be compatible with Pale Moon if they are at least using an SSE2 capable CPU (as in, something less than about 15 years old)
I think they are refusing to accept their world has changed. There is no advantage on XP over Windows 7 if you don't use it on any of the special purposes you've mentioned. Now, there IS a case of windows 7 being what they wished XP would be and be future-proof indefininitely into this and the next decade until god knows when possible for those who decide to deal with security challenges (i see them as challenges and not future fatalities, not saying you do but many do) and refuse current tiktok wide web gimnicks, because NT 6.1 was VERY ahead of its time (it could have been way way way more if microsoft had not failed at their initially defined longhorn targets and launched vistapocalypse) and they are definitely oblivious to that. And i definitely agree, any linux distribution, any BSD, are better as daily web connected desktop operating systems than 90s-era technology windows xp

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Re: Does K-Meleon hurt the Palemoon project or violate licenses?

Unread post by moonbat » 2022-01-10, 06:07

Eduardo Lucas wrote:
2022-01-10, 05:13
there IS a case of windows 7 being what they wished XP would be and be future-proof indefininitely
Wish this applied to 7 :(
Unfortunately 7 will go the way of XP once Microsoft ends their extended paid support (if they haven't already). Metro UI is an unforgivable abomination, Vista wasn't as bad by contrast. 7 is what Vista should've been without the bugs. And now 10 is actively hostile to the user by resetting default apps and updates that can bork your installation.
Eduardo Lucas wrote:
2022-01-10, 05:13
90s-era technology windows xp
It was released in 2001. It was the first unified Windows after they got rid of the 9x/Me codebase and built exclusively on the NT kernel, like 2000 before it.
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