Pale Moon's PR Problem

[_JaSn]

Hey everyone, new Pale Moon user here.

I've been looking at web browsers for a while, and Pale Moon is actually a fine web browser. It has more personality than most other browsers out there, and in most ways it's quite different from virtually all other browsers; it takes a very traditional approach to its UI, it is completely privacy-respecting out-of-the-box with DDG, virtually no unsolicited network requests, and no telemetry, and it is a lot less bloated than the Chromium and Firefox forks, which are basically all web browsers used on the desktop. It's also not only completely independent from the Google ecosystem, but exists in spite of it in some ways.

All of this alone should be enough for Pale Moon to get attention. The privacy and design advantages of a browser have been more than enough to get people interested in a web browser; Brave, Vivaldi, etc. So what gives?

I am specifically referring to an overall interest in Pale Moon's development. This is truly its own browser; it uses its own engine; many have the chance to contribute to a browser that has the chance to be truly great. So why hasn't Pale Moon caught on again, as things on the Internet often do, and attract more attention from developers across the browser/OSS community at large? Why hasn't Pale Moon's dev team grown?

I think that to answer this question, we should look at three things:

- How Pale Moon is perceived in these communities, the stigma around Pale Moon (otherwise what is the point of discussion)
- What role Pale Moon's limits in supporting modern web "standards" actually play in its perception
- What role Pale Moon's past drama on the development side has played in its perception
- The relatively new Helium browser, because it fundamentally introduces no new features or advantages in the browser itself; its appeal is based around its development model and philosophy, or maybe just that the devs have basic competence. Also, because of this, Helium has as much hype behind it as even some major browsers, seemingly out of nowhere. (so yeah I think it's worth talking about, but definitely secondary to the above points)


And I do think all this is at least somewhat important to discuss for reasons you can imagine. Personally, for me:
- I like this browser; I want to see this browser do well.
- Moreover, as a user of Pale Moon, I don't have to worry about the dev team having major plans that aren't in the interest of its users, because Pale Moon always aims to avoid this. So, as a Pale Moon user, my primary concern isn't about pushing for or against new features, but rather has to do with its proactive development, to help make strides in its technical merits.
- Pale Moon's development is heavily dependent on community contributions.

So, why does Pale Moon have the reputation that it does outside of this community? how can we turn around this situation and attract new potential contributors to the project, so that all of its users can benefit?

[jarsealer]

Sorry for the short reply to this long post, but I personally think it's just lack of coverage or mention in main stream stuff. Nobody really knows about Pale Moon's existence in, say, YouTube or any other big site, atleast not that I have seen.

[Basilisk-Dev]

From my perspective, there are several things that contribute to this. These are what I believe to be the biggest ones:

People say our codebase is "old and insecure" because it's forked from an older version of Firefox. The truth is that UXP does regularly get security updates, both as backports from upstream Firefox as well as security issues we find on our own.

Going back to the topic of being an older Firefox fork, people think that we're using the same engine as Firefox so there is no reason to use our browser. While the "same engine as Firefox" statement was true at the time UXP was created, it is no longer true. At this point, we could be considered our own separate thing. Sure, there is some code that exists or did exist in both engines, but we drift apart more and more every single day.

There were past events that made people dislike the Pale Moon community and contributors. Examples being the MyPal and OpenBSD debacles. I won't go into detail here, but it definitely rubbed people the wrong way and unfortunately the stigma stuck.

The performance is a bit slower than say Firefox or Chrome due to the lack of multiprocess. On a personal level I agree with Moonchild's decision to exclude Mozilla's e10s multiprocess implementation, but that being said I could see how that might put people off from using the browser. I have to use Firefox/Chrome for some sites because they are slower in UXP (usually these sites are horribly written garbage that pull in tens of megabytes of JS code).

There is also the issue that UXP can't browse some sites due to some JS/CSS features not being implemented. I've been working heavily on improving this this year and other contributors have worked on this as well, but there are still sites that can't be used in Pale Moon at this time due to lack of JS features. People don't want to use a browser that can't browse the sites they want to visit.

[_JaSn]

Sorry for the short reply to this long post, but I personally think it's just lack of coverage or mention in main stream stuff. Nobody really knows about Pale Moon's existence in, say, YouTube or any other big site, atleast not that I have seen.

Yeah you have a good point. I was talking more in the context of the FOSS community though. FOSS does not exactly have a big presence on YouTube overall, except for a maybe few not-too-big channels, but they probably don't primarily focus on FOSS.

Also, its safe to say that Pale Moon isn't ready for the mainstream, in my opinion. Normal people don't care about blocking ads or keeping your digital presence private from big corporations. They use webapps, DRM, WebRTC, and websites that may not even work properly in present-day Firefox.

But if Pale Moon were to go mainstream, I think you have something in that it would be from some respected YouTuber. Maybe Pale Moon becomes a meme? Would all this be a good or bad thing? See where we are 10 years from now. As for now, we can still dream I guess.

[_JaSn]

From my perspective, there are several things that contribute to this. These are what I believe to be the biggest ones:

People say our codebase is "old and insecure" because it's forked from an older version of Firefox. The truth is that UXP does regularly get security updates, both as backports from upstream Firefox as well as security issues we find on our own.

Going back to the topic of being an older Firefox fork, people think that we're using the same engine as Firefox so there is no reason to use our browser. While the "same engine as Firefox" statement was true at the time UXP was created, it is no longer true. At this point, we could be considered our own separate thing. Sure, there is some code that exists or did exist in both engines, but we drift apart more and more every single day.

There were past events that made people dislike the Pale Moon community and contributors. Examples being the MyPal and OpenBSD debacles. I won't go into detail here, but it definitely rubbed people the wrong way and unfortunately the stigma stuck.

The performance is a bit slower than say Firefox or Chrome due to the lack of multiprocess. On a personal level I agree with Moonchild's decision to exclude Mozilla's e10s multiprocess implementation, but that being said I could see how that might put people off from using the browser. I have to use Firefox/Chrome for some sites because they are slower in UXP (usually these sites are horribly written garbage that pull in tens of megabytes of JS code).

There is also the issue that UXP can't browse some sites due to some JS/CSS features not being implemented. I've been working heavily on improving this this year and other contributors have worked on this as well, but there are still sites that can't be used in Pale Moon at this time due to lack of JS features. People don't want to use a browser that can't browse the sites they want to visit.

This is good stuff.

From my observations, I think that the Goanna engine is sort of underdeveloped, such as in the ways that you mentioned, and that really contributes to the PR problem.

And this does meaningfully impact the user. For example, jumping around old forum convos, A lot of users here use a 'backup browser' when Pale Moon doesn't work on some site or something. Sure, WebRTC and DRM we tend to do without, more so than with other browsers. We know we won't be using websites as applications that do crazy stuff beyond stuff like displaying images or playing media from a database. Yet this practice of using a 'backup' browser is predominant among the userbase, because it's often required to load some sites.

Honestly, I kind of find it wrong that if you're a Pale Moon user you need to have another browser installed as a backup. It's just off-putting that you discover this alright browser that is significantly less bloated than the others, takes up less system resources, carries a great deal of customizability and personality, and is very privacy-friendly, and sure maybe it's kinda slow sometimes, and then realize that you will probably also have to install some other browser to do the stuff you want, which BTW also supports tons of garbage you won't be loading sites with 90%+ of the time, and thus is bloated and probably takes up something like gigabytes of space on your computer for no reason other than those websites.

That's why I want to support Pale Moon's development and attract contributors. I think Pale Moon is complete in terms of its approach/philosophy, and its custom of serving its users, but not 'complete' in terms of its technical capability/compatibility.

In other words, one could easily say that this browser is under development. Then, OSS user thinks, "Wow! An INDEPENDENT browser in development that is significantly less bloated than Chromium/FF and derivatives, is currently actually stable, and aims to be a viable alternative to those browsers? Hey, maybe we could improve this -- make it faster or compatible with a few other web technologies! I wonder what are the devs are up to."

But then, Pale Moon's PR problem kicks in.

[athenian200]

how can we turn around this situation and attract new potential contributors to the project, so that all of its users can benefit?

Well, do you have a time machine? If you do, please go back in time to about 8 years ago and take a copy of the forum database with you, asking Moonchild to look at some of the most infamous "debacles" that happened between now and then. Sort of like Marty McFly having to convince the Doc to look at future events and wear a bulletproof vest.

That's why I want to support Pale Moon's development and attract contributors. I think Pale Moon is complete in terms of its approach/philosophy, and its custom of serving its users, but not 'complete' in terms of its technical capability/compatibility.

In other words, one could easily say that this browser is under development. Then, OSS user thinks, "Wow! An INDEPENDENT browser in development that is significantly less bloated than Chromium/FF and derivatives, is currently actually stable, and aims to be a viable alternative to those browsers? Hey, maybe we could improve this -- make it faster or compatible with a few other web technologies! I wonder what are the devs are up to."

But then, Pale Moon's PR problem kicks in.

I mean, you are right that it needs contributors and further development, but I think it would be very hard for us to get to the point that the average Pale Moon user doesn't need a backup browser... the web just moves too fast. If we have to be a true replacement for Firefox or Chromium, that's just not something a small team can achieve, and you'd basically be asking us to stop the project because of our inability to deliver on that kind of ambition, with the implication that we have to push that hard and go that far, or else resign ourselves to the inevitable and stop fighting.

And yeah, I don't think there's much we can do about the PR problem... I mean. We are always going to be that community, and those devs who did things the open source community frowns on (our own users don't help and have biases and attitudes that make them say a lot of things mainstream Linux users with good coding skills would find upsetting). I mean... I hate to say it, but maybe this really is the limit of what we can achieve. We are hitting walls. We took this codebase further than anyone ever thought we would, but I don't know how much more room to run we actually have. I did the Python 3 port hoping to make contributing more attractive. But I don't know that anything can wash away the stained reputation we have... only the people who were here would understand.

All I know is, we're going to keep trying to pull it forward until it's over, but if you are expecting a project with the ambition and resources to become a drop-in replacement for Firefox or Chromium that will eliminate the need for a backup-browser, then I'm afraid you may be in the wrong place. It's honestly not even fair to expect that...

[Gemmaugr]

As I see it, there are two major PR problems, but they're external and continuous. The internal one(s) are over, and every browser has had similar negative events somewhere in their history.

The first one is https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=28565 (FF fanboys that keep spreading disinfo)

The second one is googles vertical web integration, which is a constantly moving target that only google can keep up with and is in control of.
When they decide what internet standards are (WHATWG) and keep using draft "standards" that they themselves just introduced, and spread it through site frameworks that relies on google's V8 javascript engine (which is the majority of site framekworks, like angular, node/next/vue/NW/react.js), they set the "pace" at their own rate. And that's not even half of half of what they're doing..

What's needed is for a neutral and unbiased party to take back control of internet standards. To bring back sites to include fallback code to a more sane level of entry.

[_JaSn]

but I think it would be very hard for us to get to the point that the average Pale Moon user doesn't need a backup browser... the web just moves too fast. If we have to be a true replacement for Firefox or Chromium, that's just not something a small team can achieve, and you'd basically be asking us to stop the project because of our inability to deliver on that kind of ambition, with the implication that we have to push that hard and go that far, or else resign ourselves to the inevitable and stop fighting.

All I know is, we're going to keep trying to pull it forward until it's over, but if you are expecting a project with the ambition and resources to become a drop-in replacement for Firefox or Chromium that will eliminate the need for a backup-browser, then I'm afraid you may be in the wrong place. It's honestly not even fair to expect that...

This is not what I propose, and Pale Moon will most definitely not ever strive for this. Firefox and Chromium each have a multi-process architecture, support DRM, WebRTC and webapps, and develop their capabilities in step with all of Google's web standards. Consequently, they are incredibly bloated, and have a much larger, more complicated codebase than Pale Moon. Pale Moon as inherent advantages in a simpler, smaller codebase and a tendency to use much less resources. I like these advantages. To preserve them, we shouldn't expect to aim to become a Firefox or Chromium, aim to be multi-process or over-optimize or extend the browser/engine in a way that sacrifices composition or simplicity for the sake of fulfilling niche cases.

Pale Moon at its best fulfills the balance that it strives to achieve, the balance between being bare bones and having little functionality outside of simple websites made of pure HTML and CSS, and being Chromium/FF. And IMHO, Pale Moon right now is leaning towards the former. And you are right, we shouldn't expect the small dev team we have (most of which are volunteers -- btw, thank you for being one), as it is now, to be able to get to that point where most Pale Moon users -- at least most of those engaged with the Pale Moon community -- can daily drive Pale Moon with no caveats. That is why we should GROW the dev team. To grow the dev team, we have to make sure our userbase can grow. For these things to be able to happen, we need to address Pale Moon's reputation in FOSS.

And yeah, I don't think there's much we can do about the PR problem... I mean. We are always going to be that community, and those devs who did things the open source community frowns on (our own users don't help and have biases and attitudes that make them say a lot of things mainstream Linux users with good coding skills would find upsetting). I mean... I hate to say it, but maybe this really is the limit of what we can achieve. We are hitting walls. We took this codebase further than anyone ever thought we would, but I don't know how much more room to run we actually have. I did the Python 3 port hoping to make contributing more attractive. But I don't know that anything can wash away the stained reputation we have... only the people who were here would understand.

I actually agree with you on the users' attitudes thing. I've seen some weird stuff said, both here in the forums by other users, and by users in the subreddit. Stuff people would only say in an obscure forum on the Internet
You've been in the community for a long while, so I suppose I will sort of trust your word on that. Even though you and the other contributors/devs seem to be pretty chill.

Still, there has to be something we can do. Pale Moon fulfills a niche that it hasn't yet fully tapped into due to its damaged reputation. If Helium can become basically the end-game of web browsing for normie OSS users, out of nowhere, over literally nothing but a sane dev team that listens to its community, then we can turn things around in some way or other.

[back2themoon]

Also, its safe to say that Pale Moon isn't ready for the mainstream, in my opinion.

Not the expert here, but I don't believe that was ever a goal. And that's a good thing.

As for now, we can still dream I guess.

If we are going to dream about mainstream however, then I imagine that:

a) The Development Team would need a significant boost, in every possible way.
b) At least one important Web Standards organization would have to write down Goanna/UXP on the List, in some sort of official form.
c) Furthermore, that List would need to be promoted, if not partially enforced in some way on web developers as a compatibility List.

It is obvious that the above, especially b) and c) require influence, power, money and time. Elements that a small team cannot have and hence, no mainstream plans. Also see Pale Moon future roadmap.

That said, I do not at all imply that having Pale Moon fold under the weight of greedy mega-corps is anywhere near acceptable or unavoidable.

[back2themoon]

If Helium can become basically the end-game of web browsing for normie OSS users, out of nowhere, over literally nothing but a sane dev team that listens to its community, then we can turn things around in some way or other.

Don't want to be unfair since I haven't tried it, but what is so different here than other Chromium browsers? When did built-in ad-blocking become a revolutionary feature and have we become THAT lazy to even bother looking for an extension?

I cannot hide a strong disbelief to flattering stuff like "made for people, with love". As opposed to what, "made for aliens, with disgust"? In any case, I wish that browser well but how can it compete with, say, Brave for example? What's the difference?

[_JaSn]

Off-topic:

Not the expert here, but I don't believe that was ever a goal. And that's a good thing.

In the world we live in, I completely agree, not because I wouldn't like it if Pale Moon was to be truly big/reputable/recognized among the absolute mainstream, but because in a world where that happens, at that point we will probably have sacrificed too much for Pale Moon to still be Pale Moon.

[_JaSn]

If Helium can become basically the end-game of web browsing for normie OSS users, out of nowhere, over literally nothing but a sane dev team that listens to its community, then we can turn things around in some way or other.

Don't want to be unfair since I haven't tried it, but what is so different here than other Chromium browsers? When did built-in ad-blocking become a revolutionary feature and have we become THAT lazy to even bother looking for an extension?

I cannot hide a strong disbelief to flattering stuff like "made for people, with love". As opposed to what, "made for aliens, with disgust"? In any case, I wish that browser well but how can it compete with, say, Brave for example? What's the difference?

OMG, exactly.

As I said earlier, Helium's only true appeal is that in an ecosystem of browsers that are inconsistent in their design and intentions, mostly due to being for-profit (e.g. Vivaldi having closed-source components, Brave's marketing, Firefox's illusions of grandeur), it is actually sane.
- It is totally community-powered.
- It comes with no extra features aside from those relevant to the browser. It has fingerprinting similar to Brave (in general, childs play; but for a Chromium-based browser, it's impressive).
- It comes prepackaged with uBlock Origin, the community's choice for adblocking. Not quite as good as with Firefox, but close enough; uBlock Origin users will be attracted to Helium because of this.
- It will guaranteed support MV2 until it can no longer -- literally taking up a sisyphean task, while Brave has less incentive and definitely will cuck sooner. They will make excuses that their own adblocking system is enough for its users -- which, btw, probably is heavier on system resources than just using uBO.
- It is actually giving the people what they want! and this is what they mainly do with their browser. So basically, they are making software primarily for the benefit of the people who use it. WOW! What a mind-blowing concept!

And this is all there is to it, ladies and gentlemen. They do not have any revolutionary features. They just took all the best parts from all different places and put them together. DDG's !bangs; vertical tabs; MV2; a friendly UI; no built-in telemetry or tracking from Google; no in-browser ads; no extra services offered within the browser that are irrelevant and that no one asked for. So they are just literally doing what a browser that actually cares SHOULD do.

And this has basically led to the christening and hype you see today. People talk about Helium's awesome features; none of them are new. People talk about Helium's speed; that's just Chromium and, IDK, maybe some cool optimizations they enabled or put in, that probably aren't new (Thorium probably did them first). People talk about Helium not having no bloat; that is just their perception, because they are used to excessive feature creep from other browsers e.g. Brave with their crypto and stuff. All trivial compared to what lies underneath.

And then there's Pale Moon. You can count the advantages listed here, Pale Moon rules them all, except for speed, and I guess maybe the community. Maybe we can leverage this?

[Mæstro]

Where should we leverage it? We have not the budget for any advertising, and even if Pale Moon’s budget were substantially to expand, I deny this would be prudent. I am sure active members here already talk about Pale Moon and its virtues with friends and anyone else in our lives who might be receptive. There is neither virtue nor reward in feuding on SNS.

[back2themoon]

Also, the mainstream crowd uses mainstream websites. And having those working as expected, not only clashes with Pale Moon's small team and the current state of the Web, but possibly also with the project's own roadmap, mentioned earlier.

[UCyborg]

I don't talk to people about Pale Moon because they all tick on different frequencies.

Even in certain tech spaces, you're more likely to see Links mentioned or SeaMonkey.

I use Pale Moon because it's an imitation of what once mainstream Firefox was, before it changed into something where the only thing Firefox about it is its name. Perhaps there simply wasn't a lot of "real" Firefox fans back then.

[Moonchild]

If you look at why this problem (lack of contributions to be a major player) exists, it should be clear that none of this is internal.
Because the project is a fork that has been forced to remain parallel in major strokes for years with a browser that pushed the "philosophy" edge hard, there is not just a capacity or technological hurdle, but also very much a social one, and there are some major factors working against us here:

• As indicated: full-stack vertical integration of Google into everything from Chrome to web platforms (including self-published ones) integrating V8, to major and sometimes exclusive writing and pushing of specs leading to implementation-first standards. We're by definition always "catching up" because standards aren't allowed to mature, often not even becoming standards track material before they are already pushed out to hundreds of millions of websites.
• A continued "blackballing" by major tech news outlets that all fall under the same umbrella (IGN/ZD).
• Misunderstanding that Goanna and UXP are independently developed and maintained, and aim to follow modern web technologies. (The "old and insecure" angle, because people don't understand the project's fully independent nature; in part also due to redefinition of the term "independent" in media).
• Cult-like pushback from Mozilla fans who will categorically lean very hard into anything that isn't published by Mozilla (or follows Mozilla to the letter, i.e. rebuilds). Mozilla reps themselves have helped this by going as far as stating independent forks were "stealing code".
• Stigmas due to past scuffles with small but extremely vocal and influential OSS groups, amplified by the sycophantic Mozilla fans whenever there would be an angle to "kick the smaller project while down".
• Splintering due to animosity from people who forked off from us to go "full retro", which was never one of our goals.
• Major lack of financial backing to be able to advertise without the stated support of mainstream tech news outlets. And to be fair, at this point I really don't think advertising would even help much, because of various applied stigmas.

Ultimately, it boils down to this: we can't force people to contribute. I've always kept an open door for contributions (if they are sane) but if there is no interest in actually doing the work (not just talking up a storm) then we can just work with what we have, nothing more.

[athenian200]

There is another angle to this that's a lot darker that no one likes to think about... have you seen Firefox marketshare over the past few years? They're now below 3%. And it still appears to be headed down.

The web in the future seems like it's only going to be designed for Chromium and maybe Safari, not Mozilla or its forks. Which means I worry at some point we really will be "on our own" to the point even spoofing a Firefox UA might not help... might have to spoof an older WebKit or something instead when that day comes.

My thinking on this is... if Firefox with all the resources they have just keeps losing to Chromium forks, it seems like it would be pretty hard for us to do better even if we have much better intentions. The worst part is? I watched this pattern before as an IE user. I watched IE lose marketshare year after year, resenting Chrome and Firefox and not liking how Google was funding Firefox development, until Microsoft eventually tried to create Edge to stop the bleeding. I went through the whole thing of trying to get webmasters to care about Edge back when it had its own engine, and watching Google insert nag screens to download Chrome on YouTube and every other site they controlled, long before I discovered the Pale Moon community. Eventually it got critical to the point Microsoft had to turn Edge into a Chromium browser and rip out Google services to replace with their own, and that's about the time I found the Pale Moon community.

It really looks like the browser engine monoculture may be here to stay. Microsoft couldn't beat Chrome, Firefox is losing despite being funded by Google and them using kid gloves to avoid killing that project, so... I hate to say it, maybe Chromium is just too entrenched in the ecosystem now for people to ever have a choice of browser again. Maybe everyone who ever wanted something different has already lost and we're all just too stubborn to give up anyway.

[plumsh]

I think I first found out about Pale Moon through Wikipedia, a few years ago. I got the idea that it was an old fork of Firefox from back in the old days that prioritized performance, and that then it got discontinued. It's only until I got back into trying to cut as many GAFAM from my life as possible that I found out Pale Moon not only was still being developed, but had a completely independent web engine. However, the website that (re-)introduced me to PM had a whole list of reasons for why Pale Moon was no longer good, supposedly. I looked through them all, and they were either never true (NoScript being blacklisted for breaking webpages), were no longer true (the use of Cloudflare), or were blown out of proportion (being unable to directly download add-ons is not an issue when you can simply retrieve the files in the "extensions" directory). I ended up using Pale Moon anyway.

So I do think misinformation plays a role, though I also think Pale Moon being largely unknown is why it hasn't attracted as much attention.

I've seen the "insecure" argument being used for all forks of Firefox because they don't get security patches as quickly as upstream, like here (the deleted comment is me pointing out that Pale Moon was not affected by Meltdown/Spectre).

And then there's Pale Moon. You can count the advantages listed here, Pale Moon rules them all, except for speed, and I guess maybe the community. Maybe we can leverage this?

I don't really expect people primarily using a Chromium fork to really care for Pale Moon. If they don't mind using a web engine based on Google's browser (rather than use something based on Gecko), why would they actively seek a browser with an independent web engine?

Even some of the people aware of Pale Moon and none of its stigma don't tend to use it. They either don't know about its advantages (single-process, XUL, customization, lightweight, etc) or don't really care about them. They find using a Firefox fork sufficient (and probably more convenient/useful to their needs, like access to Widevine-protected services). The fact you can't transfer profiles from Firefox (the way you can with modern Firefox forks) probably doesn't help. People who are satisfied with their current browser don't tend to change it for something else.

Honestly, I kind of find it wrong that if you're a Pale Moon user you need to have another browser installed as a backup. It's just off-putting that you discover this alright browser that is significantly less bloated than the others, takes up less system resources, carries a great deal of customizability and personality, and is very privacy-friendly, and sure maybe it's kinda slow sometimes, and then realize that you will probably also have to install some other browser to do the stuff you want, which BTW also supports tons of garbage you won't be loading sites with 90%+ of the time, and thus is bloated and probably takes up something like gigabytes of space on your computer for no reason other than those websites.

Honestly, websites that don't work on Pale Moon are pretty rare for me. And among those, the ones I need to use (which are not a one-time deal or something I can progressively stop using) are ones I could connect to a few times per year, if not once per year. I'm honestly considering using a different OS/machine to avoid this "backup browser" issue. It's probably good practice too security-wise, to have one OS where I pay for stuff and another where I do everything else.

[Night Wing]

There is another angle to this that's a lot darker that no one likes to think about... have you seen Firefox marketshare over the past few years? They're now below 3%. And it still appears to be headed down.

When it comes to browser market share, it depends on where the market share comes from and from what devices. For instance. Take a look at the link below for the USA.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-mark ... of-america

Statcounter has Chrome at (and I'm going to round up the numbers) 50% and Safari at 32%. I think this percentage for Safari is mostly based on iPads and iPhones. Apple computers, all-in-ones and laptops, are very expensive compared to Windows computers.

I say this because in the shop where we repair desktop towers and laptops, we basically see around "four to six" Apple computers (all-in-ones, laptops) in a year (time wise). The rest of the computers, towers and laptops, we see at the shop are Windows computers. And those Windows computers usually have two browsers on them.

They are:

1) Edge and Chrome
2) Edge and Firefox

We do not see many of these Windows towers and laptops with Edge being paired with Brave, Vivaldi or Opera.

[andyprough]

Once again, I see a lot of people missing the big picture. Let me briefly itemize:

a) Literally no one on earth (maybe a tiny handful of the most extremist fringe security people) uses openBSD as a home desktop. People literally have no idea anything openBSD has ever said about anything.
b) Literally no one on earth (maybe a tiny handful of the most extremist fringe xp users) uses mypal. Same as above.
c) People are fleeing Firefox as fast as they possibly can and have been for years, in fact they have been ever since the time of the last major UXP fork (@athenian200 gets this). The best thing Pale Moon could do for itself would be to stop advertising itself in any way as an independently developed modern fork that has ever had anything to do with Firefox. No one has the slightest interest. Call it the "latest, greatest, most private, secure thing ever", just like Helium has (whether true or not) and Brave before that (whether true or not), and you'll get downloads. It's human nature.

Pale Moon makes every "top 10 alternative browsers" list I can recall seeing for years, both in the tech press and on youtube. So it's not actually that there are never any mentions, it's just that readers, who are fleeing Firefox as fast as they can, are reading that Pale Moon has something to do with Firefox.

That's all. Also, put lots of bright shiny colors on your home page, and make your Linux Downloads page look like a simplified version of Veit Kannegeiser's Downloads page - a command for getting his key, a command for adding his repo to your source list, and instructions on running 'apt update' and 'apt install palemoon'. This is what all the big browsers do, since almost all the users are on some form of Debian or Ubuntu. People don't want to come to a Downloads page and say to themselves, "oh man, I have to figure out a freaking tarball?" Just being honest.

I don't know much about how Windows users get software, maybe you are already doing that right and they just need to stop hearing anything related to Firefox.

This is just marketing 101 kind of stuff. I may be wrong on some of my assumptions, but probably not. Who among us has ever known a long-term, commmitted openBSD home desktop user? Who among us has ever known a mypal user who wasn't an XP extremist (or we ourselves were trying it to get internet access on an XP box)? The long-term plummeting, cratering, death spiral Firefox user base numbers speak for themselves, and even THEY claim "latest, greatest, most private, secure thing ever" to try to prop themselves up, but hardly anyone is buying it any longer.