Pale Moon turns 15

[Moonchild]

It's been 15 years since Pale Moon was first published, and we've come down a long and winding path to get here!

Back in 2009, Pale Moon was just an optimized rebuild of Firefox, which, back then, was still putting its users and customization first. As that changed, so did Pale Moon's direction, into one that kept the user central to the browser, and not being afraid to evaluate and decline changes Mozilla was making not aligned with what Pale Moon aimed to be. After a few important and difficult decisions we have settled on fully maintaining our own platform, our own layout and rendering engine, and our own architectural and design goals.

Of course it wasn't smooth sailing. Some of the less favourable things of note in the 15 years have been a constant struggle against Google pushing hard and fast for implementation-first changes to the web, and refusal to license technologies to non-commercial Open Source projects (like Widevine, authentication protocols, safebrowsing, etc.), a total lack of interest by similarly struggling players in the browser market to cooperate with us, as well as various more internal issues with the project, including a lack of flexibility of some major developers in the past and a desire by some parts of the community to treat Pale Moon as a free resource that didn't deserve any respect.

But after all that, I remember that which matters most, and I'm happy to say that yes, we are still here. We will continue to do our best to keep up with the madness various groups keep pushing to the web, and continue to provide you with a customizable, efficient browser that remains fully independent. Our independence is entirely thanks to the generosity of our users who have chipped in over the years! My eternal gratitude to all of you who have helped one way or another.

If you want to support our continued independence, please consider providing a donation. If you would like to have something tangible in return, there are still some of our challenge coins available (although stock is getting low, and they won't be re-made again - the amount shown on the website is every last coin that's left). We are primarily donation-supported at this point, and every small amount you can share to help out our continued development is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!