• onlinepersona@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m confident that Mozilla will follow suite sooner or later to make it easier for extension developers to make extensions for both browsers. Mozilla did that when manifest v1 came along, removed a bunch of functionality from Jetpack, and aligned with Google.

    • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      They implement Manifest v3 already for compatibility, but without the user-hostile restrictions.

      • onlinepersona@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        It wouldn’t surprise me if they removed features to make popular extensions work. Time will tell. I’m still salty about Jetpack.

        • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          What do you suppose Firefox’s goal or motive would be in removing features for the end user? Isn’t their purpose to compete with Chrome and be better?

            • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              It would stand to reason that if they were as bad as Chrome, that people would just stick with Chrome and they would miss out on profit entirely, I would think. If monetary incentive is a reason, purposely hamstringing themselves seems counter-intuitive toward that goal.

              • onlinepersona@programming.dev
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                The thing is, firefox is the only other browser out there that doesn’t use the same browser engine. They know it too. They have absolutely no incentive to change, unless some other browser engine and a corresponding browser were to pop up that competed with them. If a group decided “we’re going to make a browser that is really private and doesn’t do what Mozilla does”, and they got a footing, only then would Mozilla consider competing, but only to be better than that other browser, not Chrome.

                For Mozilla to want to be better than Chrome, Google would have to do some incredibly dumb shit, Mozilla would need an enormous cash injection from another party, or the current stewards of Mozilla would need to be replaced with people who actually care. IMO, those are all unlikely.

                • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  In this specific context we are talking about Manifest V3 artificially limiting the number of rules in an extension. That’s it, it’s artificial, there is no reason for it to exist other than Google purposely degrading the capability. What does Mozilla have to gain by also degrading themselves?

                  • onlinepersona@programming.dev
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Compatibility. You want to have enough users to be considered for being paid off, but not too little that you can be ignored. It’s similar to the linux gaming move: on linux you can’t just add a windows compatible interface to the kernel, so you have to translate it. Game developers thus focus on windows and ignore linux since there build process is completely different. As a browser, you sure as hell can introduce a common interface --> extension devs write their extension once and it run on firefox too. Users who care enough can thus switch without much hassle.

                    It’s a numbers game.