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Former Mozilla CEO Launches Security-Centric Browser Brave
rudy_wayne writes: Former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich has launched a new Chromium-based browser called Brave. "Brave blocks everything: initial signaling/analytics scripts that start the programmatic advertising 'dirty pipe', impression-tracking pixels, and ad-click confirmation signals," Eich wrote on the Brave site. Former Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal said in a blog post that "the web is broken," with current browser vendors unwilling to tackle the dilemma of blocking ads, while looking at alternative mechanisms for funding content. Gal said it was ironic Brave was a for-profit operation that can make money from reducing advertising.
And the other day the Human Rights Campaign endorsed Clinton over Sanders for president even though Sanders has a far longer and better track record when it comes to support for gays and Clinton was even previously opposed to gay marriage for a good chunk of her political career.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows and it wouldn't surprise me if Elissa was another one of those feminists who has more in common with someone like Benny Hinn than they do with supporting the actual ideals of the movement. I've never heard of her before, so I have no idea what she believes in or supports as far as positions go, but it does stand out as strange. Then again, the overreaction related to Eich was pretty damned ridiculous to begin with, so it may be something anyone with half a brain could look past when there are bigger things at stake. So perhaps she's not one of those idiots more interested in grandstanding on platitudes or ideological purity and someone who'd prefer to get something with actual significance accomplished.
The most important thing I see out of all of this is that he isn't using Gecko, despite his very long history with that technology.
He's also not using Servo, the browser engine Mozilla is working on to eventually replace Gecko.
I think this says a huge amount about the sorry state of Mozilla's offerings today.
Users of Firefox already know what I'm talking about. They know how much slower Firefox feels than Chrome, Edge, Safari, and browsers using other engines. They know how Firefox uses more memory. They know how Firefox suffers from bugs that haven't been fixed even after many years.
It's truly sad what has happened to Mozilla's products. They've shot themselves in the foot by going off on stupid tangents like Firefox OS, Persona, and especially Rust and Servo.
Rust and Servo are leading Mozilla down a dead end trail. They're a twin example of software rewrites gone bad.
Rust is basically trying to rewrite C++, but hasn't done a very good job. The syntax is no better, and sometimes much worse. Its approach to resource management is harder to understand and use practically than C++'s. There's only one Rust implementation, and it's buggy and slow. The Rust community is way too focused on social justice and censorship. They even have a moderation squad, for crying out loud! It took them ages to get a 1.0 release out, and it isn't good at all. Then there's the fact that C++ has continued to evolve and get better, along with having multiple excellent implementations.
Servo is written in Rust, so that helps explain why it's a failure so far, too. When I tried it recently, it gave me what I'd consider an experience similar to IE 3, which dates back to 1996. Servo has a huge amount of catching up to do. The entire situation is not encouraging at all.
Mozilla should end the Rust and Servo projects now, along with Firefox OS and their other failed initiatives. They need to get back to focusing on Gecko and Firefox. They need to restore Firefox's UI to the usable Firefox 3.6 approach. They need to migrate Gecko to C++14, and prepare for the use of C++17 instead of switching to Rust. They need to fix Gecko's performance issues. They need to fix the longstanding bugs.
Right now there are at least a few remaining users of Firefox and Gecko, although their number is dropping. There are basically no users of Servo. Mozilla's only hope for salvation is to win back the Firefox users they've alienated over the past few years. I fear that if they don't do that, then they will slide into irrelevancy. That won't be good for them, and it won't be good for the web either.