It's too late. Firefox already has compatibility issues with sites I use heavily. There's a much better chance I'd use the new Chromium based Edge than Firefox at this point. And with it's usage share dropping...if moral superiority is the only thing Firefox has going for it, it's a sinking ship. Having more contributors/users of Chromium/Blink seems to be a better path towards a less Google-dominated browser landscape at this point.

I'm just using firefox because it's the better browser. it's got better plugins, better settings and better performance (except in cases of google frameworks like angular, but come on, a webframework that "just so happens" to perform better on the vendors browser.."

Although I also despair the lack of choice in web browsers nowadays (not to mention certain coworkers of mine who try to spin "standardization" on Chrome/Chromium as a good thing), I wouldn't go so far as to claim there's some moral component to one's choice of browser. While I have strong feelings about this, I can't judge people who choose the path of least resistance when picking the software they use. Sometimes you want stuff to just work. People's priorities are their own and not everyone has the luxury of being able to be different because of their views. Some people just need to get things done.

I kind of agree. We can't let a single corporation drive some almost-universally-used thing like a web browser. I mean, look what an oligopolistic market did to US car manufacturers. Stifled innovation, downgraded product, the entire industry almost went under in the mid-to-late 70s.

Look at what happened when Microsoft attained near-universal presence with IE 6. Their innovation stopped, security went straight down the toilet. Of course, at that point, Microsoft also lost their edge and began losing mindshare and dominance in emerging technologies, but that's a bit beside this point.

No mention of Safari here (or Epiphany on Linux). The latest version of Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.1 is pretty good at fingerprint protection.

Morals aside, I agree with the points made regarding key Firefox fumbles at times when Chrome was making significant inroads. Of course there are many other mistakes Firefox/Mozilla made that people have also commented on here. Over the years I saw these mistakes take place and lamented about them often. I'm just not sure that even if all these mistakes were avoided Chrome wouldn't still dominate the market, especially in the mobile space - Platform bundling is a powerful thing! As we know, even a poorly performing browser (like IE) can get a large market share when it's the default for the masses. I see a lot of non-technical Windows 10 users browsing away in Edge these days because it's there and seemingly as a bonus it works well enough for them.

I personally would like to use Firefox exclusively, but I often deal with equipment that demands Chrome whether it really needs to or not. This is especially common when it comes to IP video applications.

Is there any reason why you should use Firefox over Safari in this case then? How are we defining the "moral superiority" of web browsers here because it all seems to bit iffy to me. Why not use NetSurf if we're really talking, something that's actually open source and not only in name like Mozilla does with Firefox.

I agree. I have tried Chromium at times, but the weight of Google hegemony always sends me back.

HOWEVER! I run it in a VM on a Qubes host, with UMatrix add-on and a Google Analytics blocker. It has no access to a GPU. It crashes, sometimes, hundreds of times a day. (Most usually this is a tab crashing, but frequently enough the whole thing goes.) Nothing else on the machine is even slightly unstable. At the moment, 66 is entirely unable to bring up a Google Maps tab for more than a half-second; it draws the map, then BOOM.

Frequently it can bring up a page, but then crashes at the first hint of scrolling.

Looking back, this seems to have started sometime around 60 or 61, and got really bad around 63 or 64. I really would like to see an end to its crashing.

Great browser. It has really been improved over the last months.

I think that extension portability is needed in order to compete with the chromium family.

Why firefox? It is the next major browser (after chrome) in desktop. Promoving the use of another may lead to the parity in the very long term.

Actual paying users would be better than millions of users that just want to complain. At this point with so much immorality online, what browser you use is just a matter of taste.

lol firefox. i wouldnt hate the guys if they had stuck to their guns on DRM and didnt kick the guy because he made a religious donation.

FF was also behind in using auto update the software without user interaction. That was a big change from user’s perspective (who didn’t much care that a certain service was also always running behind the scenes).

"With every year it is more likely that one day you will not be able to create a website using the technologies of your choosing and you will not be able to make it behave as you see fit. Others will make those decisions for you."

This is already how it is for almost everyone and it's... fine? I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't even be bothered to keep up with emerging web standards, let alone make any decisions about them.

I'll use it when they bring back RSS functionality, make it possible for me to configure its UI like I could before, and stop tracking me by default. I'm sick of updates stealing functionality from me, and I'll use qutebrowser or something similar until Firefox is no longer run by people intent on destroying the software.

The most important advantage of Firefox for me is being able to run extensions on mobile

Poor title. The content doesn't try to defend it unless you accept "the web as it is now/has been is morally right" as a truism.

If it’s a moral obligation, can I mention a problem on a forum without being asked for my bug report or my patch?

Or am I both morally obligated to use the software and either open tickets for any issue I mention or fix those problems myself?

No, thanks.

I don't like being told what my moral obligation is. I'll figure that out for myself, thank you.

Make GPU acceleration work, 1080p YouTube videos play under Linux and I'll consider it.

It is Mozilla Corporation's leadership moral obligation to resign for their privacy scandals and mismanagement of Firefox.

No it is not. Why?

- Browser fingerprinting protection? Nope

- No ads on start page? Nope

- Https everywhere? Nope

- Ad block? Nope

If you want to support firefox, download TOR browser.

Else, use brave. But please don't support further degradation of privacy in the web.