Mozilla is ~83% funded by Google. That’s right- the maker of the dominant Chrome browser is mostly behind its own noteworthy “competitor”. When Google holds that much influence over Mozilla, I call it a false duopoly because consumers are duped into thinking the two are strongly competing with each other. In Mozilla’s effort to please Google and to a lesser extent the end users, it often gets caught pulling anti-user shenanigans. Users accept it because they see Firefox as the lesser of evils.

Even if it were a true duopoly, it would be insufficient anyway. For a tool that is so central to the UX of billions of people, there should be many more competitors.

public option

Every notable government has an online presence where they distribute information to the public. Yet they leave it to the public to come up with their own browser which may or may not be compatible with the public web service. In principle, if a government is going to distribute content to the public, they also have a duty to equip the public to be able to consume the content. Telling people to come up with their own private sector tools to reach the public sector is a bit off. It would be like telling citizens they can receive information about legislation that passes if they buy a private subscription to the Washington Post. The government should produce their own open source browser which adheres to open public standards and which all the gov websites are tested with.

I propose Italy

Italy is perhaps the only country in the world to have a “public money → public code” law, whereby any software development effort that is financed by the gov must be open source. So IMO Italy should develop a browser to be used to access websites of the Italian gov. Italy can save us from the false duopoly from Google.

  •  debanqued   ( @debanqued@beehaw.org ) OP
    1•7 months ago

    Forking doesn’t imply control.

    It does. That’s the reason for forking. You get control. If you don’t, then you’ve done something wrong.

    A forked version of chromium would still want to keep up to date with the upstream project.

    That’s the choice of the fork owners, because they get control. They can take or leave upstream changes at will.

    You seem to view this public option with an unrealistic view of how software development works. Especially in the public sector.

    I’ve worked on software projects in both the private sector and public sector.

    Somebody comes in with a requirement to do something in the fastest and cheapest way possible.

    This reflects an unrealistic view of how public sector software development works. What you describe is how the private sector works. You cannot superimpose your understanding of the private sector on the public sector and assume it works that way.

    The engineers go off and fork chromium and simply reskin it because that meets the brief.

    It depends on the budget. Public budgets can be tight and they can be loose. It’s a spend-it-or-lose-it scenario. If you do not spend every dime of your annual budget, you get a smaller budget next year. So there’s a unique incentive to spend in the public sector. If (and only if) the budget is tight, indeed they would fork something (not necessarily Chrome).

    And that’s merely the start of the project. In software development, we don’t just build something and walk away from it. Especially for government projects - the software is continually under maintenance. So after the fork (if that’s what the budget is limited to) the project does the necessary to meet new requirements as they emerge.

    The public sector isn’t going to be interested in trying to make the optimal browser if they are forced to create one. They are going to be interested in meeting the brief in the fastest and easiest way possible.

    That’s not how the public sector works. It’s a world of difference between the private sector. What you’re describing is the private sector. Unlike the private sector, public sector workers are not blocked from “gold plating”. Public sector workers have the freedom to produce polished work. Their wages tends to be lower than what they would fetch in the private sector, but what they gain is intellectual freedom and creative license. This is why NASA workers love their work environment and employee retention is high despite relatively low wages.