Mozilla is going to sell VPN subscriptions within Firefox
Beginning October 24th, the ad will show for select US-based Firefox users who are running the latest version — Firefox 62 — on desktop. If eligible and browsing on an unsecured network, you'll be shown an ad in the top right corner of your Firefox window that prompts you to click through to a sign up page.
Mozilla is offering ProtonVPN's services for $10 a month, which is actually $2 more than if you signed up for the same package directly through ProtonVPN. But, the majority of the revenue from ProtonVPN subscriptions that are processed through Mozilla will go directly to Mozilla. Both companies are banking that people will have good will about paying a little more in order to support their "shared goal of making the internet a safer place."
Also at ZDNet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @05:46AM (3 children)
Palemoon does seem the obvious choice, but I personally would rather have the performance improvements that came with the 'quantum' rewrite than XUL extension support. Also, as was mentioned elsewhere in the comments, Palemoon has taken to blacklisting some of the more useful privacy protecting add-ons (noscript, ad-nauseum) which does not sit well with me.
What I would really like is a palemoon-inspired fork, but that doesn't end with Firefox 57. One that keeps up with the post-quantum firefox, so that we can take advantage of the improved performance of the rewrite.
So far the transgressions from Mozilla have been moderate (statistics gathering, pushing Pocket, Mr. Robot promotion, secretly installing add-ins of tenuous utility, and now testing the waters of paid promotion), it seems straightforward enough to make a fork that strips these and keeps the users safe from these boneheaded decisions from Mozilla while also keeping the browser updated at a reasonable cadence.
Is it a dick move to try and work against Mozilla's efforts to monetize Firefox? Maybe, but if Mozilla is going to start pushing ads through Firefox (either through distros package managers, or through its internal updater) I think it is warranted.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Tuesday October 23 2018, @06:53AM
So, you want the next version of Waterfox. (The current one is still based on version 56, but the plan is to follow the ESR versions.)
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday October 23 2018, @09:53AM
It sounds like you should try Waterfox even though it doesn't use Quantum. Like I said in my other comment [soylentnews.org], it uses Mozilla's initial multiprocess feature (electrolysis), which helps a lot with UI responsiveness. Between that and auto-unload tab [mozilla.org] to stop old tabs from staying loaded and running forever, I have no trouble at all with hundreds of tabs. (Currently at around 300, but I've had much more before. Thank you tab groups and tree-style tab.)
It's also claiming to target a more technical crowd and touts privacy, so it's not blacklisting addons like NoScript the way Pale Moon is.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 23 2018, @03:47PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves