CharmCityCrab
commented
9 months ago I'm replying to some stuff from #684 because I'm not able to reply there for an unknown reason (See above):
@akliuxingyuan
Hi @CharmCityCrab, I see that you are actively participating in and paying attention to this project. Are you willing to clone What-I-want-on-Fenix and maintain it as a new default add-on collection?
I'm honored to be asked and I apologize for the delay in responding.
Essentially, I wanted to help and saw this as probably being something I was capable of doing. So, my initial reaction was to want to say "yes".
However, I conferred with an old friend of mine who works in IT and IT Security for a fairly important corporation, and he felt like letting my personal name or username and log-in be used for a list which essentially every Iceraven browser in the world logs into would not be the best idea. Essentially, I could wind up getting phone calls from law enforcement if someone downloaded extensions from my account and wound up under some type of criminal investigation, because all they would see is the suspect's IP address visiting what, in theory, according to the way Mozilla sets it up, be my personal private collection of add-ons and Mozilla would give up my details as the one to talk because I'd be the one it was registered to. I could probably explain it by, just, you know, explaining it, but it makes me a bit nervous.
My friend tends to be overcautious (as that is essentially a big part of his job), but I trust his judgement. He also knows I have a really low risk tolerance.
Secondarily, another reason I might not be the best person for this is that I was banned from the Mozilla Github (When they had one) and several other Mozilla platforms years ago, the subsequent ones just upon seeing my screen name, email address, or IP, without any further "offenses". Though I'm free to use their browsers if I want to, there's no guarantee that any add-on list I set up wouldn't be deleted and my Mozilla account (Which I currently don't have, but would have to sign up for to pull this off) banned (Either on site because I'm me, or because this type of usage might violate their TOS- or using one reason as an excuse to delete it when they really want to do it for the other reason), which could leave some users with no add-on list while someone set up a third list or fell back to the original one on the next browser update. I don't really care all that much if Mozilla bans me from yet another thing (I might start caring more if they were to lift my other bans)- like I said, I don't even have a Mozilla account (That I remember, at least), so being banned wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it could result in a bad "outage" for Iceraven if it took down the default extension list with my account in such a scenario.
Part of my delay here is that I feel like crap saying no to this. There is a large part of me that feels like I really should do it given how much this browser means to me and that a way to help is finally available that doesn't require coding. So, I wanted to put off saying no once I realized I was going to have to. However, you deserve an answer and it would not have been right to just "ghost" you on the original request. Like, I said, you deserve an answer.
I apologize that it probably wasn't the answer you wanted and it isn't the answer I want to give at a gut level, but I trust my friend's judgement on this kind of stuff (No matter how paranoid it sometimes seems). He knows a lot of things I don't when it comes to IT and IT security.
akliuxingyuan
For whatever reason, I seem to be blocked from replying to #684, but people are continuing to have that conversation with new comments being added to the thread (So it's not totally closed), and I feel like as someone who has been around participating in the issues section since the beginning of the project, and who knows some things that people in that issue don't seem to be aware of, I should be able to weigh in.
If people want to move this comment to that issue, that's fine, or it can be left here. Just don't delete it please. :)
Okay, so:
We all owe him a debt of gratitude for his solid maintenance and stewardship of this great browser.
Prior to the time when he joined the project, sometimes updates could be sparse because the project's founder had a full time job in the industry and didn't really want to do much work on something in his free time that was so similar to his day job. We owe him a debt of gratitude for all the fine work he did as well, but it was clear he needed help, and the project was probably at it's best, or second best relative to the past year, during a time period years ago when he had 2-3 other developers helping him out (Some very interesting things going on with Iceraven tabs back then), before they quit on us (Not that they had any obligation to continue- they were volunteering to help the community. It wasn't some job they were contracted to do.).
During the time after the two gentlemen referenced above had gone and before the person who's been handling most or all of the 2023 updates arrived, I openly said what we could really use was perhaps a college student who might benefit from the experience of working on a project like this that was already going with an active user base (So he wouldn't have to attract people to a new project from scratch and could just focus on coding) and that we really just needed someone who had the time and the coding ability to merge the updates regularly to see an improvement.
We were lucky in that after kind of treading water for an extended period of time with only occasional updates, that just such a person found us.
I think people should stop hammering him and try to be a little more patient under the circumstances.
In addition to all the other reasons he doesn't deserve to be criticized to the extent others are doing so, let's try to keep in mind here that English is a very difficult second language for someone who's first language is any of the multiple languages spoken by native Chinese folks. It's not like the way some westerners who's native language is English learn Spanish in high school with both languages using essentially a Latin alphabet with perhaps some languages having an "extra" few letters relative to other ones, but basically being the same.
English and Chinese (Not just one language, a family of languages from various regions within that country) aren't just different languages, they don't even have the same alphabet. It's very tough for, for example, a westerner to learn a language from the far east or vice-versa. I have a relative from my nation of the United States who learned Thai (Which is separate from Chinese but similarly not the Latin derived alphabets westerners are used to) and he said it was one of the toughest things he ever did.
So, when when people from the US and other western countries criticize this young person for not communicating clearly, I think they should probably think about how clearly they would be able to communicate if they were coding for a project used by people who were typing in Mandarin Chinese or a similar language, which can look like hieroglyphics on a surface level to people unfamiliar with them. It's got to be very difficult for him. I'm making some assumptions here, like that English is not his native language and that it's either a second or third language or he doesn't know it at all and is having to use translation software or translation Internet services, but that is what I have been assuming.
I'm just saying, let's try to be understanding. This isn't a project with 750 employees, or any employees, for that matter.
I do agree with some of what others have said in so far as obviously it would be good to know what to expect going forward if at all possible. New options are always welcome as long as they are things we can turn off if we prefer the current configuration. If Iceraven could eventually makes it's way to the Google Play Store and F-Droid, that would also be awesome.
I think Iceraven definitely still has a reason to exist. It's true that extension access overtop a stable fork of Fenix (Firefox) was sort of the initial reason @interfect did a proof of concept that evolved into a continuing project that many of us have come to love and rely on.
However, Firefox stable still lacks a lot of features Iceraven has. Someone mentioned about:config access as being important to him. Someone else mentioned extra shortcut screens as being a key driver of their use of Iceraven. For me personally, the inclusion of the option to use Full URLs with protocol (https://, etc.) and www (Where applicable) are very important and something Firefox and it's other forks don't offer on Android.
There are more features like that. For example, recently, DuckDuckGo was made the browser's default search engine, and a couple of other privacy focused search engines were added to the default list of options. That's probably a big deal for folks who want something like that out of the box instead of Google (Though of course Iceraven will let you use Google as your personal default if you want to).
Obviously, there are a lot more potential things that could be added if developers have the time and inclination down the line. Iceraven I think has at times tried to, and hopefully will continue to, position itself as a browser with the most user choice, customization, and abilities for users to see more of how their browser is interacting with websites, within the ecosystem of Firefox for Android forks, and just within the ecosystem of Android browsers in general. Firefox does a little of that, which makes it a good base to fork from, but that's not really Firefox's current mission.
Someone not associated with Mozilla offered the new Firefox for Android a small patch three and half years ago to restore an option to show protocol and www on Firefox for Android post-version 68, a feature Firefox offered up until version 69. They didn't take it or code their own, so Iceraven grabbed it and it was in the Iceraven browser less than a week later.
Firefox still hasn't included that option. It was discussed extensively on their Github back in the day. They just don't want to add the option. They're on version 119 or 120 these days, so it's probably safe to assume that it's not something they just hadn't gotten around to, but that it's something they don't want to do.
Firefox's move to restore a more open marketplace extensions on Android taking almost four years after the devs assured people that they'd be back soon when they were eliminated kind of makes it seem like they were being misleading or are only doing what they are doing now reluctantly, because they need to do it to save their Android browser.
So, just sort of folding on the premise that Firefox has essentially become Iceraven is not something I feel comfortable with. I am still kind of skeptical about whether Firefox has a long-term commitment to be what Iceraven was trying to be. There are points of intersection, but in the end Firefox seems to be more into trying to be competitive with Chrome than being the options browser on Android. Firefox is still missing features, but more than that, they don't seem to be trying to be what Iceraven is trying to be.
If any of the people complaining can code, I'm sure their help would be useful. I personally can't code, so I'm not saying that you shouldn't criticize or comment if you can't code, because that would eliminate me, too. It's not a skill that everyone has or even has the ability to learn. However, if you can do it, I'm sure the project would benefit from regular help or even just one-off patches that add features.
I don't agree with the idea that the project should be switched to relying on non-stable code. This is not a beta. Stability is important. I don't want to use a beta and I think many users and potential users don't want to use a beta either. The combination of being based on stable releases but with extra features has been a big selling point for Iceraven over the years.
A lot of us have been banned from Mozilla owned platforms (Seemingly for life) over comments about Firefox or over comments about some of Firefox's developers' own public comments that we've made on sites not owned or controlled by Mozilla, in some cases from many years ago. We can't even report a bug, offer a suggestion, or point them towards a patch from a fork that might be useful and save them some work because we offered constructive criticism on third party sites. They ban people at the drop of a hat.
Sure, we can still use the Firefox browser if we want to, but there is some I think understandable ambivalence on some of our parts over doing so given that we can't be involved in the community, may feel like we were done wrong, and have no real path to having those restrictions lifted. Iceraven doesn't have those same bad vibes, and if Iceraven disappeared, Firefox might or might not be the browser we switch to on Android. I'm honestly not sure whether I would use Firefox or find something else in that scenario. I'd rather have Iceraven to stick with.
Iceraven has been a part of many of our lives for several years now. We'd miss it if it was gone. It's not some disposable thing where the second Firefox adds some extensions, we move on. This is sort of our home for the world wide web on our cell phones and has been since the summer of 2020 for many of us.
I've been using Reddit to try to better understand what's happening upstream on Firefox so I can present the issues Firefox's most recent and near future planned future changes could create for anyone here who wants to read them, to comment on whether Iceraven should adopt them wholesale or not, and/or for Iceraven's developers to decide whether to pick them up or do something different downstream here on Iceraven. I can't get straight answers from anyone involved with Firefox (or who I'm confident understands the totality of that situation), and I don't have the technical knowledge to read and understand a lot of Firefox's technical documents (Some of which are posted online).
One thing that would be nice to know is if their new Android extension format is Manifest v2, Manifest v3, or something else entirely. If it's Manifest v3, a controversial new format invented by Google to limit what extensions and especially content/ad blockers can do, that might be an argument for trying to figure out if there's some way for Iceraven to preserve it's existing extension system within the browser or on an alternate server so it's there even after Mozilla takes it down, or to support both extension systems side by side. If anyone is going to take a stab at preserving the old extensions, it's got to be done soon, though, because they're hosted on Mozilla's servers and will likely be gone very soon.
It may be best for Iceraven to use Firefox's new extension AMO when it is available for a stable version of Firefox we can fork the updates for into Iceraven. But it'd be nice to have more information to be sure. I can understand if that's not possible, and I would imagine the new extension infrastructure will be fine and, you know, continue to feature extension updates (Whereas simply preserving the existing system would likely mean no more updates to those extensions, as the developers for said extensions will likely have moved on to the new Firefox system or simply stopped developing compatible extensions), so I'm not going to be that disappointed if we just adopt that new Firefox system wholesale on Iceraven, but it's always good to make informed choices instead of just making assumptions.