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.
That sounds like your government has an issue. That isn't the same as governments as a whole using the web.
In the US, we still have the option to do things in person. The online presence is a convenience. That's how it should work everywhere.
Even in the US people are forced to use the web for public service even if it’s not officially announced.
E.g., suppose you want to see the state secretary’s records for a corporation. A lot of SoS websites try to force you to solve a #CAPTCHA. Fuck CAPTCHAs. I don’t do CAPTCHAs. So there’s an offline option, right? Ha. Try it. Send a snail mail letter to a state secretary requesting the registration records for an arbitrary business you know they should have records on. They just ignore it now. They don’t even have the courtesy to respond to say why they will not treat your request. Offline services have been quietly taken away without people even noticing.
I can walk in to the library of Congress and make a face to face request.
The web is a convenience for any public need in the US.
SoS records are state records, not federal. Are you saying every state shares their corporate database with LoC?
I would not be as fast as you to call the web a mere “convenience” to 99.9% of the country who are not a walking distance from Washington DC. If the analog way of doing something requires thousands of miles of travel, the online way is not a mere convenience. It’s a requirement, in effect.
BTW, it’s worth noting that the LoC has an access restricted Cloudflare website. So their exclusivity makes an offline option essential. If that means face to face in DC, that’s fucked up indeed. You should be able to use the postal service.
I think you're struggling with the difference of convenience and difficulty. Doing things without the web implies you are going to do them in the same way you'd have to pre-web. That makes the web more convenient.
Pre-web, postal correspondence was treated. Now it’s not. Convenience and difficulty are inversely proportional measures of the same thing. When you take away one out of two options, the other option is not a convenience. It’s a requirement.
The idea that you think people nationwide traveling to DC to get a business record is mere inconvenience is absurd. Are you drunk? You’re making a lot of bizarre assumptions, starting with assuming the travel is even possible for everyone nationwide who needs the service. If someone needs to sue a company for $200 and travel costs to DC to get the registered agent of the company is $400, you’ve effectively killed their access public service by nixing correspondence.
Your perverse understanding of convenience is ultimately just a language game that changes the language but not the problem. So let’s say traveling from California to DC to get an address is a mere “inconvenience” and using the web is “convenient”. That so-called “convenience” is essential in countless scenarios. And because what you refer to as “inconvenient” is actually not plausible in a scenario, the need for convenience in your language becomes essential.
Yes, these things are inconvenient. Meaning they are achievable items but at some personal cost and effort. They are not insurmountable.
And a new browser isn't going to change anything. I'm honestly not even sure what you're arguing anymore.
You’re not getting it. It’s not achievable.
Pre-web:
Post-web:
Do you understand the math? Pre-web, it was possible to sue a corporation for $200 and recover $199.45 of that. Post-web, that is insurmountable. If you try, you lose even if you win the judgement. Post-web, the only way to win that case is to use the web. You are therefore forced to use the web in the US.
Of course it does. A public option can give sovereignty from US tech giants. Otherwise you have the injustice of a government forcing people not only to use technology but to subject themselves and the people to the influence of surveillance capitalists.
Your arguments are all over the place. It's not the governments responsibility to ensure that a law suit is profitable.
And a new browser isn't going to do what you think it is. Any attempt by a government to create a browser is just going to use Blink anyways. The reason so many browsers are using it (including browsers made by tech giants) is that rendering engines are incredibly difficult to maintain. Especially as the Web continues to evolve.
Nonsense. Of course we expect to get a court remedy when a business or person scams or cheats another. Otherwise why even have civil courts? It’s a foolish idea to think the government has no responsibility in providing a functional justice system. Where do you think the responsibility for justice in disputes lies, if not the government? You have don’t even have leverage to negotiate an out of court settlement unless the threat of losing your ass in court is real. Even if you live in a small indigenous tribal community, there’s a tribal leader serving as the “government” to arbitrate disputes.
It’s noteworthy that you used the term “profitable”. When I wrote the example I had recovery of actual damages in mind. But that’s fine, we can run with that too. When a lawsuit generates profit, that means we’re dealing with tort or statutory damages. Since it would be small claims, we can nix tort. Statutory damages refer to situations where the law sets out a penalty for violators whereby victims need not show actual damages. E.g. telemarketers breaking the TCPA, or credit bureaus breaking the FCRA. In these cases, the people elected Congress to write law to protect consumers, and as representatives of the people Congress opted to codify statutory penalties that are directly actionable by victims. Of course the gov has a responsibility to support their own law and make violations thereof actionable. This is what they were elected to do.
You’ve misunderstood my position. This is also non-sequitur logic. Blink is not a browser, so if you build a new browser which makes use of Blink, it’s still a new browser. (Hence the non-sequitur). From there, whether Blink is sufficiently brand-agnostic to effectively offer sovereignty from tech giants is a separate question. If yes, then Blink inside of a Google-free creation is fit for purpose. If not (due to Google steering things even from the rendering engine), then Blink would defeat the purpose and thus it would be unfit for purpose.
I'll get even more specific to what is likely to happen in that scenario. The governmental entity will reskin chromium. Google will own the open source project.
In that case it would depend on whether “reskinning” implies forking. If they fork and exercise control over the code thereafter, that’s fair enough. Otherwise, no.. it’d be insufficient to secure sovereignty from Google if the code continues to simply automatically mirror Google’s.
Forking doesn't imply control. A forked version of chromium would still want to keep up to date with the upstream project.
You seem to view this public option with an unrealistic view of how software development works. Especially in the public sector.
Somebody comes in with a requirement to do something in the fastest and cheapest way possible. In this case, make a public browser option. The engineers go off and fork chromium and simply reskin it because that meets the brief. They might even go so far as to set up a CI pipeline that auto pulls new features from upstream.
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.
It does. That’s the reason for forking. You get control. If you don’t, then you’ve done something wrong.
That’s the choice of the fork owners, because they get control. They can take or leave upstream changes at will.
I’ve worked on software projects in both the private sector and public sector.
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.
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.
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.
I'm going to stop. Your over confidence is preventing you from listening to anything.