Mozilla gets a new CEO: Anthony Enzor-DeMeo

[Posted December 16, 2025 by jzb]

Mozilla has announced a new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo. Prior to becoming CEO, Enzor-DeMeo was general manager of Firefox and led its "vision, strategy, and business performance". He has published a blog post about taking over from interim CEO Laura Chambers, and his plans for Mozilla and Firefox:

As Mozilla moves forward, we will focus on becoming the trusted software company. This is not a slogan. It is a direction that guides how we build and how we grow. It means three things.

First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.

Second: our business model must align with trust. We will grow through transparent monetization that people recognize and value.

Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.

to post comments

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 20:21 UTC (Tue) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (35 responses)

Fourth: Firefox must be fixed to work correctly again.

It simply doesn't work correctly with many modern web sites anymore.
That's a recent phenomenon.
In the recent year or two I was forced to open Chromium more and more often because the website simply didn't work in Firefox.

I didn't even have a second web brower installed for about two decades, until two years ago.

People are running away from Firefox - for a reason.
The only reason I still use Firefox is that there is no alternative with equivalent Firefox compatible plugin support and trustworthiness.

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 20:40 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (33 responses)

> It simply doesn't work correctly with many modern web sites anymore.

That's because sites only bother testing against Chrome now. And maybe Safari.

Not much Firefox can really do about that other than making Firefox just another reskin of Chromium.

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 20:57 UTC (Tue) by davecb (subscriber, #1574) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, this is called the "modem testing problem"*.

Were I working on Firefox (I'm not), I'd build a mechanism with something like Playwright to download a url and compare the two files, alerting on things that responded differently. Then I'd review the difference and decide if it deserverd to be changed in Firefox.

A customer used to do something quite similar, when they needed their program to work on numerous browsers.

--dave
[https://leaflessca.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/the-modem-tes...

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 22:35 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> Then I'd review the difference and decide if it deserverd to be changed in Firefox.

The answer will _always_ be "we must be bug-for-bug compatible with Chrome"

(Because even if Firefox is "correct", that doesn't change the indisputable fact that it "works just fine" in every other browser)

How to be compatible with Chrome?

Posted Dec 17, 2025 15:32 UTC (Wed) by DemiMarie (subscriber, #164188) [Link] (1 responses)

The question is how to achieve this.

Should Firefox be another Chromium-based browser? Or is there a way to make this work with Gecko?

How to be compatible with Chrome?

Posted Dec 18, 2025 8:56 UTC (Thu) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

If they decided to replace Gecko with the same engine every other browser is using they would lose most of their remaining user base. Their one major advantage right now is that they are preventing a total browser engine mono-culture.

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 21:10 UTC (Tue) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (26 responses)

Yes.
But I'm wondering what Firefox developers actually do when they hit these problems by themselves.
They must surely see these problems frequently, too, right? I assume they actually all use their own product.

What are they going to do if they hit such a problem?
Are they going to fire up Chromium to get the thing done quickly, because they must get back asap to implementing the next "AI" feature for Firefox?

I do get it that website developers don't test on Firefox anymore.
But then the only chance for Firefox to survive is to become bug compatible with Chrome.

Priorities are set incorrectly.

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 21:19 UTC (Tue) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

Yeah. The only way to fix this is to become more popular. Mozilla might think the way to do that is "AI", but then they're in a feature race with one of the primary AI companies, and they're going to lose that race. Meanwhile, they're bleeding trust every time they do something like this.

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 21:24 UTC (Tue) by ptime (subscriber, #168171) [Link] (12 responses)

It’s quite possible they aren’t hitting them. I use Firefox for a lot of browsing, and I can’t tell you the last time I encountered a broken page that wasn’t just being broken by pi-hole or ublock

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 21:29 UTC (Tue) by pm215 (subscriber, #98099) [Link]

Mmm, I think I encountered a hotel website three years ago that seemed to need chrome, but that was it.

It probably depends very heavily on your browsing habits -- I expect 90% of mine is the same quite small set of websites, and I don't have a job that requires me to deal with a lot of corporate or internal-IT web apps. There could be lots of chrome-assuming websites out there that I simply never see...

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 22:11 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (8 responses)

Yes, I haven't encountered a website that refused to work with Firefox in ages.

Actually, one exception was my bank website. They did user-agent sniffing and I used a spoofed user-agent that they didn't like, so I had to un-spoof it for them. But that wasn't a Firefox-specific thing,

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 6:32 UTC (Wed) by ebee_matteo (guest, #165284) [Link] (7 responses)

As somebody using Firefox with Microsoft 365 and MS Teams daily, there are several small and annoying issues. Even to the point that editing a Word document jumps backwards in the text while auto-saving during typing. Or audio breaks down in calls for no reason. Or email writing in Outlook is janky.

SAP is another thing that only works in Chrome/Edge.

The majority of employees at European companies rely on Microsoft products for their business. That's million of users, 8 hours per day.

Sure, as a Linux embedded dev I am more than willing to take the pain to have a browser that doesn't resell my data. I can work around problems. I am also in the 1%. Corporate? They just want to reduce calls to the help desk hotline.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 8:58 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

All features of Office365 pages really work only on Microsoft's Edge (to the extent they work on Linux at all). No surprise there. Edge is the new IE. Leopard can't change its spots...

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 13:08 UTC (Wed) by ptime (subscriber, #168171) [Link]

I use O365 on Firefox Nightly every day and don’t have any issues

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 21:10 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (4 responses)

I have definitely noticed jank in Teams on Firefox, but I'm going to blame it all on Teams. I don't know what it is like recently because I've been using a macOS machine for video calls (still Firefox though; everything I've tried works fine) because Dell "wisely" used IPU7 camera hardware in this model which works poorly on Linux.

My observations were once:

- everything except video working with uBlock enabled
- if there is a whiff of a Microsoft login cookie, I was blocked because "Teams was disabled for my account" (nevermind that anonymous users could join the call…)
- in private browsing, the login page would infinitely redirect
- in a normal session (fresh-ish profile), it mostly worked (I think background blurring/replacement wasn't supported at the time)

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 21:21 UTC (Wed) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (3 responses)

> but I'm going to blame it all on Teams

Yes. That's the problem.

Firefox used to work perfectly fine between say about 2010 - 2020, roundabout.
Now we are back to the bad old times where websites only work correctly with certain browsers.

The answer to that is *not* to just ignore it and say it's somebody else's fault.
Even if in fact it *is* somebody else's fault.
That doesn't help Firefox.
It kills it.

And to the people saying that it's plugins/ublock that break sites:
No, it's not. Almost never does disabling ublock unbreak sites.
This is a fundamental problem.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 23:33 UTC (Wed) by ptime (subscriber, #168171) [Link]

I was trying to rent a storage unit today, the site was “broken,” and turning off UBO fixed the site.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 23:39 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> The answer to that is *not* to just ignore it and say it's somebody else's fault.

Pray tell, WTF is Mozilla (or indeed, any of us) supposed to do about Microsoft deliberately choosing to degrade functionality on browsers (and/or platforms) other than their own? What will making Firefox into yet another Chrome reskin accomplish?

None of us use Teams _willingly_. Instead it's a requirement for $dayjob. Complain and at best you'll be either ignored -- more likely you'll just be told to "use the app or other supported platform" [1] and/or get written up for violating IT policies. [2]

[1] my new employer's SSO requires Chrome or Edge along with a couple of plugins in order to even _log in_.
[2] processing company data with unapproved software

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 9:37 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

For me video calls are broken with Firefox and work with Chromium: both on Teams and on Jitsi (and on a trivial html demo file I tried, to see using a camera). This started recently, not sure exactly when. Maybe related to playing with libcamera, and maybe related to another upgrade. Have not had the time to debug this further. Video calls have generally worked better with Chroium than with Firefox: this is not just an issue with Teams.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 11:42 UTC (Wed) by mote (guest, #173576) [Link] (1 responses)

I have a persistent problem using https://www.heb.com in Firefox (typically private browsing but persists to non-private). The home page loads, you can load a single product once, then refresh once or twice and you're not blocked from the entire site.

They used to just hit you with a network denial type message, but now they emit JSON blaming your browser (incorrectly in my Firefox case, disabling ublock/etc. doesn't do anything).

```
hostName "www.heb.com"
errorCode "15"
description "This page could not load. It looks like an ad blocker, antivirus software, VPN, or firewall may be causing an issue. Try changing your settings, switching to a different device, or use the My H-E-B app"
```

I have to use Chromium to use HEB's website even to browse anonymously.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 12:06 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

I've just tried it in Firefox 146 (from Flathub), with uBlock Origin installed and active, and I have no problem browsing, up until the point I need an account to continue (add to cart/add to list); I've not bothered with account creation since I'm an ocean away from my nearest H-E-B branch.

It continues to work just fine if I disable uBlock Origin, too.

Fourth

Posted Dec 16, 2025 23:05 UTC (Tue) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link] (10 responses)

> But I'm wondering what Firefox developers actually do when they hit these problems by themselves.
> They must surely see these problems frequently, too, right? I assume they actually all use their own product.

I’m not a Firefox dev, but I am a Firefox user and I never have a problem where a website doesn’t work with Firefox and I have to launch another browser. I’m not sure how common that issue is.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 4:03 UTC (Wed) by xanni (subscriber, #361) [Link] (9 responses)

I've encountered quite a few of these problems, but just to pick one that has a happy ending: Patreon discussion groups used not to load in Firefox, and the image carousels used to display 50% offscreen. Both of those issues persisted for a year or two but have recently been resolved and now work perfectly, though I don't know how much is Firefox improvements and how much is site updates. Patreon is fairly widely used!

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 11:50 UTC (Thu) by kpfleming (subscriber, #23250) [Link] (8 responses)

Portions of the Monoprice website have been broken in Firefox for a few years at least, but work fine in Chromium.

For example, go to this page - https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2268. After the page has finished loading, click a radio button to switch to a different color. The page content will switch to the new selection, but the 'overlay' which dims the page and shows a spinner never goes away, so you cannot interact with the page. This functionality works as they intended in Chromium and other browsers.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 12:46 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

For cases like this, you can right-click on the modal spinner and then press "Inspect" (or "Q"), which displays the developer tools showing you the code for that element. In this case, the class of the modal spinner is "mp-spinner-overlay", so you can use the Stylus extension to remove it from the web page:

.mp-spinner-overlay {
  display: none;
}

This permanently resolves the problem for Monoprice. It's good for modals that break interaction, but also popups like newsletter signup forms, "Sign in with Google/Facebook/etc", and so on.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 13:01 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

This is another case where Firefox 146 from Flathub doesn't reproduce the problem - it works fine for me with, or without, uBlock Origin active on the page.

I wonder if you and mote are using a build from the same supplier? I'm not seeing the reported problems in Firefox from Flathub, and haven't in previous versions, either - which to me suggests that there might be an underlying difference worth tracking down.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 13:13 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm using the Fedora build of FF and I see the problem as well. If I run a Firefox build from Mozilla, I don't see the problem. Probably worth filing a bug against the package.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 13:18 UTC (Thu) by kpfleming (subscriber, #23250) [Link] (1 responses)

Bizarre... I am also using the Firefox build from Mozilla (Debian packages), and I do see the problem. Presumably that means the problem is caused by some interaction between Firefox and the extensions that are loaded, or something else in my profile. I'll try again with a fresh profile to see if it persists.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 15:51 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]

Indeed. I'm also using Fedora build and it works fine :-)

Most likely different extensions loaded for all of us, and even in the different builds jzb tried?

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 15:49 UTC (Thu) by rbtree (guest, #129790) [Link]

Report these issues to Mozilla when you see them. "Menu: Help → Report broken site", or "hamburger: Report broken site". It takes very little time.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 16:54 UTC (Thu) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

That one happens when Firefox's enhanced tracking protection is set to "strict", and you don't enable "fix minor site issues": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1962420

You should be able to add per-site ETP exceptions by clicking the shield icon in the address bar. Or turn on "fix major/minor site issues" globally in the settings (which slightly reduces the tracking protection, but appears to fix Monoprice).

Strict mode is advertised as "stronger protection, but may cause some sites or content to break", so the breakage is not considered a Firefox bug - it's a deliberate tradeoff for privacy.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 16:57 UTC (Thu) by kpfleming (subscriber, #23250) [Link]

Thank you! I've had ETP enabled for so long I wasn't aware that those 'fix issues' checkboxes even existed.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 3:20 UTC (Wed) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

I'm going to join the people who say they don't see those problems. I run Firefox and I don't recall a site that I've had trouble viewing. There are maybe a few that I blamed on lacking an ad-blocker that might be better under Chrome, but the sites I use, Google Docs, LWN, Google Mail, Wikimedia, iNaturalist, Archive.org, GitHub, Ollama, they all work fine under Firefox.

Fourth

Posted Dec 18, 2025 11:28 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (1 responses)

> That's because sites only bother testing against Chrome now. And maybe Safari.

Sure, if it's actually broken, that either means it wasn't tested or some higher-up made the decision that it wsn't worth the time investment to support FF. But...

> Not much Firefox can really do about that other than making Firefox just another reskin of Chromium.

This isn't really true, and all the talk about being "bug compatible" with Chrome really misses the mark. The principal thing they could do is *fix the known bugs*. Updates to web specs, especially CSS, commonly add new features that developers have been crying out for for years, and when they finally become available, people have been waiting patiently for years and really want to start using them.

FF is often the last to implement new features, eg :has() which is probably the greatest CSS improvement since its inception, and where FF lagged by years. When it does get new features, they often have trailing bugs that can take a long time to get fixed, eg https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1882408 .

I know I've personally had several occasions where I was about to submit some new frontend updates, did a final round of cross browser testing, and then get hit with the crushing discovery that something is badly broken in Firefox because of a bug in how it implements some feature that's theoretically been usable for a couple of years. It's true that there are *some* times where it comes down to "there is no single unambiguously correct way to implement this, and FF and Chrome made different choices" (eg the phrasing of the file upload button, which is hardcoded by the browser and which leads to bug reports from Dragon Naturally Speaking users which are unfixable except by giving up and using a fully custom upload control), but those are by far the minority IME.

Supporting Firefox in web apps

Posted Dec 19, 2025 11:37 UTC (Fri) by jch (guest, #51929) [Link]

To be fair, it's not completely trivial to make a web app compatible with Firefox and Safari.

I've been maintaining a videoconference system <https://galene.org>, and for ideological reasons I'm trying to keep it compatible with Firefox. I've had to work around a number of issues in Firefox's implementation of WebRTC; off the top of my head:

- Simulcast is broken with VP9 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1633876>
- Firefox fails to negotiate a trivial simulcast envelope <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71550933/limiting-web...>
- the `sendEncodings` field is ignored in `sendTransceiver`, you need to manually hack things with `setParameters`;
- the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) API is not implemented.

Now perhaps that's specific to WebRTC, but some of these issues have been reported years ago, and there's still no fix.

I've also had a number of issues with Chrome (incorrectly implemented data channels, for example) and with Safari (overly restrictive autoplay, no filter property on Context2D), but I've found Firefox to be more painful to support than the other two.

Fourth

Posted Dec 17, 2025 2:34 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Firefox works fine for everything for me, the only exception is WebGL (which only helps with fingerprinting me anyway), on my (old) hardware that works in Chromium but not Firefox.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 17, 2025 3:01 UTC (Wed) by denials (subscriber, #3413) [Link] (11 responses)

Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.

I love Firefox and have used it as my primary browser and supported it in various ways since it was Phoenix 0.1, but this "evolution" is concerning. Do Firefox users want Mozilla to take it this direction?

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 17, 2025 7:25 UTC (Wed) by rrolls (subscriber, #151126) [Link] (2 responses)

What Firefox needs is to implement this promise _correctly_:

> AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.

And I think doing that correctly is surprisingly simple, we've just gotten used to not seeing it. It needs three things:

(1) Make each individual AI feature optional.
(2) Have a single settings page to control these features, with a button to turn everything off at once if you so desire.
(3) Most importantly: Have a setting to control whether newly-added features are on or off when they are added.

Firefox, like many other pieces of modern software is actually still pretty good at (1), making everything optional. The big problem we see today is the lack of (3): you're forced to update your software Because Security™* and then new features that you didn't want get added and enabled by default and that's what makes the whole experience terrible. _If only_ those people who don't like change (like me) can just set one setting to say "keep all new features disabled until I explicitly turn them on" and have this take effect forever, there'd be a lot fewer moans about updates. As it stands, it's a constant game of whack-a-mole.

Actually, I've just realised this isn't even about AI, this is just about user experience around feature updates in general.

*standard caveat: of course by this I am not suggesting that you don't need updates to stay secure, just pointing out that corporates use "you need security updates" as an excuse to shove features you don't like down your throat at the same time.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 17, 2025 8:22 UTC (Wed) by gnu (guest, #65) [Link] (1 responses)

When I read the last part of that quoted sentence, my first thought was that it should rather be an "opt-in" instead of "opt-out". i.e. AI turned off by default and a way to turn on the features easily than mucking around with "about:config".

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 17, 2025 14:18 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

It would be strange if they made it their focus and also disabled it.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 17, 2025 7:44 UTC (Wed) by rrolls (subscriber, #151126) [Link] (4 responses)

And, for the record, there _are_ some uses of AI I find useful:

- DuckDuckGo's Search Assist is useful more often than not, if I'm just quickly checking something.
- I use ChatGPT (on a free account) on an irregular basis - maybe once a month - mainly to look up something of the nature where a search engine would work if only I knew what to search for. For example, "there's this movie where XYZ happens, what was it called?" - and a more recent example, where it surprised me how well it performed - "here's a popular recreational maths problem, but can you find me papers about a specific very slightly different but related problem?" - I'd _never_ have figured that one out on my own. It's also useful when you want to do initial research on a programming language or library that you have zero experience with and want a starting point.
- I've used a local text AI as a rubber duck debugger a few times.
- Translation services, for _reading_, are invaluable, especially if they can be done locally (thus privately). I think Firefox is adding some kind of local translation AI - this is one of the few browser AI features I'd probably keep enabled.

Of course I'm still opposed (and I think most people are) to using AI for publishing (e.g. use AI to translate something if you're the only one that's going to read it; but don't publish something you ran through an AI translator, instead just let the reader run _their_ AI, on your handwritten work, into their preferred language if they wish). But these are some places where AI is genuinely helpful, so as much as I will ride the anti-AI bandwagon in general, I wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 17, 2025 9:49 UTC (Wed) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

> I think Firefox is adding some kind of local translation AI - this is one of the few browser AI features I'd probably keep enabled

It's been there for maybe two years, I think. Though it responds quickly to languages which haven't been downloaded, which makes me suspicious that probably it has an online fallback.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 17, 2025 15:55 UTC (Wed) by denials (subscriber, #3413) [Link] (2 responses)

The in-browser translation is the one AI feature in Firefox that I've appreciated. That's a great combination of usefulness and protection of privacy (vs dumping text into deepl or Google Translate).

Everything else they've done so far, I want turned off. Which currently means turning it off manually in every instance of Firefox I use, because those preferences don't sync.

The Mozilla Connect community forum has been filled for months with complaints about the existing AI features and begging the organization to just focus on being a web browser. The new CEO is ignoring their own community.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 18, 2025 10:19 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

The Mozilla Connect community forum has been filled for months with complaints about the existing AI features and begging the organization to just focus on being a web browser. The new CEO is ignoring their own community.

Or those who (a) subscribe to the community forum and (b) feel strongly enough about the existing AI features to complain. There might be a silent majority that either likes the existing AI features just fine but doesn't want to engage in a shouting match with the AI detractors in the community forum, or quietly ignores the existing AI features outright, or else doesn't show up in the community forum in the first place.

The Mozilla people should obviously take note of what goes on in their community forum, but it would also be reasonable to assume that for them, the community forum is not the only source of input on what Firefox users are thinking.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 19, 2025 9:53 UTC (Fri) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

Mozilla doesn't listen to feedback that they should focus on the browser anyway so lots of people have probably given up on that one.

And similarly, AI hype (and a tendency to put the latest hyped stuff into everything in general, see blockchain and cloud) seems to affect most CEOs anyway, no matter what anyone else says, so most people opposed to that have probably given up on trying to make them see sense by now too.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 19, 2025 17:26 UTC (Fri) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (2 responses)

concerning disabling it, see the following Mastodon post:

Something that hasn't been made clear: Firefox will have an option to completely disable all AI features.

We've been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I'm sure it'll ship with a less murderous name, but that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this.
https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 22, 2025 8:35 UTC (Mon) by rrolls (subscriber, #151126) [Link] (1 responses)

Following your link, I think it's important to highlight the very next post too:

> All AI features will also be opt-in. I think there are some grey areas in what 'opt-in' means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?), but the kill switch will absolutely remove all that stuff, and never show it in future. That's unambiguous.

Speaking genuinely, not sarcastically: both of these posts are really good news and, I'm sure, incredibly important to a lot of people.

My main question now is: why wasn't this publicised more widely and clearly in the first place? That would have been genuinely good PR for Firefox - something which it hasn't gotten much of for years.

A modern AI browser

Posted Dec 25, 2025 11:08 UTC (Thu) by davidgerard (guest, #100304) [Link]

Because that thread was a PR disaster response to the backlash against the CEO's comments about making Firefox an "AI browser."

Iceweasel

Posted Dec 17, 2025 7:43 UTC (Wed) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link] (4 responses)

Perhaps it’s time to look at doing an Iceweasel fork again…

Iceweasel

Posted Dec 17, 2025 13:03 UTC (Wed) by alx.manpages (subscriber, #145117) [Link] (1 responses)

Sadly, Debian seems to be ignoring the problems with Firefox. (Maybe it has something to do with having a Mozilla employee maintaing the Debian package of Firefox.)

<https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1099130>

They didn't drop Firefox from Trixie, even with DFSG violations, which are serious, and I'd expect them to be release critical. That bug is still open from earlier this year.

Iceweasel

Posted Dec 17, 2025 13:32 UTC (Wed) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link]

Pretty sure *these* don’t apply to Firefox as shipped in distros compiled from source. They are not operated by Mozilla, after all. But let’s not digress…

Iceweasel

Posted Dec 19, 2025 5:13 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (1 responses)

Happily reading this in librewolf.

Iceweasel

Posted Dec 19, 2025 13:49 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

LibreWolf +1

Switched my daily browsing over to LibreWolf. It's fine. I can open a Chromium instance for WebGL on the odd occasion I need that (typically, I want to look at Google 3d maps).

There is really no returning to user-alignment without finding new and different income streams

Posted Dec 19, 2025 5:15 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

So long as the main source of money to Mozilla is "google gives us big paycheck", Firefox is not going to find its way. This isn't even so much that Google will demand bad decisions, but rather that the organization will simply not have a guiding star that leads them to good decisions.

they understand the assignment

Posted Dec 28, 2025 18:17 UTC (Sun) by jokeyrhyme (guest, #136576) [Link]

they understand the assignment: that if people don't trust them then they're no different to any other browser vendor

let's hope that this is both genuine and also achievable

who knows? maybe if they become sustainable they might resume contributions to servo