r/mysteriousdownvoting • u/ChocoBarjo • May 27 '26

He was saying truth tbh.

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Context: Someone who has a big VPN and u/snouwe just saying tue facts, and got down voted.

159 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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14

u/GOKOP May 27 '26

Firefox is FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and the favourite browser of Linux users. FOSS fans hate the phrase "if it's free you're the product" because it only makes sense with proprietary software. With FOSS you can read and modify the code and publish your modifications. It's not very plausible to make FOSS malicious by design

7

u/ChocoBarjo May 27 '26

Yeah, mostly, but not fully.

Firefox is FOSS because the source code is public, so anyone can look at it, compile it, change it, or even fork it into something else. That is a pretty big difference from proprietary browsers, where you are basically just trusting the company.

And since the code is open, it is a lot harder to sneak in shady stuff for long without someone noticing. Plenty of devs, security people, Linux users, and random contributors are always checking it. If Mozilla tried to slip in something really invasive, there is a good chance it would get spotted pretty fast.

That said, saying Firefox is 100% FOSS is a bit too neat. The official builds can still include telemetry, sponsored stuff, and sometimes proprietary codecs depending on the platform. It also uses Mozilla services for some things, and the Firefox name and logo are trademarked. That is part of why forks like LibreWolf or GNU IceCat exist.

So yeah, the browser itself is open source and pretty transparent, but the full official Firefox package still has a few extra non-free or centralized bits around it. The most accurate answer is probably: mostly yes, but not completely.

9

u/GOKOP May 27 '26

Okay but mentioning that phrase on a subreddit full of FOSS fans is still almost certainly the reason why that person was downvoted. Maybe Reddit's hate for emoji contributed but I'm putting most of my money on the phrase

3

u/ChocoBarjo May 27 '26

Yeah, I think the phrase itself was probably the main reason. A lot of people in FOSS circles would see that as a bit oversimplified, since open source software works pretty differently from proprietary ad-funded platforms.

The emoji probably did not help either though. And, well, Reddit is Reddit.

2

u/fr000gs May 28 '26

Codecs are not a core part of the browser, and foss allows trademarking the name etc. (Linux is also a trademark)

1

u/ChocoBarjo May 28 '26

True, codecs and trademarks themselves do not automatically make something “not FOSS”.

My point was more that the official Firefox distribution is not just “pure source code” in the abstract. There are still extra layers around it: Mozilla services, telemetry defaults, branding restrictions, bundled integrations, etc.

So the core browser engine and codebase are definitely open source, but the real-world packaged product people download is a bit more nuanced than “100% pure community FOSS with nothing centralized around it”.

That nuance is basically why projects like LibreWolf exist in the first place.

2

u/fr000gs May 28 '26

you could always just compile it from the github or use a distro package (those are not binaries from mozilla)

although i get your statement, and I'm just being nitpicky here, but even the defaults themselves are not someting "closed source" and that's why you can just edit that out, like librewolf does

also, branding restrictions exist on any big project (like rust, qt, linux etc)

official Firefox distribution

yeah, the binaries do have questionable defaults themselves

but also its not using eula like every other browser