General Discussion • Re: Pale Moon's PR Problem

I remember someone saying they remained on Vivaldi rather than Firefox because Vivaldi offered (more) customization, so I do think emphasizing customization is a good idea. Same with being lightweight and single-process. I do think capitalizing on being "fully AI-free" would've been a good idea since the only browser doing that to my knowledge is Servo (which is still in an alpha/experimental state, and is Rust-based), and it would've caught many eyes since Firefox forks "will use Firefox vibecode sooner or later," but there doesn't seem to be much interest in the idea.

Also, I don't understand the issue with "being associated with Firefox." People's main complaint about Mozilla and Firefox these days is the "AI" stuff, so wouldn't they seek non-"AI" alternatives rather than non-Firefox ones?

My view is... using AI for code is very different from using it for art or writing. I can understand people's objections to it in those contexts, but I honestly feel like refusing to use AI would almost be like refusing to use an IDE that does code completion type stuff, or refusing to look up code snippets on Stack Overflow and copy/paste them and adapt them to what you need if they're "close enough," and in general would be like going Amish in the technology sense.

I don't see code as all that different from writing or art, especially since code can be part of the latter. But I'm not a coder, just an artist.

The Amish do not reject technology based on whether it's "modern" or not, but based on whether it aligns with their values.

Being selective with (modern) web technology is something the UXP team has been doing too, with regards to multi-process, Rust and WebExtensions among others. That's why PerformanceObservers used to be disabled by default until recently. The people behind UXP are critical of certain new Web advancements, but not to the point of rejecting modern technology altogether. It's a matter of striking a balance.

That was one of the big reasons why I got interested in Pale Moon, and why I likely wouldn't leave it for something like Ladybird, where the lead dev sees no issues with Google quickly churning out a ton of web standards or with implementing all web technologies, including insecure ones.

If copy-pasting code from Stack Overflow largely contributed to pollution and encouraged the building of several datacenters in a world that likely doesn't need any more of them, then yeah, I'd be against that too. As far as I'm aware though, it doesn't.

I have no issue with people using AI coding assistants [...] The problem I have with AI is integrating it into the end user's workflow. Are people really conflating the two, now? They are entirely separate things.

Those who object to both are not conflating the two. We're against LLM use in general, meaning we're against both.

Pale Moon's development is focused on the backend, which is good given its nature. But we should change something that is a visible benefit to users; this way, we can attract attention from OSS users.

Pale Moon's UI remaining the same is one of its strengths to me. I like having one thing that doesn't change for the sake of change.