Re: If FOSS isn't your number one concern, why use IceCat?

[Narcis Garcia]

You are talking about only part of security scope.
I think privacy is a security chapter.

You are convincing me that you'll be more comfortable by building your
own M.Firefox derivative or customization. And someday you'll share your
effort and work with a project name, and this will feed FOSS community
to have better software, including Mozilla projects.


El 17/11/19 a les 0:36, Haniho Dude ha escrit:
> You make a fair point. All else being equal, FOSS ought to be more
> secure. For IceCat however, all is not equal. If need be, I can get up
> the changelog for Firefox ESR. I am confident that if I were to do so, I
> would find multiple security updates that have not been ported to the
> latest stable build of IceCat.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* help-gnuzilla
> <help-gnuzilla-bounces+hanihodude=address@hidden> on behalf of
> Narcis Garcia via help-gnuzilla <address@hidden>
> *Sent:* 16 November 2019 21:13
> *To:* address@hidden <address@hidden>
> *Subject:* Re: If FOSS isn't your number one concern, why use IceCat?
>  
> I don't understand how can somebody prefer secutiry to FOSS.
> I's like to prefer electricity to energy.
> 
> 
> El 16/11/19 a les 1:16, Haniho Dude ha escrit:
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> First of all, thanks for your hard work on IceCat. It's one of the few
>> good browsers left. I hope that my question doesn't offend you. As much
>> as it comes from a place of love, it also comes from a place of concern.
>> 
>> I'll begin by giving some context. FOSS is not my number one concern. I
>> like FOSS and prefer it to many other things, but if I have to pick
>> between FOSS and security, or FOSS and privacy, I'm not going to pick
>> FOSS. Personally, I use IceCat because I find it to be the easiest and
>> most trustworthy way to get a privacy-focused browser if you're someone
>> who does not have the time to learn about the ins and outs of
>> configuring Firefox. To be blunt, it is easier to remove the
>> functionality-breaking components of IceCat (e.g. LibreJS) than it is to
>> privacy harden Firefox. This bring me to my main point of concern. In
>> recent years it has become clear that I can no longer trust IceCat for
>> privacy. It has been 6 months since the last build and if my experience
>> with the previous build is anything to go by, this means that IceCat
>> will be behind Firefox ESR in terms of security updates. *It is
>> impossible for any such browser to be secure and therefore I cannot
>> believe that IceCat protects my privacy*. This would already be good
>> reason to abandon the browser, but it appears that recent privacy
>> efforts
>> <https://old.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/d3of43/firefox_privacy_guide/>
>> have completely superseded IceCat in terms of tweaking Firefox for
>> privacy. In this day and age, it appears that one can read a Reddit
>> post, copy and paste some text
>> <https://zerobin.net/?7ff179a3343f88b4#H7fn13PHvwJLKliegJR2bpLtoMpuHtH3yf4zxDidXwA=>,
>> delete a few bits, and soon have a privacy-focused version of Firefox.
>> This also skips over the issues that one may find when installing IceCat
>> on a distribution that does not have it packaged (e.g. getting it on
>> Ubuntu was a pain, but you can't be blamed for that) and will make for
>> much faster updates because said updates will not have to be filtered
>> through IceCat development.
>> 
>> This finally bring me to my question: Aside from the components that
>> exist only to make IceCat FOSS, what does IceCat offer that cannot be
>> trivially obtained from a copy and paste job like what I have suggested?
>> This page <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Gnuzilla> and your settings.js
>> <https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/data/settings.js>
>> offer some insight, but I want to be sure. Finally, I am aware that
>> there exists a script that will make IceCat from any build of Firefox,
>> but if I do not prioritise FOSS (or rather, I prefer security to it), is
>> there any reason for me to run it on a Firefox that has been modified in
>> the ways that we are discussing?
>> 
>> Thank you for your time,
>> Philip.
>