Re: Update for gnu.org and fsf.org pages

[Adam Faiz]

Hello Chippy,

On 8/26/23 00:00, gnuzilla-dev-request@gnu.org wrote:
> Hi, late reply, I hope you get this...
> I would like to help you, so if you want, tell me, for which os would
> you like to build Icecat?
> 
> I'm also disappointed that information is outdated and there are no
> binary packages to download and run on any platform.
> 
> It looks like there is a barrier to who can use Icecat.
> Personally I'm a devops/infra engineer and I'm usually good at
> debugging and fixing things, but the codebase of Firefox is huge and
> there are a lot of things that can go wrong. 
> I managed to get my debian testing laptop set up for building Icecat,
> and after each successful build I upload the debian installer here:
> https://github.com/alithechemist/Gnu-Icecat-binary-debian/releases
> 
> Of course I wouldn't trust a build coming for an unknown person and
> these are mainly for me and some friends, in case it is needed on some
> debian based system.
> 
> I keep asking myself why is that? Why is it so hard to get Icecat for
> someone who understands and share concerns about privacy, big data and
> mass surveillance, but at the same time is not a professional developer
> or IT-pro, say a lawyer... or a biologist... or an astronomer...> 
> Take a doctor who saves your life, does he ask you to understand
> protein biosynthesis? Does a chemist who creates a food preservative
> present in your food ask you to understand redox reactions, ions and
> the periodic table? When you visit a museum, do you have to dig out all
> the archeological finds, carbon date them yourself, etc? Does the
> goldsmith asks you about melting point of metals? Do you listen to
> music with absolute hear and are you able to tell the key, the cords,
> the melody and re-play it by yourself with all instruments at once? Do
> you make your own shoes?
> 
> This is my naive take on this, probably there are even more very good 
> reason behind this, some might be that you need to use non free
> software to build Icecat for windows, mac os, android. 
I'm disappointed in this too, I offered ideas for improvement 9 months ago but 
didn't get a response:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnuzilla-dev/2022-12/msg00000.html

> 
> But at this point, given the current browser landscape, people download
> firefox thinking that they are ok surveillance-wise but they are not.
> Same for chromium. I believe that liberating Icecat from this hard-to-
> get jail would be a good thing for the world and it could even be a
> game changer in the culture (or lack of it).
> 
> It would be also good to mitigate the number of hilarious alleged
> "privacy oriented" forks of Firefox like Waterfox or Librewolf, those
> are just tracking your activity as much as Firefox, in some case they
> make it even worse sending data to even more companies or companies
> that monetize on that data.
> 
> Unless... there are reason to keep all this going, to keep the status
> quo going.
> 
The problem is that modern web browsers are very complex, so unless something 
is done most people will think it's hopeless to modify it themselves.
My ideas above were to improve in this direction, by getting rid of bundled 
dependencies so that the source code will be smaller and make it easier for 
people.

> With the occasion I'd like to offer my work and resources to maintain
> an Icecat CD/CI and a repository for all the platforms as well as a
> cleaned up version of Chromium, to reduce chances that we run out of
> options in case Mozilla decided to keep hammering with amazon ads or
> made firefox very hard to fork, and also to let users pick webkit or
> Geko.
That would great! There's already a CI for Guix's IceCat build, and other FSDG 
distros are most likely also interested in this.

> That thing that might be mistaken with anger is just an endless
> enthusiasm for Free Software, and disappointment for the lack a of a
> bridge from FSF to the average user.
> 
> I also saw that you used Thunderbird, that is bad for your privacy, I
> advise about Evolution as it does not phone home like Thunderbird does
> every-single-time you use it.> 
> Chippy