Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company

General
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I guess that there is a new CEO of Mozilla, and he somehow plans to make Firefox into an “optional” AI browser.

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Please, no AI in my browser. I don’t even want the option. Mullvad Browser, Librewolf, Orion, and Helium are the only ones now available with no built in AI.

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Their recent communiqués have been really strong on the yogababble scale, always changing the world.

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It makes me wonder how Mozilla’s new CEO’s plans will impact the Firefox forks in the future (Waterfox, Librewolf, Mullvad Browser, Tor Browser, etc.).

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Because its open source, the derivatives will ensure they stick to how they want to be and continue being differentiated. Don’t think there will be a major impact. Mozilla can’t afford to screw up such that the Tor browser is affected. Its too important.

It’s the new CEO, they have to do something to make their case for their new position. Too bad its just like everyone else’s - AI. I continue to scoff at their decision making.

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I talked about this on the LibreWolf Matrix. It would really depend on how deeply integrated it becomes, and at some point removing it might start breaking too much to remove everything AI-related.

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I forgot to mention… add Vivaldi and Waterfox to that list too.

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Happy Birthday! :birthday_cake:

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Thank you man! I appreciate it.

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It seems they are working on an “AI kill switch” for opting out of most of this.

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I don’t want or plan to disable all ML features, I think the features Firefox has implemented thus far have been mostly sensible, modest, and useful. But I also understand that many people have a valid and reasonable preference to not want AI features. For those people, I’m posting some relevant links below.

Related Bugzilla links:

  1. 1996202 - Provide global LLM disabling option (Global opt-out)
  2. 2005800 - Add Disable AI section to gen ai settings (expose in the GUI)
  3. 1971973 - Add a policy to Disable AI in Firefox (enterprise policy)
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I’d say that you’re about a day late and a dollar short, Brodie.

Brodie Robertson- The Future of Firefox is Going to be Interesting

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That’s a useful list of links related to disabling AI features in Firefox. Personally, I’m more likely to want to enable them judiciously, with preference for on-device models, so I wish that Firefox made it a lot more obvious which AI features make use of on-device models vs. cloud service APIs.