They "caved" because it's a browser for humans and lots of humans stream TV. I don't miss the daily "how can I watch Netflix on Ubuntu?" posts in different communities. Users can disable Widevine in FF.
So they use Firefox 99% of the time and then if they encounter the rare thing that requires DRM they treat it like toxic waste that has to run in an isolated sandbox, which doesn't need to be the same browser they use for anything else.
The only other sensible option is to get out the reversing toolkit and break the DRM.
There is absolutely no way I would be able to convince my parents to do streaming that way, and I'm reasonably certain that they're a much more representative set of the community than people who hang around HN.
You absolutely would and it's the default way that normal people actually do it, which is to isolate Netflix into some kind of TV or HDMI stick instead of putting it in a browser on a PC.
Sure, when they are at home. They use laptops to watch Netflix when they travel, and I am quite confident that if Netflix didn't work on Firefox they would assume it is broken and then switch to Chrome.
Cool story. Except you still can't watch Netflix on Ubuntu unless you are OK being a second class citizen who is only allowed resolutions that may have been acceptable a century ago. So congratulations, FF sold out for nothing.
In this day and age I dont understand why there isnt a more successful fork of firefox or a new opensource browser thats more succesful with privacy as a concern. My only speculation is collective lazyness and lack of sex appeal as new technologies have emerged. I’m probably biased as I lived through the browser wars. I guess I’m probably projecting combined with curiosity. I know most of the old greybeards have moved on and those of us left are stuck carrying the torch, but man it sure seems the culture has been eroded significantly. Case in point back in my day it seemed like there was a new browser every few months or so. I’m done ranting, I’ve got kids to yell at to get off my lawn.
At the end of the day, before implementing support for streaming services via DRM, this was the most requested feature.
Privacy is a sliding scale and the idea that it's absolute privacy or nothing else isn't helpful IMO. If people want that, they should use Tor as nothing comes close.
LibreWolf isn't a real fork. It's a patch set on top of firefox, meaning they are still beholden to any design decisions in the upstream project that can't easily be patched out.
WebKit seems to be doing at least some of that, rejecting some of the more invasive new web APIs. Why does my browser ever need to know my battery status?
Brave is such a browser but seeing as it is backed by Thiel's VC money and involves a crypto monetization incentive for the user (which can easily be turned off, btw) it evokes strong emotions in people who are rightly averse to such things. However, it does do pretty much everything privacy advocates ask for as soon as you turn off a few settings. I use it and would recommend it for people who want a anti-tracking, anti-ad browser if you can live with the drama around it.
