@frankie @kreyren No, and it sacrifices too much security to be called private, too.

@inference
like what?
@kreyren

@inference @frankie GNU IceCat is privacy oriented and strips all non-free and questionable functionality from firefox

@kreyren @frankie

https://inferencium.net/blog/foss-is-working-against-itself.html

@inference @frankie i don't agree with the reasoning, but i do agree with statement and working on a solution

git.dotya.ml/tlf

@kreyren @frankie I'm not against FOSS, I'm against the idea that security doesn't matter and the code being open is all it takes to have privacy.

IceCat is a fine example of FOSS which fails at enforcing the privacy because it lacks security; it's even unmaintained. As much as I prefer Chromium or even Firefox proper, myself, use something such as LibreFox if you want an IceCat replacement which is still maintained.

@inference @frankie you are missinformed about icecat it's actively maintained and it's devs focus on privacy and security and it has a lot of measures for that by default

@kreyren @frankie Where's the repo for this maintained version? All I've seen is a Firefox 60 series version as the last one.

@inference @frankie

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git

@inference @frankie again the 60 series is **UNMAINTAINED BINARY**

the binary is no longer released and with huge red warning discouraged to use as it's not sustainable to build it and none was using it bcs distros are doing their own packaging anyway

@kreyren @frankie Seems it is maintained. I didn't know this existed. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It seems to be based on Firefox ESR, so it almost certainly has the same security practices as that, as long as what's been changed doesn't affect it. It's likely comparable directly to Firefox ESR security.

@inference @frankie GNU people also do security and privacy on top of that with
* using arkenfox-inspired default settings
* maintaining custom extensions
* privacy-oriented features
* alternative extension marketplace and plugin finder that does auditing for privacy and security of the extensions

@kreyren @frankie By "security", I was referring to the practices comparable with some FOSS projects which just carelessly tear out code without thinking about the consequences. I'm all for freedom and open source (or FOSS, if that's your thing), but I'm not for doing it in a brute force careless way.

Since I only knew about the 60 series IceCat, I saw it as carelessly not maintaining the fork or just telling users that it doesn't matter, even when there are countless CVEs by now which can easily break privacy through breaking security.

@inference @frankie I agree that it's malpractice in FOSS and i am working on a long-term solution to that as just waiting for the problem to fix itself with time is a terrible

@kreyren
Hey, is the latest version of GNU IceCat available for Windows?
@inference

@frankie @kreyren "Note that building binary packages for Windows and MacOS currently requires nonfree software, so we no longer distribute binary packages for those platforms."

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/


I don't think stopping Windows or macOS users from using it is promoting free software; it's harming the ideology as it keeps more people away from FOSS.

@frankie it is actively maintained just the binary is no longer updated as it was unsustainable to do so