You are suggesting that I replace a simple configuration change with familiarizing myself with a very complicated code base, creating a patch, and running a build that on my machine takes multiple hours, then repeat the process for every update? Yeah, I have no idea why more people don't do that.
> I don't know what you mean by "systematically removed" in that way, frequent addition and removal of various features is completely normal for a large project.
Sure. But from my perspective at least, the customisability is decreasing, more features are being removed than added. It used to be that Firefox was a browser built for power users, but it is becoming less so. That was one of it's major advantages over chrome.
I understand the cost of maintaining features, and the tradeoffs involved. The Firefox teams priorities are different than mine, and I understand that. For example, there are many features I would have rather seen worked on rather than redesigning the UI (and I do actually like a lot of the proton design). But I can accept that they have different priorities. But they are also bleeding users, so something is clearly not working for them. And maybe, as the OP suggests it is because of changes that anger a minority of their users. At some point, the union of many minorities becomes a majority.
I'll also mention that only one person needs to create the build, once you do that then anyone else can run that build. That's usually how development works, and in fact this is already the gist of how Mozilla tests their unstable builds.
>the customisability is decreasing, more features are being removed than added
I can't agree with this, maybe the amount of visible settings in the preferences has been reduced, but currently there are a few thousand about:config options, and the number seems to keep growing.
>But they are also bleeding users, so something is clearly not working for them. And maybe, as the OP suggests it is because of changes that anger a minority of their users.
For many years I asked people why they were switching to Chrome and I got various answers, very few of them were because of something negative about another browser, and most of them were about what they liked about Chrome. That's just my personal anecdote. It also just seems to me that Mozilla is in a bad place where people say they drop Firefox because they like Chrome, so Mozilla switches gears to make it more like Chrome, and then people complain it's not unique enough anymore and it's missing some old non-Chrome feature. How could they possibly win here?
> but currently there are a few thousand about:config options, and the number seems to keep growing.
But those configurations are not very discoverable, not well documented, are in constant flux, and if you set them incorrectly can really mess up your browser (I speak from experience).
> I'll also mention that only one person needs to create the build, once you do that then anyone else can run that build
From my understanding, if I were to distribute my custom build I would also need to change all the firefox branding, since Mozilla has trademarks on it, which increases the effort even more.
I think the huge number of about:config options is actually a major problem for Firefox, there is no possible way to test all those options and ensure they stay working forever and have zero regressions. You won't like this, but a lot of them probably need to be removed.
You would need to change the branding but I think some of the other Firefox modifications have systems in place to deal with that. If you ever need to do it, maybe it would be worth asking them.
Now after this you may want to refer back to the article. I have seen various pieces and rants like this article that complain about this but none of them offer any more reliable sources of information. The article makes an unverifiable claim of "Almost everyone hated the changes" and unfortunately those type of claims seem to be extremely common instead of presenting some data. That's not enough to change anyone's course.
But in the end, I don't know what you mean by "systematically removed" in that way, frequent addition and removal of various features is completely normal for a large project. And technically only the setting was removed -- you can still customize all that but you'll have to modify the browser itself. No they probably won't add back in the setting but as I explained above, those have a cost, and when the cost-benefit analysis doesn't play out the right way, it doesn't make sense to blame an organization for cutting it.