Apple does this on every single one of its products, but not even from the nation its designed in, but the state!

I think they’re asking why it’s so prominent (more in the title of this submission than the website itself) as if it’s the main feature of the browser

Japanese people are proud of their country. In some nations, like France or Bulgaria it’s taboo. But in the US or Japan it’s fine to be proud of where a product is coming from.

Most Bulgarians are actually proud of their country, often sharing that the Cyrillic originated there, and focusing proudly on the old history and all kinds of inventors/achievements, even on stuff like the uniqueness of our yoghurt: so I have the opposite impression, as a Bulgarian

Stop making this about Japan specifically. I very much believe that this question would be asked were Japan exchanged with the US in the title.

believe me the French are very, very proud of their country, that doesn't really mean you need to buy into rather cringy economic 'patriotism'. Especially when it makes zero sense as in the case of software. It's not like this browser came out of a 500 year old artisanal Japanese crafting shop, where the browser recipes where handed down the family tree

With these kinds of things it's basically, I have no way to differentiate my product, so I'm gonna slap the country flag on it for good measure

You were probably fortunate to live in the better part of France :)

In many parts of France, simply displaying the French flag in front of your house is very dangerous, whereas it is perfectly normal for everywhere else.

Neither in Spain. Its quite provocative if you do

Not in software.

Most successful French startups move their HQ to US as soon as they can and claim they're a US company.

"Made in France" software is a shame and if you're targetting the global market (not just the French domestic market) no founder wants to advertise that.

Which is a shame because we have a lot of talented engineers in France, it's just that the biggest French software companies are frauds.

> Most successful French startups move their HQ to US as soon as they can

I'm pretty sure it is more a question of astonishing level of taxation and the difficulty to rise capital than national pride.

> "Made in France" software is a shame

Any source to back this? I've never read or heard anywhere that a piece of software sucks because it was made in France. I'm pretty sure most people don't care, and those who do (Frenchmen) take it positively.

I get the opposite impression. Most people don't care. The remaining few, typically bigots, are active online. But you see those kinds of people almost anywhere on the globe.

There are, however, perceptions among the Japanese people that their own products are generally off higher quality.

Because they were accused of having uygar forced labour in their supply chains iirc

I doubt that the accusations were about forcing Uyghurs labor in California to do the dirty design and R&D work. It was always about manufacturing and assembly, which definitely does not happen in California.

Good point, misread, thanks

Maybe for someone who prefers to buy made in Japan over made in China. A made in Europe sticker would definitely appeal to me more than a made in China. At least on products that are not mass produced from established brands.

I couldn't care less where my item is produced. It just so happens that a large variety of high-end products are produced at a higher level of quality (and cost, generally) in the West (including S Korea and Japan); but if someone introduced me to a Nigerian, Mexican, Thai, etc product that surpassed my current choice, I would switch in an instant.

I don't understand caring at all about the source, unless there is some fundamental moral hangup with it (such as blood diamonds, for instance).

Privacy laws are different depending on the country of the publisher of the software.

Generally European countries provide the best protections and the fact it is published in Japan may imply that the US laws don’t apply there (and be a + or not)

Some people care about items not travelling twice the globe before landing home.

Other people care about work conditions for the produced items they buy, namely not manufactured by children, for which country origin could be an indicator.

>Some people care about items not travelling twice the globe before landing home

Which is pretty dumb thing to care about, since these journeys have minimal carbon footprint, compared to something like local delivery

Can you elaborate on the minimal carbon footprint in this context?

> unless there is some fundamental moral hangup with it

How can you evaluate the quality of a product that was not built yet?

Most people don’t buy 500 cars or 390 tv. It’s just about reputation and isn’t branding a reputation.

Cars made in foo are good, tv made is bar have bad QA

I definitely have a preference for made in America, but that really only applies to physical products since there are strong associations with reputation and quality; the "country of origin" of software is far less well-defined in general, especially in the case of OSS.

It is only partially true now.

It was very true before, but more like 10 years ago.

For example, Apple, one main reason they chose to produce a lot of the phone in China was because of infrastructure and skills that people have, and not costs anymore.

China (in particular when you see markets like Yiwu!) has an impressive ability to produce all type of quality and grade of products.

It's sort of strange to me how many Americans seem to share the same sentiment when my experience has often been the total opposite.

China has some of the best factories, supply chains, and collaboration in the world. And while yes, of course, loads of intentionally cheap, low-quality goods are churned out regularly, many Chinese companies also make really solid products, often even the best products until you reach a certain ultra-luxury price bracket that they simply aren't trying to compete in.

For example, sure, an LG/Samsung/Sony OLED will be way nicer in terms of picture quality than any Hisense on the market. But the cheapest OLED on BestBuy right now is a last-gen, clearance 46" LG that costs almost ~$700; if you want a 50"+ model, be prepared to spend $1,000 minimum. On the other hand, the 75" U6H I got for $600 was better than any comparable non-OLED offering by non-Chinese companies until you got into the $1,000-1,200+ price range.

Midea is another good example; sure, Bosch, Miele, and Zojirushi often have much nicer luxury products, but if you're a middle/working-class person who doesn't want to or can't spend $300+ on a rice cooker, it'll be hard to beat--unless you get lucky like me and find the one weird guy in your town who happened to be moving cities and selling off all his appliances, including some perfect-condition JDM Zojirushi with an inverter for $100 (and also happen to have a Japanese friend you can annoy to help you figure out what all the Kanji menus do).

Same can be said for handset manufacturers like Xiaomi, etc. And a lot of audio gear as well; $100-200 Russian Oktava microphones easily punch several hundred to several thousand dollars above their class, Chinese brands dominate the mid-range IEM market, and Chinese headphone brands like HiFiMan are difficult to beat in any price bracket -- first paycheck I got, I spent $1,600 on Sennheiser HD 800 S because I wanted the HD 800 as a kid, but realistically, $300 HiFiMan Sundaras will get you almost there for over a thousand less.

Personally, every "made in America" thing I've bought that wasn't manufactured before like 1990 either fell apart and/or was ridiculously expensive compared to things made elsewhere. My association of made in America is either:

A. Truly craftsman, low-volume, specialized products that have an inherently high price tag

B. More commonly, low-quality, over-priced junk that survives only because of nationalism or protectionism alone

Not to bash on manufactured goods from china, but in a lot of product segments there really are a large difference in quality even from the upper end of middle priced products. I think this in large amount is origin agnostic though, and some of the reason china has gotten a bad reputation is that they are in a greater way willing to sacrifice quality to hit a lower price, and a lot of brands not paying the manufacturer above the bare minimum. I have had good and bad product origin from both China, and of European/American origin.

Annecdata, but a Chinese guy in my language class said that China was is trying to compete against quality rather than price, so maybe both are true at different points.

I think, two pertinent questions I'd like to ask (that would somewhat 'change' my reaction to your post: Are you American? Do you live in America?

Yeah, Palestinian-American; I was born in Israel with Israeli and American citizenship, but grew up mostly in Florida, did a government thing in high school that sent me to Moscow, stayed in Russia for university, and back in the U.S. now.

> It's sort of strange to me how many Americans seem to share the same sentiment when my experience has often been the total opposite.

> China has some of the best factories, supply chains, and collaboration in the world. And while yes, of course, loads of intentionally cheap, low-quality goods are churned out regularly, many Chinese companies also make really solid products, often even the best products until you reach a certain ultra-luxury price bracket that they simply aren't trying to compete in.

Rather like conservatives' reflexive dislike for California despite more registered Republicans living in California than any other state.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/registered-...

This is laughable. There are so many manufacturing skillsets that the US couldn’t dream to beat China in.

I am from neither country, from the perspective of residence, origin, or that of my family. I have absolutely no horse in the race. I just can’t believe that in 2023 Americans still believe this. Does anyone else remember Mac Pros being built in the US 10 years ago?

It's just that they made it in Japan. No need to overthink it :)

Context is everything

It's supposed to prepare your for the wonderful engrish documentation, and I quote: :)

> If you download Floorp you agree to the <h1>Pricacy Policy</h1>.

That’s just a typo, obviously.

Same reason as why people append "in Rust" to titles. Marketing.

“In Rust” is a technical detail that influences various properties of the result (performance certainly; maintainability likely; immaturity possibly for areas like GUI). That’s quite different from “from Japan” which doesn’t say anything specific and measurable.

For me at least it helps to know that it's not somehow secretly connected to some American intelligency agency

Japan is not "connected to some American intelligency agency"??

If you receive any email from US agencies and you are a Japanese company you can just say “no thank you I’m not interested” and it will most likely stop there.

If you are US company you don’t have a choice as it is the law.

Mozilla, Google, Facebook, Cloudflare, Signal, all have to respect the local laws.

the connection is less direct, less direct connections imply increased safety.

Precisely the reason people obfuscate direct connections is so people like you believe this about their products.

People like me? Why thank you, I've always thought they didn't. Good to know.

Japan is part of the Five Eyes Plus alliance that has areed to share intelligence with the US ( https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/fourteen-eyes-countries ).

People buying and flexing with stuff that have "Designed in California" engraved on them and being offended with an Open Source software that just want to say is it developed in Japan.

Stop over thinking and just appreciate people work.

And meanwhile, Japan has been the biggest video games actor in the industry for the latest 50 years, so I guess there are some engineers over there.

By what metric? Top 3 games by units sold are american. By revenue they are in top 4 with games made in 80s and top spot is a Korean game.

I don't really care and thought about a specific metric.

If you have experience in the video game industry, then I think you get my point but I also enjoy arguing about metrics.

In this case the "actor" was referring as a role in the industry so more about an aggregation of metrics I guess.

Place 4 is from Japan tho

> Top 3 games by units sold are american

Counting Minecraft and Tetris as American games? I suppose Microsoft bought Minecraft and EA licensed Tetris, but that seems to speak more to the business sense of American publishers than quality of American software development.

Eleven out of the twenty best-selling games are Japanese, and 28 out of the top 50.

> By what metric? Top 3 games by units sold are american.

The top 3 games by units sold were made respectively in Stockholm, Edinburgh and Moscow. How exactly do you figure that makes them "american"?

The particular mobile version of EA published Tetris was made in Moscow?

Also none of those are Japan.

> The particular mobile version of EA published Tetris was made in Moscow?

No, but if someone e.g. dubs (and perhaps even recuts) a film for the local market, we would generally still consider it to be "from" the place it was originally made.

> Also none of those are Japan.

Sure, just trying to puncture the americocentrism a little.

Is there seriously anyone outside of Apple marketing that pays attention to “designed in California”? Much less anyone that “flexes” this attribute?

And would it not be just as weird to say “designed in California” in the title of this webpage?

I don’t think anyone is questioning Japan having residents that can…fork Firefox. GP was questioning Japan as a mark of software quality, in an attempt to determine the intent behind the messaging.

It’a valid question. It’s a valid critique, even. There really is no need to get so defensive.

> People buying and flexing with stuff that have "Designed in California" engraved on them

Maybe I'm just in the wrong bubble, but I've never seen that.

> And meanwhile, Japan has been the biggest video games actor in the industry for the latest 50 years

Japanese games are often notorious bad on the technical details. Their focus is on the gaming part. Though, it has become a bit better in the last years, but usually because Japanese Companies have diversified into international teams.

> Maybe I'm just in the wrong bubble, but I've never seen that.

Maybe not everybody is flexing but at least people are not complaining about that, like for this web browser.

> Japanese games are often notorious bad on the technical details. Their focus is on the gaming part. Though, it has become a bit better in the last years, but usually because Japanese Companies have diversified into international teams.

So when it's technically bad, it's because the company doesn't have foreigners, when it's good it's because non-Japanese people are working there. Noted.

There is a significant difference between often and always...

> Japanese games are often notorious bad on the technical details.

You have to be from a parallel planet or a limited bubble to not notice that Japanese games have always generally had fewer bugs than Western games, and much less need for patches, ever since arcades and the NES.

If there are fewer features, then there are naturally fewer bugs.

Tears of the Kingdom is more featureful than the last few Assassin's Creed games and worked out of the box, which is more than I can say for today's Ubisoft products.

Seems like you're going to twist it around to "West is Best" chauvinism no matter what.

Elden Ring

Demon's Souls Remake

Death Stranding

Resident Evil 4 Remake

Street Fighter 6

Final Fantasy 16

Armored Core 6...

Every major PS5 game in the last couple years, was virtually flawless on release day.

And of course Nintendo is still scoring hits with almost everything.

Meanwhile on Reddit everyone is crying about the PC versions, of even PC-only games!

Starfield has been a bug ridden joke, typical of Bethesda, one of the flagship Western studios, still unable to improve their janky physics and cringey NPCs.

Diablo 4 gave me the only crashes I have ever seen on the PS5.

Harry Potter, Redfall, Immortals of Aveum... overhyped flops. Baldur's Gate 3 has been the only saving grace from the Western gaming industry that I can think of.

That's often a good tradeoff than average user think

Look at the PC ports. Games tied to FPS which results in poor in-game physics behavior. Inability to change settings. It's like they live on some other planet not us...

Devil May Cry 3 and Dark Souls 1 jumped to my mind immediately as notoriously bad ports. Even DMC4 and DMC5 have some problems. FromSoft games improved the quality of their ports on the other hand.

I do understand that Japanese mostly play on consoles but nowadays it's not an excuse anymore.

PC in general basically stands for Patch City.

Pretty much every PS5 game on the other hand has been basically flawless on release day.

It's not even about common bugs, it's about design choices. PC players are accustomed to being able to tweak their games. But in Japanese games you either can't tweak anything or the tweaks just don't work because the developers hardcoded settings in the executable (DMC4 SE as an example).

>WHICH PC game has been free of bugs in recent times anyway? Most indie games that I played. AAA-games are bug fests not because of the platform but because of the negligence by the developers.

> Most indie games that I played.

Fewer features, fewer bugs.

> AAA-games are bug fests not because of the platform but because of the negligence by the developers.

Meanwhile most AAAs in the last couple years from Japan have been flawless on consoles since launch day.

>Fewer features It's not like AAA games have an astonishing amount of features. Quantity over quality is currently driving AAA gaming market with its live service model. Meanwhile an indie game must be feature rich to grab attention because there are thousands of games to choose from.

>most AAAs in the last couple years from Japan Fewer games, fewer opportunities for messing up. On PC FromSoft games had problems with optimization (Elden Ring).

The gaming PC market is absolutely booming right now in Japan, so I guess they will be forced to adapt.

Most Apple products say "Designed by Apple in California".

> Japanese games are often notorious bad on the technical details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

Guess which hemisphere was responsible for the Video Game Crash and which one helped the industry recover from it. :)

Nobody can't say that Japan isn't a video game powerhouse, that is for sure. But when it comes to any other kind of software...

Well, it's not like california is known for making quality products (outside of film, i guess). Japan is.

> It's not like Japan is famous for its quality software to be honest.

Exactly. The developers are probably proud to have built something (presumably) high-quality in Japan and they want to promote that fact to help shift the country's image I guess.

Japan idolization is a thing in tech circles so it's an unfortunate no-brainer to do this.

I just copy-pasted the description from their site copy since the default title was too short :) They do mention Japan on their frontpage for some reason and I'm cool with that.

just the pride? the same as some swiss businesses put 'made in Switzerland', or 'made in Germany', or how even some US politicians use Tesla, made in US as a point of pride?

It means many things, including "not made in PRC" (as much of a thing in world of software as world of appliances and electronics, similar implications)

Things I associate with software from Japan:

- Dense interfaces, flashy colors, the opposite of Apple-style minimalism

- Proprietary software

- Lots of customization when its comes to appearance / theming

- Passionate communities

- Traditionalism, resistance to change

- Function over security

It does not all apply to Floorp, but that's what I think when I think of "made in Japan" software.

For example, Floorp is open source, which I think is less common in Japan than in the west, and hopefully, it is secure. But the customization and "dual sidebar" (i.e. more stuff on screen) features are typically Japanese.

I hear their TV sets actually look like a cloudy sky when they're tuned to a dead channel.

This is purely personal opinion and I can only cite a couple of examples off the cuff, but I have noticed some Japanese authors can have an affinity for avoiding bloat. Whether this is intentional I do not know, but they seem comfortable writing relatively small, concise software.

(Now, this being HN I'm sure someone will cite some counter examples.)

That's the point I guess. Japan's not famous for making quality opensource softwares, which makes the project look outstanding in Japan.

> What's the point of stating that "it's made in Japan"? I just don't get it.

What I don't get is why this is your main and only takeaway. It's such an odd and surprising reaction.

When I hear, for example, that Linux is being used at a gov site in Brazil or Germany or France - I get quit excited. I like that the FOSS is making inroads in other areas.

With the dominance of Chrome worldwide, I am equally excited that a group of developers from another country are helping push competition in this space, driving home the message of privacy. Mozilla needs it... we all need it for the health of the internet.

These guys have been at this for a while (based on their github page) and have made installers available for the main three OSes. I'm excited to give this a try.

> It's not like Japan is famous for its quality software to be honest.

Well they aren't known for software at all, but the japanese are notorious about being sticklers for quality.