Firefox never took off.

At one point, Firefox (3.5 specifically) was #1, for a brief moment:

> Between mid-December 2009 and February 2010, Firefox 3.5 was the most popular browser (when counting individual browser versions) according to StatCounter, and as of February 2010 was one of the top 3 browser versions according to Net Applications. Both milestones involved passing Internet Explorer 7, which previously held the No. 1 and No. 3 spots in popularity according to StatCounter and Net Applications, respectively - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.5

Then Chrome appeared and flattened both IE and Firefox.

lol, and I used neither. Opera all the way until...

Define taking off then. Everyone knows Firefox and some people even like it

Millions of people use it. What's the latest usage number? 5% or something?

There's 5 billion people on the internet. 5% of that is 250 million.

Some companies would kill for user numbers like that. Hell, some would slaughter entire villages.

FOSS is a flexible term but carries the connotation of community ownership, and therefore independence from for-profit interests. That was an original selling point of FF, and to this day the user base is mainly comprised of individuals (who were at one point or another) seeking free and open alternatives. Sadly Mozilla as an organization has made increasingly user hostile decisions (deals with Google, recent changes in privacy policy, some telemetry on by default) and FF no longer lives up to the original promise. But yes, thanks to the code being open source there are off-shoots like LibreWolf and WaterFox that may be worthwhile (I haven't vetted them) but its the same dilemma as with chrome, the upstream code is captured and controlled by an organization that I don't trust to respect user privacy.

> FOSS is a flexible term but carries the connotation of community ownership, and therefore independence from for-profit interests.

That's certainly not true. Unless Red Hat, MongoDB, Chef, etc. are not open source.

While I love to believe that the FOSS world is an anarchist utopia that believes in wellbeing for all, I think there are plenty of profit driven people there. They just don't sell access to the code/software.

This is just making better the enemy of best.

In reality people espouse this opinion then continue using Chrome or Chromium browsers.

see original comment:

> Yet there really is little recourse for privacy enthusiasts

> What makes you disqualify Firefox from being a "proper open source browser"?

- June 2024. Mozilla acquires Anonym, an ad metrics firm.

- July 2024. Mozilla adds Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA), feature is enabled by default. Developed in cooperation with Meta (Facebook).

- Feb 2025. Mozilla updates its Privacy FAQ and TOS. "does not sell data about you." becomes "... in the way that most people think about it".

Yes "PPA" is absolutely shady, it is a browser cooperating with ad companies behind user's back. I do not understand why I need this on my computer.