Mozilla may seem strong, but it's actually very much on its last legs. It has played the dope in Google's strategy to unite social liberals under its corporate banner, to create a bipolar duopoly in the browser space analogous to the right and left wings in politics (with Apple rounding out the Greens). Chrome gains every month at Firefox's exclusive expense. Chrome fans are putting Firefox users under significant pressure to switch, particularly in light of the Eich controversy which seems completely alien to 90% of anti-Microsoft surfers. Google will probably prop Mozilla up for another couple years while they continue to bleed it, but only to put a "fork" in us.
You see, "we" are the thorn in Google's side. "We" are the people who have the potential to resist its institution of a red-blue divide over the internet. We are the exclusive threat to the dominance of its web browser, because "we" have the potential to open up the entire anti-Microsoft user segment... and beyond.That is why we must seize this moment, and realize the potential this opportunity gives us. Mozilla's decline is creating the beginning of a loyalty vacuum that is the essence of market opportunity. If we dither, Google will command it. But if we strike while the iron is hot, we will create a dynamo effect that will liberate the internet like never before. Liberation not just about offering choices... it's about creating opportunity to succeed independently of the establishment by advancing an ethos of dynamism and massive competitiveness.
Firefox is a very complex system, and any fork of it must be piecemeal. Individual features must be isolated and cut from the code base itself. There are probably no more than ten people alive today who truly understand how Firefox works. While Mozilla offers a broad overview of Firefox's components at its Developers Center, the specifics have not been articulated. Such information is not freely given: the few who know consider their time valuable and will only offer one-to-one training on a need to know basis. Firefox as we know it is, for all intents and purposes, a black box. But one to which we hold the key.
Firefox's code regime is easiest to see in its makefile. By tweaking the build you can slim down Firefox drastically and separate its interdependent, integral components from its dependent, expendable ones. This is the first step. The next step is to document the design of the integrals. For practical purposes, your first port of call may be to remove the code which instructs Firefox.exe to load JAR files in a specific order (this speeds it up at load time (modestly), but makes it much harder to hack as any replacement/modification of the archived Javascript corrupts the entire installation). Past this point, we confront the reality of a truly independent Internet. The questions we face are philosophical. For example, why not create our own HTML elements? Should websites not be allowed to choose which features thrive and which die? Why rely on a standards body beholden to the special interests of its members at all? Yes Microsoft introduced havoc back in the day at its own purposed instigation, but would a free Web really be that rowdy? Is there any harm in users using different browsers for different sites? These are meaningful questions without simple answers. You might take the conventional wisdom approach and say. "well of course we should adhere to standards as much as possible, because not everybody knows how to use a computer". And that would work except, Firefox users are singularly united in that they are not, and never will be conventional. Why appeal to the lowest denominator, when you can create a browser for people like you? Google and Microsoft compete endlessly for every last dollar, no matter the moral hazard or the encumbrance to freedom. Is that really what you want, to submit to becoming the very thing you despise? Is it really that important to obey, not matter the outcome to yourself? When you fork Firefox -- when you pick and choose what "HTML 5" means, and whether you're up for what Google wants you to bear as a user of the Internet or not -- YOU have the power. For your own sake, cast aside the security principal... cast aside the increasingly bloated XPCOM interface that makes the code an unwieldy, inescapably bug-ridden mess.... Make Firefox work... for you.
You really do have opportunity. Most Firefox users today are ready to embrace a world of possibilities. They are as fine with 50 different flavors of Firefox as they are with 50 different flavors of Linux. 80% of Firefox users are united by the common characteristic of indifference to Mozilla or its dictates. They are rebels, after all, and rebels kneel before none. As the mass media continues to gang up on Mozilla and make a story of their tragic decline, the foundation's fate is foretold... in a couple years, the staff which anger us today will have moved on, and the project will be in dormancy. The future will be either Google, ...or you.
