It's hard to imagine now, but in the 2000s web browsers were quite boring and didn't get updated very often. IE7 being released was a huge deal (indeed, Microsoft kept to a slower-moving schedule just as the rest of the industry was starting to pick up the pace). Opera was a viable fully-independent alternative. This all changed with the rise of the idea of a "Living Standard" (that is to say, a non-standard of endless layers of constantly-changing complexity for web technology), and more particularly Google Chrome, which adopted a rapid-release model right as its authors started having more influence on standards committees.
When Mozilla switched to the same rapid release model around the time of the Firefox 5.x series, many of us winced. It looked like a capitulation towards an internet that would be increasingly dominated by Chrome in the future (and how!), and its own identity that gained it success in the 2000s was quickly fading.
We can still see projects eyeing up the idea of dumping stability today - MariaDB recently adopted a rapid release schedule (probably in some way connected to monetization goals) and it seems most distributors have reacted by only paying attention to long-term-support releases, because it turns out "where's this cutting edge feature in my boring SQL database?" isn't a question many reasonable pepole ask often. Debian has done the same with Firefox, opting only to package LTS versions that receive only security updates for a year after release. In another world, there's many slow-moving Android and KaiOS users that will continue to be ignored by most western tech firms.
For years, I maintained the Firefox ESR package for NetBSD. Mostly, I tried to find and diagnose regressions that came falling down from the current release. It was a hard job. It was evident that Mozilla did not care about what we were doing at all. In this age of "web first", it's essential for a platform to have a viable web browser, and the treatment our first-class one (no Chrome on NetBSD - upstream won't accept the patches) was giving us was shocking.
Regularly, features I'd worked on fixing would break in a new release and I'd be scrambling to work out why. It was an uneasy feeling. I think 78 ESR was our best ever, and after 102 ESR a security feature I'd implemented stopped working and I thought "fuck it".
I gave up and switched to Pale Moon around the time Mozilla's corporate office displayed yet another clear sign that their head is in the clouds by deciding that built-in "AI" chatbots are what its users deseperately need. Now, some have chosen to cast fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the direction of all Firefox forks with regards to applying security patches, but as far as I can tell there's patches for CVEs regularly being applied in new releases just as other code is updated and bugs are fixed. I also lived through the pre-Electrolysis era when infosec twitter influencers were telling everyone to use Chrome to protect their privacy. These appeal to authority arguments have an appeal in some situations - it makes sense to get your bread from a baker you know doesn't add insects, but when the authority demonstratably has insects^W ad-tech in the oven? It doesn't make sense.
Pale Moon feels like a breath of fresh air in the regard that my bug reports and pull requests don't get lost in the endless churn. When there's a full changelog for a new release, I get the sense that it's actually mostly understandable features my users might actually need. A return to a slower, more boring web, even if it comes at the expense of some "web apps" downgrading or (more likely in our current year) refusing to work after performing some kind of user agent check, since that's the state of web compatibility now.
In an age where web is essential, we need a universal web browser for minority platforms. One that focuses on keeping HTML+JS working rather than chasing things like "WebVR" and collaborating with the ads industry. Unfortunately, I think the system has been set up to ensure that small players are no longer possible. Let's hope I'm proven wrong. Regardless, skipping on "just one more framework" in today's world is feeling more and more like an act of rebellion - slow-moving standards are a deep threat to corporate monopolies over technology. Services like invidio.us, and the ActivityPub sphere, that allow breaking through into JS tracking-laden "web applications" with simple HTML and CSS are a demonstration of a possible future of a web without the useless cruft. Much to the chagrin of its gatekeepers.
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