[Discuss] Linux Mint caves to Mozilla

[admin]

Darren Duncan wrote on 2022-01-11 5:47 p.m.:

> Interesting how the news calls this "sells out" or "caves".

Agreed, although Slashdot hardly qualifies as "news".  After 16 years, I 
dropped them from my regular sites to visit.


> How exactly 
> was Mint modifying Firefox that Firefox would pay them to ship an 
> unadulterated version?  Is it just the default search engine choice or 
> is there more to it? -- Darren Duncan

Looks like "snaps" may have a large part to do with it. Mint dropped 
support for snaps "since version 20" and Ubuntu will be packaging 
Firefox as a snap.


Also, Firefox / Mozilla doesn't appreciate their IP (trademarks, etc.) 
being used if their software is modified (too much) before release. Mint 
had changed the default search engine and the start page.

Mozilla had agreements involving money with Google on the defaults. 
Could the fact that "Mozilla Firefox" being installed on machines that 
do *not* have those settings cause issues between Google & Mozilla? 
Quite possibly, even though Mozilla wasn't the ones responsible.

May devalue the worth of what Google's getting for their money though. 
Mint is one of the largest desktop Linux distros.


El Reg has a decent write-up about it:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/12/mint_203_mozilla/