Why Firefox is not a good choice of browser for a KDE/Plasma-based product

[Kevin Kofler]

Hi,

I am going to summarize what I wrote yesterday on IRC so everyone can read 
it.

The discussion of what should be the default browser on the Plasma Product 
has come up yesterday, and I strongly believe that Firefox is NOT the answer 
(but either Konqueror+KWebKitPart or Rekonq is), for the following reasons:
* We do not control the packaging of Firefox. It is not even open to
  provenpackager! We'd be completely at the mercy of the Firefox
  maintainers.
* In particular, the Fedora Firefox package will most likely NOT include the
  KDE integration developed by openSUSE, ever. That means the package will
  integrate extremely poorly into our Plasma setup (e.g., no KDE file
  dialogs).
* Firefox also has unwanted GNOME dependencies such as
  (lib)startup-notification.
* Shipping Firefox means we have to ship a third HTML engine just for
  Firefox! We already have to ship KHTML and QtWebKit because KDE software
  requires them. Shipping either Rekonq or Konqueror+KWebKitPart reuses
  QtWebKit. Shipping Firefox means adding Gecko and thus pointless code
  duplication and more security updates for users to worry about.
* Users who absolutely want Firefox can simply install it from the
  repository. Or they could use one of the other spins, which (last I
  checked) all included Firefox (either as the one default or next to
  Midori). Users who do NOT want Firefox forced on them will have no option
  to choose from anymore if we join the monopoly.
* I don't buy the argument that there is "no alternative" to Firefox. There
  are 2 perfectly fine KDE alternatives, both based on QtWebKit. Both Rekonq
  and Konqueror+KWebKitPart just work on almost all websites out there. (And
  even Firefox doesn't work on 100% of the web.) Our plan is to prefer KDE
  applications wherever possible. Here, it is clearly possible. Shipping
  non-KDE applications is acceptable if those are specialized applications
  with no KDE alternative (think, e.g., Blender). A browser is not
  specialized, it's a core part of the desktop. And the KDE alternatives
  exist and work.
* I also don't share the worries about Rekonq's future. The port to Qt 5 +
  QtWebKitWidget is proceeding well. A switch to QWebEngine will be done
  only when QWebEngine will be ready, a sound decision. And if this really
  should become a problem in the future (i.e. AFTER F21), we can always
  reevaluate the default browser decision at that point.
* Firefox does not use kioslaves. As such its URL support is inconsistent
  with the other applications we will ship. In particular, Firefox does NOT
  support man:foo and info:foo URLs. IMHO, those are by far the most
  comfortable way to read man and info pages. It also cannot reuse things
  like kio_gopher, requiring a separate extension (for Gopher, that would be
  OverbiteFF) instead. In both Rekonq and Konqueror, man:, info: and all the
  other kioslave-handled protocols just work.
* Firefox also has some "features" that are worrisome for Fedora as a whole:
  - The anti-malware and anti-phishing protection (enabled by default!)
    sends a hash of every URL you visit to Google (yes, Google!).
  - Firefox Health Report sends some additional data to Mozilla. It is also
    enabled by default!
  - Mozilla also intends to show client-side advertisements (i.e. ones that
    are NOT part of a web page you are visiting) by default. This is both an
    added annoyance (as if the ads on the web weren't bad enough!) and a
    privacy risk. (Speaking of ads on the web, both Konqueror and Rekonq
    support ad blocking out of the box, Firefox doesn't.)
  And the Firefox trademark and packaging situation are such that we have no
  control over these "features", nor any future ones that get added.

So please consider these points before voting here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Fedora_Plasma_Product/Integration#Default_web_browser
(votes please ONLY from Plasma working group members, 4 voting members have 
not voted yet). If you voted for Firefox and these arguments convinced you 
otherwise, it's also not too late to change your mind!

Let's PLEASE let the Plasma Product be a Plasma product, not yet another 
Firefox product!

        Kevin Kofler