As pointed out in another comment [0], apparently it’s extremely outdated. Other comments describe it as unstable and lacking Apple Silicon builds. If you’re just looking for a version of Firefox without the user-hostile parts, this ain’t exactly it.
From my months-old research such a thing doesn’t really seem to exist yet, but I definitely think it should. It could perhaps initially be shipped as a set of patches to be done on top of an existing Firefox installation.
There are two versions of Waterfox: Classic, based on Gecko 56 that has backported security patches (but is not recommended to be used unless you are desperate to use XUL extensions) and the 3rd Generation (G3) based on ESR releases.
Waterfox Classic is based on XUL and while we back port security patches as best we can, I always try motivate existing users to migrate to the newer versions. I’m not going to force an upgrade on Classic users as it will break their current setup and instead leave it their choice.
We follow the ESR release currently for “current” versions (the default download on the website) and since ESR78 didn’t support ARM on macOS there were no builds for it.
Hmm. You're right that they are trying to do more than just that, they're trying to make a browser with an "off by default" policy for anything potentially privacy impacting. Personally, I haven't done any more than check it out, but I did end up switching back most of their changed settings.
I think the end game for this probably ought to be an interface that appears post-install and asks you to choose a set of privacy-friendly options (which may break things), or enable all web technologies (which may impact privacy). That seems the user-respecting thing to do to me.
Still, though, I'm glad that privacy-by-default, no unexpected connections out of the box, is something that someone is working on.
For the purposes of this comment, user-hostility means decisions that have negative utility for Firefox users as a whole, while benefiting Mozilla in some way (usually financial).
* There is disgusting clickbait and spam on the new tab page by default, thanks to bundling Pocket's article recommendations. Many of these are sponsored suggestions (a euphemism that means "advertisement"), but ironically these are scarcely more annoying than the actual suggestions.
* The top sites feature on the new tab page, intended to provide easy access to the sites you use the most, is now infested with sponsored recommendations like Amazon and Ebay.
* The URL bar is now infested with sponsored suggestions, even if you have searching from that bar turned off!
* The have made major blunders in their handling of "experiments" and telemetry. They broke all extensions because they failed to update a certificate (after shipping Firefox with a signing requirement for extensions that can't be disabled), and shipped an extension directly to users via their hotpatching feature that implemented a sponsored tie-in with a TV SHOW which manipulated the text on web pages, a major breach of trust in their use of hotpatching.
More minor or borderline cases:
* They have shipped many of these anti-features and stuff that belongs in user-installable extensions as part of the source code of Firefox itself. This bloats the browser, makes it harder for potential forkers to remove the code, and makes it harder for them to reverse course in the future should they decide to undo their disastrous series of decisions.
* They default to Google as a search engine because Google pays them lots of money, not because they believe that's the best search engine for their users to use. They were using Yahoo a few years ago.
* They generate pointless UI churn, presumably because their design team has nothing else to do. Most of these features have been received poorly by the majority of Firefox users invested enough to speak out, suggesting that they have some other motive than making their users happy.
* Needless removal of features that arguably do belong in a browser: detection of RSS feeds, compact mode for the GUI, the ability to use CSS to restyle the browser interface (now hidden behind a "deprecated" toggle)
* On top of everything else, the horrible communication from Mozilla has made everything so much more hostile than it already was. They outright denied at first, for example, that the "new tab suggestions intended to improve the user experience" were advertisements.
* The mobile transition has been a disaster. They've had like 4 or 5 different "editions" of Firefox over the last few years as they tried to decide what their strategy was, and now that they've set on one, they deprecated the only version of their browser that supported add-ons on mobile without a replacement, and now almost 30 versions later the overwhelming majority of addons are still not supported. And the justification for all this, refactoring to make the browser faster, didn't materialize. I tested both the old and newest browser on objective benchmarks and saw a difference of less than 10%, and the UI of the new browser was noticeably slower.
I'm so confused. Pretty much everything you describe is them making money. Would you rather them not be in business? Be a subscription browser? I don't understand.
Hmm. I haven't made a claim that they should not or must not do this. Your argument amounts to the claim that they must do these things because they have no other choice. I have ... not a lot to say on this point, honestly. What you say might be true.
However, it doesn't bear at all on the question of whether the actions are user hostile. Any change known to the developers to negatively impact the utility of end users is user hostile. Maybe a program like Firefox can't exist in 2021 without being ... essentially adware ... and if so I think that's sad, but it's not a reason to redefine our terms to make it not user hostile to begin with!
From my months-old research such a thing doesn’t really seem to exist yet, but I definitely think it should. It could perhaps initially be shipped as a set of patches to be done on top of an existing Firefox installation.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816443