• VoiHyvaLuojaMitaNyt@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Firefox donations will be solely used for Firefox development

    This might be a stupid question… but how much developing does a browser actually need? I get security updates and such but how much resources does that stuff really need? Full disclosure: I’m a dumb lorry driver I have no idea how these things work. Some years ago I realized I hadn’t updated my browser in at least a year, maybe two and I had no issues lol

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      A conservative guess would be around 60 people.

      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi

      You can click around and see the bug reports they’re working on. There are a few, to say the least.

      https://www.firefox.com/en-US/releases/

      This is a way to see what’s in each release. The ones on the left are major releases and tend to have bigger features, and the others tend to be bug fixes.

      Web browsers start with core functionality that’s very complex. Then you tack on that they’re being used for things like banking, and managing the critical details of people’s lives. That means security galore, which is hard and constant. Then you have ad people, who are also something that’s hard to defend against.
      Then there’s the constant flood of new features you have to implement to keep up with Google.

      Chrome has 1,000 to 4,000 people working on it. Mozzila employs about 700 to work on firefox, with maybe 1,000 additional open source developers.

      My initial guess was very wrong.

    • Orygin@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      It is really difficult to implement in the first place, and the standards evolve constantly.
      Some argue it may not be possible to build new browsers anymore