ImYoric

Thanks for the kind words :)

I have started a series of blog entries about the topic. To make a long story short: we have considerably improved our speed (we are now often faster than Chrome), our memory usage (we are considerably leaner than Chrome) but we still have lots of work improving our responsiveness (Chrome is much more responsive than us). We are very actively working on it.

Now, one of the ways Chrome gains speed and responsiveness is by modelling and predicting the behavior of the user, which it does by sending huge amounts of information to the mothership. That's the kind of thing we don't really like, for privacy reasons.

The debate is raging inside the Mozilla community, so take everything I write with a healthy dose of uncertainty.

Firstly, note that the DRM scheme being discussed at w3c is actually essentially a safer subset of the current plug-in API that has been implemented in all browsers since ~1995 and is used by Flash, Silverlight or Java. I believe that, should an agreement be reached between Microsoft, Google and Apple regarding said API, ignoring the specifications would be pointless and suicidal, so we will probably implement it.

Now, this does not mean that we have given up the fight. We are actively pursuing anti-DRM strategies. If we manage, say, to convince major Hollywood distributors to use watermarking (which is cheap, simple, non-intrusive and doesn't require such a heavy machinery to produce robust results) instead of DRM (which is complex and doesn't work), we can win the battle of minds outside w3c.

Finally, I personally believe that DRMs are doomed by definition. I'm sure that some astute add-on developer will be able to produce an add-on that short circuits any protection scheme cooked up at the w3c.

Firefox is designed and implemented by a non-profit organization fighting for the rights and the privacy of users on the web. Other major browsers are basically the opposite.

Thunderbird has officially been deprioritized, I'm afraid. Which is a shame, I love it, too.

Around 2003, I decided to write an e-book reader for the format that wasn't yet named epub. By making this a Firefox add-on, I managed to write a fully functional version in a matter of weeks and on my spare time while development of the official prototype was taking forever.

That's how I got hooked :)