I don’t quite understand the concerns in the comments here. The original blog post seems reasonable: https://www.waterfox.com/blog/15-years-of-forking/#what-waterfox-is-in-2026
God, it’s not hard to read an article instead of speculate in the comments.
“The new built in blocker will use Brave’s adblock library and run in Waterfox’s main browser process rather than as an extension. Kontos says this should make adblocking faster, more tightly integrated, and less dependent on extension APIs or constant upstream updates.”
He also said Brave’s library was chosen partly because its MPL 2.0 license is a better fit for Waterfox, while deeper integration with a blocker like uBlock Origin would be more complicated because of its GPLv3 license.
Waterfox will still make one exception by default by allowing text ads on its default search partner page, currently Startpage, as a way to support the browser financially. The team clarified that this is Waterfox’s own revenue decision and not something inherited from Brave’s adblocking technology. Users who want stricter blocking will be able to disable all ads with a single setting, while people who already use third party blockers can keep using them as usual.
This, to me, is fine, because I change the default regardless. There’s nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same. Sure, this could potentially open the door for additional “greedy” decisions down the road, but let’s not jump to conclusions.
The aversion to using a GPL library is a red flag for me. It basically says: “we don’t want to grant our users the same rights we have”.
It’s a bit more complicated than that because MPL is itself a weak copyleft license that requires that the MPL licensed source code is always made available to recipients of a binary or derived work. The difference from GPL is that it does not require that all additional parts of the derived work are also licensed under MPL, (ie. not viral copyleft) meaning that the MPL licensed work can be linked with proprietary code without requiring that the proprietary code make its source available, but unlike BSD or MIT licenses it does not allow the MPL licensed code to be made proprietary.
The complication comes when linking MPL code with GPL code, even though MPL is GPL-compatible, since this requires that the entire derived work must now be made available under the GPL, while the original MPL licensed parts become dual-licensed under both MPL and GPL.
If Waterfox developers allowed this then it would prohibit the use of the whole derived work in proprietary projects (as they would now need to be GPL), so it would be removing rights that they have already given to downstream users of their code. Proprietary projects would therefore have to remove the GPL licensed additions (in this case it would be the UblockOrigin code) and link just the MPL licensed parts, which would mean using only part of the whole browser.
Personally I agree with you: I prefer GPL licensed projects. But MPL is not a bad license and I can understand and respect that some developers would make that choice (especially since the project is already licensed under MPL as it’s a fork of Firefox).
AFAIK MPL is viral, but only at the file level. In other words, if you modify an MPL-licensed file, your modifications need to be MPL-licensed, but if you add additional files, those can be a different license.
(In practice, I suppose that that’s fairly weak?)
I think you misunderstood what “viral” mean in that context.
If a file, under GPL, is added to a project, the whole project becomes dual licensed under the original licence plus GPL, which propagate to the whole project, like a virus. I know comparing it to something like a virus sound derogative, but this is the best way to describe its effect.
If a file, under MPL, is added to a project, the project do not become MPL, only the added part is. Said project cannot change the MPL licensed part to another licence, but still can build anything it wish using it.
Globally, a GPL licensed project protects the user more, but also prevent the devs from doing a lot of thing, which MPL does not.
In the end, this is the devs freedom to chose which licence they wish to publish their code under, not ours.
Since it’s Firefox based, do they even have the option to release their software with GPL components?
I don’t see how not, but I’m not a lawyer. From my perspective only Waterfox’s edits would actually be GPL anyway, since they don’t own copyright to Mozilla. If they wanted to integrate their work upstream that would be an issue
That’s bad
I am concerned but is there enough information here to know it’s bad?
Braves Adblock is generally very good as i recall. Traditional adblockers block content that is already downloaded while brave blocks it from using bandwidth at all. (Please correct if wrong)
Its the other toxic and malicious crap it does and the far right sympathies that are its real problems.
So many of these stories
Brave should be investigated by the CFTC. It’s basically a scam.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/brave-affiliate-links-autocomplete
https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-browser-leaks-onion-addresses-in-dns-traffic/
Braves Adblock is generally very good as i recall. Traditional adblockers block content that is already downloaded while brave blocks it from using bandwidth at all. (Please correct if wrong)
This is wrong, almost all reputable ad blockers block specific known problematic domains or endpoints from being reached altogether, nothing is downloaded. You can check this in the most common blocking rules out there, such as EasyList.
This was also the drama about chrome deprecating manifest v1, which allowed for more of these rules dynamically, and in which Google forced extensions for the Chrome browser only to follow a more limited approach in manifest v2, but still network blocking.
Its the other toxic and malicious crap it does and the far right sympathies that are its real problems.
Yeah,this,I don’t like it
I’m glad I stuck with Librewolf.
I miss when people made web browsers without appeasing advertisers. Remember when mozilla introduced the popup blocker and netscape actually incorporated that into their mainstream product? You never see stuff like that anymore because advertisers control everything on the internet now.
toss
Next!
Haha, Im here for people flipping out comments :)
They (used) to be owned by an advertising company. Use librewolf
What does this mean? Waterfox turning into Brave-like browser, which is Chromium, but for Mozilla forks?
All it means is that it has an integrated ad blocker now.
FFS I switched last week
I’m not sure if I like this. I hope it can be configured in about:settings.
Personally I don’t want any ad-tech related code in my browser, unless it’s for blocking ads and tracking scripts.
Allowing ads on startpage probably doesn’t really entail that though. It’s probably just a simple rule adding an exception to the blocking rules.
It’s not a good precedent though. If I was a Waterfox user, I’d be uneasy about this.
I am a Waterfox user. I am uneasy about this. Especially given that it’s Brave Browser code. Fuck that company.
I’m gonna guess “very probably”, but just like most recent changes in Mozilla Firefox too… It’s really not looking good.
So long waterfox! Get fucked!
