NoScript’s legacy XUL version supports Pale Moon.
It works fine, but by default, “MoonChild” has set it to disable NoScript and warn the user that the extension may “cause issues”.
I went to install NoScript, the legacy XUL version, which works fine in SeaMonkey.
Pale Moon immediately disabled it and told me it was dangerous to use that extension because it might break Web sites.
Then when I clicked to know more about this issue, I was led to a page on Pale Moon Forums where “MoonChild”, the main developer, explains that he doesn’t want people coming to bitch to him if an extension that disables JavaShit breaks a Web site.
So it just turns it off and makes it sound like the extension is sketchy, and then you have to read that and say “Oh bullshit!” and turn the extension back on.
The cynic in me would say that since it breaks Pale Moon’s default start.me page full of ads and shit, he’s worried he may lose money if you don’t see that every time you load the browser.
So he is scaring people away from NoScript to keep the spice flowing.
It’s understandable that people who spend significant time and effort to create a program deserve to be compensated for it, but scaring the users of an extension that enhances Web browser security by reducing the Active Content attack surface (which is present in all Web browsers) is not the right way to handle this.
“MoonChild” doesn’t need to deal with his revenue problem by implying that NoScript is malicious software, which is dishonest to say the least. He should, rather, put a one time notice in the browser explaining that he needs revenue and that blocking the start.me page harms his ability to fund Pale Moon development, and then asking the user or offering to the user to whitelist that page, and ultimately respecting the user’s decision.
Free Software (as defined by the Free Software Definition in “The Freedom to run the program as you wish.”) is about respecting user choices.
If your program doesn’t respect what the user wants, it may technically fall under a Free Software license as source code, but it violates the spirit of the Free Software Definition.
When I went to learn more about the issue that Pale Moon causes for NoScript, I came to a different forum where I learned that after “MoonChild” made the childish decision about overriding the user’s clearly expressed intention of installing NoScript to protect them from Active Content, users flooded the Pale Moon forums to complain, and the result of the complaining was that NoScript is declared a “banned subject” on their forums, and threats of being banned from the Pale Moon forums by “MoonChild”.
I’m starting to seriously wonder about “MoonChild’s” version of the events that led to former Pale Moon developer Matt Tobin being expelled from the project. Tobin hangs out at the #SeaMonkey IRC room on Libera Chat, and he doesn’t seem like a bad/mean person to me. The description of a developer as a Prima Donna and a “Hitler”-like figure sounds more to me like “MoonChild” because of the ongoing NoScript debacle.
I would generally like to have another browser to recommend to people.
I’m going to hold off on Pale Moon. It does seem to have fewer Web compatibility issues than SeaMonkey, but there are still quite a few.
I noticed that the Palefills extension to fix some of these up also works in SeaMonkey (it’s in the manifest and makes GitHub and Gitlab and dozens of other sites work again in both browsers).
Typically, both browsers should generally appeal to people who don’t like the “Modern Web” very much and who think Firefox has gone completely off the rails, who are willing to deal with “Modern Web” breakage by deploying clever hacks and workarounds where needed (or just opening some Modern browser to pay their electric bill and close it again for a month), but the developers of Pale Moon seem to be difficult people, to put it mildly.
I’ve noticed that “MoonChild” has made Matt Tobin another “graylisted” subject on his forums. Either you say Tobin is Hitler or you disappear too.
“Communities” such as this are impossible and ultimately fail due to attrition.
They can be fun to make fun of, though, but you have to find your own platform to do it on.
For example, when MinceR in #techrights IRC said, “Has he heard of the ability to change home pages?”, I said, “ALERT: Changing your home page is dangerous and may cause Pale Moon to become unstable, resulting in profile corruption. We cannot support this if you proceed. -M.C. Hitler”.
Gone are the days where we can have mild disagreements, or disagreements that aren’t even about Free Software, or even an off beat sense of humor, without the Cancel Mob trying to hijack everything and kill us with fire.
Recently, Matthew J. Garrett, or Matt GULAG as I call him on #Techrights IRC has been petitioning Roy to cancel me over some personal beliefs that I have expressed that aren’t even that unusual. Roy hasn’t acted on that.
Matt GULAG’s career in software development is on a jack stand provided by Microsoft and other companies that are hostile to software freedom.
Unfortunately, when Freenode turned into The Pretender’s “Freenode Autonomous Zone”, people who are bad in other ways, like Matt GULAG and “MoonChild” (*cough* M.C. Hitler) (which MinceR refers to as “ManChild”) forked it and created Libera.Chat. Libera.Chat is awful because it’s been politicized by the cancel mob.
Freenode, before The Pretender took it over, had almost 100,000 users and was _the_ place to discuss Free Software.
Libera.Chat only has about 49,000 users at peak hours, and it’s because they cancel anyone who isn’t some total leftist freak-of-nature or a Microsoft toady that supports their sabotage efforts of GNU/Linux.
Libera.Chat has banned me like 7 times (sort of like Matrix.org has), but K-Lines don’t mean much of anything to me like they did in the days of dial-up or direct connect over my real IP which only changed every several months or so.
I change IP addresses and VPN providers every so often so good luck making any of that stick. I’m on Libera.Chat in several different ways all at once right now.
Eventually the bans don’t happen as often because you know which rooms (such as #linux and #libera) which have asshole moderators in them.
Microsoft has virtually succeeded in planting moles in every high profile place where “Linux” is up for discussion, and they’ve made sure that people who don’t like Microsoft and say why get banned. Even if it’s like, a one-liner and you’re not up on a soap box. Or you make a joke about something that really happened.
(Like the time Microsoft did the BIG BOOBIES debacle with the Linux kernel in their HyperV driver and then says all the perverts are in open source.)
The bans happened to me on Reddit and Libera, and whether the ban itself sticks or not, they know that you know that if you come back and criticize them again, the ban will just happen again.
This is part of their strategy to make it seem like everyone “loves” Microsoft or are at least indifferent.
When communities fall apart, and the center cannot hold, due to people like Matt GULAG re-defining “community” into something that creates proprietary “standards” that people have no control over, which lock them out of their computer (e.g., “secure boot community”), then projects like GNU/Linux become little more than another crappy “vendor UNIX”, which everyone hated due to the lock-in and incompatibilities.
Oh, you want to go make something else?
It won’t be compatible, it’ll probably have bugs if you try, but “you have every right to do that”, says Matt GULAG on his Twitter blog.
(In reference to IBM’s systemd. The creator of systemd now works for Microsoft. I’m assuming that Mr. GULAG was trying to bring his manure spreader of FUD to bear on Devuan GNU/Linux.)
Mr. GULAG has repeatedly defended Microsoft “Secure” Boot even though he himself admits that their Platinum-level OEM partner, Lenovo, has now sabotaged it to prevent Linux kernels from booting, either nearly entirely, on a laptop that was hard coded to only boot if the OS entry was Windows Boot Manager, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or on a very recent one that doesn’t enable the third-party certificate that his Linux implementation of “Secure” Boot needs to start up, and in which case Windows screws up your Bitlocker and potentially causes data loss on your Windows partition if you try to re-configure this.
I had another system, the Yoga 900-ISK2 that was sabotaged so badly that I filed a lawsuit against Lenovo in Illinois before they agreed to change it.
My reward? Mr. GULAG’s white glove character assassination, as usual. He only ever attacks defenders of Free Software, and people who write Free Software. He never attacks the rapists, stranglers, and pedophiles of Microsoft and their affiliates.
Peter Bright of Ars Technica? Posted pro-Microsoft articles constantly. Silence. (Tried to rape a 9 year old. Now in prison.)
Jeremy Soule of Microsoft Bethesda? Silence. (Raped a woman in the office, sent her a video of himself masturbating. Tried to force himself on an immigrant and threaten her immigration status if she refused. Quietly slinked away with no punishment.)
Alex Gravely of Microsoft GitHub? Silence. (Strangled an immigrant Latina woman and raped her. Court gave him a pre-trial diversion as pretend punishment.)
Rick Allen Jones? Silence. (Personal engineer of Bill Gates. Arrested in the Gates mansion after police found a Child Pornography dungeon in his house.) Silence from Mr. GULAG again.
I’ve never actually gotten him to offer me his opinion of those people or why we’re letting them form “communities”. The only community most Microsoft toadies should be in is that one under the bridge in Florida, obviously.
He only attacks defenders and writers of Free Software. He himself seems to be currently employed writing some proprietary software for these self-driving cars. Which don’t have a very good safety record. Many brands of these cars run over people and the company goes “Welp, thought she was a shopping bag! How little can we get the family to settle for?!”.
I’ve been driving for decades and haven’t managed to injure anyone. But money talks, and pretty soon we’ll all be forced onto the road with buggy/dodgy software and we all get to hope it doesn’t get in front of us and randomly slam the brakes or mistake us for shopping bags, because it will be the law.
But back to Microsoft… Microsoft has regrouped and changed its strategy, but the clear endgame is still against Free Software, and they have an army of useful idiots to help them.
Using difficult people as pawns to manipulate and pull apart communities is one of the center pieces of this strategy.
But as Robert Reich would say, “Don’t believe it!”.
If it seems like all you hear is good things about the corporate takeover of FOSS, it’s because they’re taking out all of their critics by any means necessary. ⬆