>[!DANGER] > The development team is extremely aggressive, rude, and litigious. > > I will not be including Pale Moon in any future browser roundups or lists and I recommend that you avoid it at all costs. Pale Moon is a [[MPLv2]] licensed fork of [[Firefox]] written in [[C++]]. - [Website](https://www.palemoon.org/) > You think trademark law is a joke? \- Pale Moon developer implying they will sue [[OpenBSD]] maintainers for working on a port # Notability A truly independently operated browser with a long history. # Philosophy ## DMCA Takedowns and Legal Threats In 2021 Pale Moon developers filed multiple DMCA takedowns against forks who were trying to port the browser to [[OpenBSD]] and [[Windows XP]]. The lead developer also threatened legal action against [[OpenBSD]] developers, which when called out then denied and refused to elaborate on the implication. Importantly, [[OpensBSD]] maintainers was not redistributing Pale Moon. The work they were doing was to understand how to build it on [[OpenBSD]] from source. After enduring aggressive threats, the [[OpenBSD]] maintainers decided to remove all work done on the Pale Moon port and refuse its entry into their ports list. > This issue is now officially resolved. There will be no Pale Moon browser, official or not. The port has been removed. \- ibara, [[OpenBSD]] maintainer ## Redistribution Pale Moon has a huge page dedicated to the do's and don't of redistributing the software. It is an incredible mess and I feel like a lawyer has never once seen it. I think this is somewhat inspired by Mozilla's branding guidelines, which have also been noted for their ridiculousness, but Mozilla have not attacked random developers in pursuit of their trademarks. - https://www.palemoon.org/redist.shtml ## Maintainers - `wolfbeast` (M. C. Straver AKA "Moonchild") is the primary developer and operator of "ManchildProductions" according to the DMCA - `mattatobin` (Matt A. Tobin AKA Binary Outcast) is one of the aggressive members of the team, banned from many forums for his behaviour - `shakeyourbunny` is someone who has jumped in to support the maintainers' attacks - `athenian200` former maintainer who, while generally more polite than the others, has been fully supportive of their attacks and was previously a radical proprietary software user before joining Binary Outcast, but after being attacked themselves by `mattatobin` quit the project and deleted their Github account entirely and pretty much disappeared online after posting another anti-FOSS screed ## Origin Pale Moon is a hard-fork of [[Firefox]] prior to "Quantum" in 2017 and retains features lost by the mainline from that earlier era. This includes hard-forking [[Gecko Browser Engine]] into [[Goanna Browser Engine]]. ## Mission Statement > Pale Moon will continue to provide grouped navigation buttons of a decent size, a bookmarks toolbar that is enabled by default, tabs next to page content by default (easily switchable) and not in the least a functional status bar and more freedom in customization, to name a few things. Its support for classic XUL extensions and full themes also provides users with powerful tools and options to change, extend and control the browser and its user interface. ## Monetization Pale Moon does not accept contributions via cryptocurrency. # Platform Support - Linux - FreeBSD - MacOS - Windows # Features ## Customization Firefox removed most of its customization options in years past. Pale Moon retains this high level of customizability. # Issues ## Restart Installing or enabling/disabling themes and extensions requires a full restart. Tres retro. ## Missing Extensions Because Pale Moon uses an older extension API, there are very few new extensions available. The biggest missing one for me is [[Dark Reader]]. But also things like [[MarkDownload]] or [[Obsidian Editor]]'s own web clipper. # Tips ## Compatibility Hacks Some sites will reject browsers they don't recognize and so the browser might need to lie to them. - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=29327&start=80#p238599 ## uBlock Origin It seems that Pale Moon doesn't support Manifest v2 and/or more modern APIs and so mainline uBlock cannot be loaded. However, older versions of uBlock do work, and there are some people still maintaining forks of these compatible versions since [[gorhill]] spun it off. - https://github.com/UCyborg/uBlock-for-firefox-legacy/releases Potential improvement for ad blockers on some sites? Not sure if still needed. - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?p=183822#p183822 # References ## Attacks, Threats, Abuse, DMCAs - https://archive.ph/ftQw5 - https://archive.ph/C1QU3 - https://msfn.org/board/topic/180462-my-browser-builds-part-2/page/108/?tab=comments#comment-1186420 - https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/10/2021-10-14-pale-moon.md - https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/10/2021-10-27-pale-moon.md - https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/10/2021-10-28-binoc-central-mirror.md - https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/10/2021-10-12-boc-uxp.md ### Discussions - https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/xvvzx9/comment/ir4bh3k/?context=3 - https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/tvl2ro/i_am_no_longer_associated_with_binary_outcast/ - https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/pf6hyd/pale_moon_developers_abuse_mozilla_public_license/