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Comment by greenyoda | Hacker News Reader

Official statement from Waterfox's developer: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1

On reddit the developer has stated multiple times that this is a search partnership and not a buyout. The blog indicates that it is a buyout and so does the change in company director. That makes me confused as to what is happening here.

Sure looks like they acquihired him: https://www.system1.com/press/system1-welcomes-waterfox

Also, Alex appears to have stepped down as director of Waterfox and a co-founder of System1 became director: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08071145/filing-h...

could be a deliberate tactic to sow confusion. I would not update waterfox beyond the pre-acquisition version.

I would go so far as to say that I would never have installed waterfox in the first place as it provides dubious value insofar as privacy and none as far as technical quality.

Probably just bad phrasing on my part. Also, Waterfox is OSS? There are definitely some security patches that have been released that I’d recommend you have; so for your sake at least use an up-to-date browser.

That's probably why during the last 2 weeks Waterfox pestered me every day asking to upgrade it. I didn't know about the acquisition and tried to upgrade, but luckily in hindsight the upgrade failed because it required a new glibc version that isn't even in Debian unstable. I'll probably go back to FF ESR.

Sad news indeeed; I loved Waterfox:(

Also, If he would have asked for help, I'd have happily donated some quid.

That’s just how the Mozilla platform works for newer products (that Waterfox has inherited).

Why not try Pale Moon or Basilisk?

Sorry if I was phrasing incorrectly. System1 are a search syndicator and that’s how they’ll be pushing forward with it. A lot of people seem to have extrapolated more than what’s actually happened.

So why did you transfer the directorship to the System1 director? This is not needed for partnerships.

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