Re: [Bug-gnuzilla] Windows 8.1 Icecat Bug Report

[Ivan Zaigralin]

Narcis, I am a bit confused by your apparent confusion, even as you seem
to be providing a Win32 binary.

What I want to say here is my strictly personal opinion, and it does not
represent the views of other people associated with this project, nor
those of any organizations I happen to be affiliated with.

I believe that Gnuzilla providing support for either Win32, OS X, or any
commercial mobile platform is a mistake because it is a total waste of
the development resources. The following argument would also work for
any platform which spits on (user) privacy and security.

Sometimes it makes sense to provide free software on a non-free
platform, especially when it replaces a non-free app (e.g. libreoffice),
or has no non-free equivalent (e.g. LaTeX). But is there a point at all
in providing something like IceCat? Its only differences from the stock
Firefox focus on privacy and security, which the users of non-free
platforms already gave up completely. Giving a Windoze user IceCat is
like giving a pillow to a man who jumped from the roof of the Empire
State. Technically speaking, it will soften the blow, but in practice
it's just dead weight. When compatibility issues are taken into account,
there is basically no advantage over the stock Firefox.

This issue reminds me of a lengthy rant I left on the TOR dev list,
accusing them of, well, incompetence (since I didn't want to assume
malice right away) for providing Windoze binaries. This was right after
the big dragnet closed on the drug stores, with (allegedly) hundreds of
secret services and users unmasked. I argued that giving Windoze users
TOR is not just useless, but counterproductive, since it gives a
completely false sense of anonymity where there is absolutely none. As a
matter of fact, it would be trivial for the law enforcement to update
Windoze to report and/or poison all local TOR activity, and by now it
has probably been done.

IceCat for Win32 is definitely not in the same "incompetence" category,
but unless a case can be made for why it has anything on Firefox in that
environment, I'll keep calling it a waste.

On 07/12/2015 11:19 AM, Narcis Garcia wrote:
> "I'm trying to install icecat on Windows 8.1 "
> 
> WHY ?!
> 
> 
> El 12/07/15 a les 13:42, John ha escrit:
>> I'm trying to install icecat on Windows 8.1
>>
>> Steps to produce bug:
>> 1    Download 31.7.0 win32 zip file
>> 2    Extract with 7zip
>> 3    Navigate to the directory *\icecat-31.6.0.en-US.win32\icecat
>> 4    Run icecat.exe as administrator
>> Result:
>> 1    My mouse will have a hourglass symbol and I'm able to find
>> icecat.exe in task manager for 1 second
>> 2    Normal cursor returns and icecat isn't found in taskmanager. There
>> is no trade of me ever having tried to run icecat.exe
>>
>> I've tried running in various Windows comparability modes and version
>> 31.6.0. I still get the same result.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> http://gnuzilla.gnu.org
> 
> --
> http://gnuzilla.gnu.org
>

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