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What Redoubt is — and what it is not

Redoubt is not the LibreWolf project. It is an independent fork of LibreWolf's source, maintained by someone who is not a LibreWolf developer; LibreWolf has not built, endorsed, or supported it. That one sentence is the whole of the naming question, and this page exists to support it with the honest detail rather than to soften it.

What Redoubt is

Redoubt is a privacy-hardened Firefox for Android. What sets it apart is the build model: it compiles Gecko from source and applies LibreWolf's patch set and preference configuration — the same shared set the desktop build uses — rather than patching a prebuilt Fennec. That is a real difference, and it is also the expensive one.

It is doing the Android work LibreWolf has explicitly declined: LibreWolf's own FAQ says nobody is working on an Android version and recommends using IronFox as the alternative. That is precisely the gap this fork fills, and precisely why it has to be clear that it is not LibreWolf.

Where the work actually comes from

The privacy configuration is the product, and it is LibreWolf's, not this project's. Roughly 260 preference decisions in settings/librewolf.cfg and the patch set that makes them enforceable are LibreWolf's work, under MPL-2.0. This is stated up front, not buried in a licence footer: installing Redoubt for its privacy posture means installing LibreWolf's work, ported to a platform LibreWolf does not ship, by someone who is not LibreWolf.

While porting, this fork also found three defects in the upstream source (a supply-chain gap in the l10n fetch, a fails-open patch test, and a beta-tarball naming bug) and documented them as reproductions worth reporting back. See docs/android/UPSTREAM-REPORTS.md.

The space is already occupied

IronFox (https://ironfoxoss.org) already does what this project is reaching for: a maintained, privacy-hardened Firefox for Android that people actually install. As of 2026-08-22 it is released and installable today — through a F-Droid repository (https://fdroid.ironfoxoss.org/fdroid/repo) and a public download page (https://ironfoxoss.org/download) — and actively maintained (source at https://github.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox). It is also the browser LibreWolf itself points Android users to.

The honest gap, named plainly: IronFox ships a browser people use. Redoubt does not. It has no public build, no download, and no users yet. A positioning page that could not say that is marketing, not positioning, so it is said here.

What Redoubt does that IronFox does not is the build model: it compiles Gecko from source with LibreWolf's shared patch set and pref configuration. That is a genuine difference, and it is not a reason to pretend the other gap away.

What Redoubt is and is not

  • The privacy configuration and the Gecko-level security/privacy patches are the shared set LibreWolf desktop uses (the common settings/ tree and the shared patch lists).
  • Platform containment is weaker than desktop, and it is published exactly where. Redoubt has no Gecko content-process sandbox (MOZ_SANDBOX is off on Android and the upstream port is unfinished). Per-site process isolation, RLBox JS/WASM sandboxing, and compiler memory hardening recover most — not all — of it.
  • Several properties are configured but not yet proven honoured on a live page (HTTPS-only, certificate revocation, the TLS floor, resist-fingerprinting coherence, the enterprise-policy mappings). In docs/android/PARITY.md these are Partial or Pending, not Equivalent.
  • It cannot carry LibreWolf's signing-key identity. A fork is a distinct trust root — a platform fact, not a configuration choice.
  • It is not published yet. The applicationId and the hosting domain are decided (org.redoubtbrowser, redoubtbrowser.org — IDENTITY.md, 2026-08-23), the build does ship under that applicationId, and the domain is registered but serves nothing. What is missing is a release-signed artefact, a download page and a closed beta (BETA.md). Nothing here should be read as an available download.

The full measured matrix, including the rows still pending on a live device, is in docs/android/PARITY.md.

Relationship to Mozilla / Firefox

Redoubt is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a product of Mozilla. It builds on Mozilla's Firefox (Gecko) source, and no Mozilla trademarks appear in its user-facing branding. The same MPL-2.0 / section-3.4 reasoning that keeps this project out of the LibreWolf name also keeps it out of the Firefox name.

Status

Not published. The org.redoubtbrowser applicationId and the redoubtbrowser.org domain were decided on 2026-08-23 (both one-way) and the build carries the applicationId — an earlier revision of this paragraph still called them open placeholders and said the build shipped as org.mozilla, and both had stopped being true. What remains before any public build: a release-signed artefact with a second key holder (SIGNING.md), the closed beta's entry and exit criteria met (BETA.md), and the final public wording above approved by the owner — still unsigned in PARITY.md §5. Until then this page describes intent and measurement, not a product on a shelf.