3 ms·

It seems that Mozilla has a bit of NIH syndrome. (Edit for the downvote parade - people have been talking about NIH at Mozilla for years: http://www.linux-mag

by icey 17y ago

It seems that Mozilla has a bit of NIH syndrome. (Edit for the downvote parade - people have been talking about NIH at Mozilla for years: http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4144 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4144 http://diary.braniecki.net/2008/01/27/not-invented-here-syndrome-in-mozilla/ http://diary.braniecki.net/2008/01/27/not-invented-here-synd... http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-9595-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=38858&messageID=712838 http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-9595-0.html?forumID=1&thr... )

jrockway 17y ago
TraceMonkey was started before anyone had heard of V8. If you want working code to ship, you can't sit around hoping that Google will maybe be working on a super-fast open-source implementation of the code you want. But sometimes it does happen.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Are you perhaps being downvoted for claiming NIH syndrome in response to a post which is about them taking code from another project? And which also details that they've already bolted-on a JIT that was created by Adobe? (And the irony that you're wanting them to adopt a codebase that exists mainly because Apple didn't follow your anti-NIH advice and adopt Gecko has already been covered in other comments, though no-one seems to have mentioned that Google could have have just worked on Webkit's Squirrelfish/Nitro rather than write V8, which meant they had two competing projects internally until they switched fully in version 2.0 of Android last September)
- icey 17y ago
  I don't care what engine they use; it's largely irrelevant to me. I mentioned that Mozilla is known for having NIH syndrome in response to the parent's question as to why they would use their own JS engine instead of V8. jrockway's point about the timing of it is probably correct, but it doesn't change the fact that people have brought up Mozilla's NIH for years.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    When wanting to use your own engine instead of V8 ... it's not always NIH. They have developers on board familiar with the TraceMonkey codebase. They have developers from Adobe helping out with the Tamarin codebase. That's inside knowledge they would lose and it's debatable if on the long term V8 will deliver ... yes, right now it's the fastest, but is it the fastest approach? Outsourcing a vital component of a project to another open-source project that's younger and hasn't proven its long-term viability should certainly be taken with a lot of care. Personally I'm pretty happy with Firefox. The only thing bothering me is the single-process model, versus the one process per tab of Chrome, but I'm pretty sure they'll fix that pretty soon.
    - ewjordan 17y ago
      The only thing bothering me is the single-process model, versus the one process per tab of Chrome, but I'm pretty sure they'll fix that pretty soon. I really hope so. My average number of tabs open seems to be growing logarithmically over time (lately I've been weighing in at about 40, which is not even that many if you use Tree Style Tabs and put your tabs on the left), so I have a whole lot of tabs to reload every time I crash. And that happens quite a bit more often than it should, since I have so many tabs open. If and when Chrome gets a left-side tree tab extension that works on OS X (haven't checked lately, I should keep an eye out), I'll be switching over almost immediately, for this reason alone.

by icey 17y ago

jrockway 17y ago

TraceMonkey was started before anyone had heard of V8. If you want working code to ship, you can't sit around hoping that Google will maybe be working on a super-fast open-source implementation of the code you want. But sometimes it does happen.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

Are you perhaps being downvoted for claiming NIH syndrome in response to a post which is about them taking code from another project? And which also details that they've already bolted-on a JIT that was created by Adobe? (And the irony that you're wanting them to adopt a codebase that exists mainly because Apple didn't follow your anti-NIH advice and adopt Gecko has already been covered in other comments, though no-one seems to have mentioned that Google could have have just worked on Webkit's Squirrelfish/Nitro rather than write V8, which meant they had two competing projects internally until they switched fully in version 2.0 of Android last September)

icey 17y ago
I don't care what engine they use; it's largely irrelevant to me. I mentioned that Mozilla is known for having NIH syndrome in response to the parent's question as to why they would use their own JS engine instead of V8. jrockway's point about the timing of it is probably correct, but it doesn't change the fact that people have brought up Mozilla's NIH for years.
- bad_user 17y ago
  When wanting to use your own engine instead of V8 ... it's not always NIH. They have developers on board familiar with the TraceMonkey codebase. They have developers from Adobe helping out with the Tamarin codebase. That's inside knowledge they would lose and it's debatable if on the long term V8 will deliver ... yes, right now it's the fastest, but is it the fastest approach? Outsourcing a vital component of a project to another open-source project that's younger and hasn't proven its long-term viability should certainly be taken with a lot of care. Personally I'm pretty happy with Firefox. The only thing bothering me is the single-process model, versus the one process per tab of Chrome, but I'm pretty sure they'll fix that pretty soon.
  - ewjordan 17y ago
    The only thing bothering me is the single-process model, versus the one process per tab of Chrome, but I'm pretty sure they'll fix that pretty soon. I really hope so. My average number of tabs open seems to be growing logarithmically over time (lately I've been weighing in at about 40, which is not even that many if you use Tree Style Tabs and put your tabs on the left), so I have a whole lot of tabs to reload every time I crash. And that happens quite a bit more often than it should, since I have so many tabs open. If and when Chrome gets a left-side tree tab extension that works on OS X (haven't checked lately, I should keep an eye out), I'll be switching over almost immediately, for this reason alone.