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Shouldn't we consider it a giant, massive red flag that you need a corporation backing you to maintain one of the most critical pieces of web software? That's
by tfha 9y ago
Shouldn't we consider it a giant, massive red flag that you need a corporation backing you to maintain one of the most critical pieces of web software?
That's how we ended up in this mess. You can't compete in the web browser battles unless you have hundreds of full time engineers behind you. That's a failure of the web.
None of this new decentralized technology is going to mean anything if we haven't learned that lesson. If you want free, open systems, competition needs to be easy. We need to be able to respond to a abusive platforms by making our own, and that means we need to live in an ecosystem where making our own platforms is easy enough that you can have 10-20 viable options simultaneously supported.
Linux distros are a fantastic example of this. It's easy enough to create a viable linux distro that there are 5+ popular ones, and if you don't like those there are 10+ less popular ones which are perfectly viable and reasonable choices for an OS.
We need to take the web back in that direction.
- zeta0134 9y agoThis is such a lovely idea on paper, but how do you put that into practice? Is the problem the monolithic design of a web browser, which now is basically an operating system all its own? Is the solution to break that into its component parts, so that each part can be maintained by a smaller group, and composed together to produce the browser as a whole?
- stirner 9y agoThe problem is the complexity of all the specifications that make up the Web. These specifications are heavily influenced by whatever major browsers already are doing (i.e. influenced by a handful of huge tech companies). These companies have a vested interest in making it hard to make a new, competitive browser. I think the Web is unredeemable at this point; there is so much entrenched complexity, ugly hacks, centralization, and misuse of various technologies that it can never be undone. The only solution is to refuse to contribute to the Web at all, which is hardly an option for most of us here.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoThe solution is to fork, or start over. I like the latter idea.
- hossbeast 9y agoAre there any ongoing efforts in that regard? I guess IPFS, but even then, you're serving html.
- xj9 9y agoits slow going, but that's what i'm trying to do with heropunch[0]. our goal is to create a p2p application platform using a handful of libre technologies: secure scuttlebutt, ipfs, lxc, enlightenment foundation libraries, rust, and elixir. [1]: https://www.heropunch.io https://www.heropunch.io
- krapp 9y agoGreat. I support this. Go build your new web and leave those of us who believe the existing web, despite its faults, has value, be.
- abiox 9y agojust about anything people invest time into is going to have some sort of value, 'despite faults'. that doesn't really speak to the value of progress, reflecting on the status quo, or creating something fresh with lessons learned from the past. i don't really get the 'leave you be' bit.
- krapp 9y ago>i don't really get the 'leave you be' bit. Simple. More than a few people here seem to believe, as the grandparent comment suggests, that the web is a lost cause, or irredeemable, and all those people seem to want to do is to constantly complain about it. I'm simply suggesting that if people feel the web has nothing to offer them, that it would be more productive for them to kindly leave it for a network that better suits their needs. Otherwise, rather than wanting to "fork the web and start over" they could consider working to improve what we have.
- rjbwork 9y agoI think this idea has some merit to it, but I don't have any experience in building that kind of software. This is essentially how teams that build huge software systems work. Like for instance, operating systems like windows/linux. The various teams at Microsoft, or trusted comitters for Linux, organize their various modules, components, subsystems, etc. independently, and eventually compose them into a coherent functioning whole to ship the whole system.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoThe biggest difficulty is tying components together. There are a few methods: 1. Libraries linked by binaries. This is the usual method, but it generally demands modules share some things, which usually couples them too tightly to their implementation. 2. IPC (Inter-Process Communication) There are a few ways to accomplish this. Some are OS specific (named pipes), others are fairly generic (sockets). This requires modules to share a language, and has some overhead, but at least they aren't coupled. 3. Microkernel Essentially the best points of 1 and 2, but generally a design challenge itself. The biggest advantage to modular design is that you don't need to create all the modules before you get something useful.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoDesign and create the equivalent of a web browser in a modular fashion. Yes, that is a lofty goal. That does not make it unreasonable. > Is the solution to break that into its component parts, so that each part can be maintained by a smaller group, and composed together to produce the browser as a whole? Possibly, but currently, a "web" browser depends on its monolithic qualities. A web page is a DOM, defined by HTML, styled by CSS, and manipulated by JavaScript. I think it may be time to start designing something less inherently monolithic. One advantage to modularity is that we don't need to finish before we can use it.
- xj9 9y agowe are slowly working towards this goal[0], we try to team up with other projects and develop this stuff cooperatively. our focus is on the user and developer experience side of things. creating good comfy tools for developers and fighting for very high quality UX on the user side. [0]: https://heropunch.io https://heropunch.io
- snaky 9y agoThat's very nontrivial task, if feasible at all, considering current overcomplicated state of affairs in CSS, HTML, JS, graphical, font-rendering and networking fields of browser's interest. > Guys, there is a _reason_ why microkernels suck. This is an example of how things are _not_ "independent". The filesystems depend on the VM, and the VM depends on the filesystem. You can't just split them up as if they were two separate things (or rather: you _can_ split them up, but they still very much need to know about each other in very intimate ways). http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/user_space_filesystems.html http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/user_space_filesystems.html
- thomastjeffery 9y ago> That's very nontrivial task I imagine so. And?
- VarFarYonder 9y agoJames Mickens gave a great talk about how we could build a better browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI
- AlexCoventry 9y agoYou're right, this is great. Is the Atlantis source code available?
- VarFarYonder 9y agoI've looked for it previously and not found anything. I'm hoping that MS are working on it in secret, but seems unlikely.
- herogreen 9y agoAmazing talk, thanks!
- hinkley 9y agoFrom my observations, a brief stint interacting with standards bodies, and a lot strong opinions about API designs and specs: The problem starts with regulatory capture of standards and standards bodies. It is in the interests of large organizations to pack a standard with every bit of code they have created internally. It slows down the other members and it keeps small groups and independents out entirely. You could in many cases have a standard that five people sharing an apartment could implement. Or you could have one that only half a dozen groups could, which is just enough competition to make it sportsmanlike.
- bshanks 9y agoDo you have any ideas on how a standards body or its procedures could be structured to fight against this tendency?
- niftich 9y agoFor the most part, they can't, because a new standards body will spin up. The history of WHATWG [1] is illuminating; WHATWG being the community -- of largely browser-makers -- behind HTML5 and other specs that moved the web forward from 2004 to now; notwithstanding how you feel about W3C or WHATWG, it's impossible to deny that once a standards-setting group no longer meets the goals of its members, those same members are likely to go start something else. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG#History
- phkahler 9y agoOne problem with standards organizations is that they have a bunch of people whose job is to make new versions of the standard. Look at the evolution of openGL, the web, C++, Unicode (love hotel? Poop emoji?) and so on. Even ASCII evolved to 8bit and the got ansi escape codes, but it's stable now. C is fairly stable now but that's because all the new stuff is in C++ (much like HTML replaced ASCII).
- hinkley 9y agoWe’re pretty bad about frog boiling. When we amend a spec we think about how much more we added, not how big it’s gotten. It’s part of the disconnect between new and old employees. Everyone who has been there for three years learned the system one piece at a time. They don’t understand why the new people look at them like they’re crazy.
- sevensor 9y agoThere are two internets now -- the internet of documents and the internet of applications. For reading documents, including somewhat dynamic documents like HN, all I need is w3m. But for the internet of applications you need a thin client: a javascript VM and layout engine. I regard anything that runs javascript as inherently malicious, out to violate my privacy and drain my battery. Of these, shenanigans notwithstanding, Firefox is still the least bad of the bad actors. Like most of the community, I'm disgusted but not surprised by this stupid stunt.
- mrighele 9y agoI would in fact be happy if we could just have a simple VM and a low level rendering engine, let's say something like a WASM based VM (or even JS if we really have to), and WebGL or similar for rendering. Define a standard way to provide (or refuse) access to local and remote resources and leave all the rest (HTML, CSS, Web Workers, Audio Playback, Video Playback etc) as software running on the VM. This way you would not need a few GB of memory if you need only to display a wall of text and it would be easier both to share code between implementations and contribute software (as libraries ? plugins?) to the platform.
- yathern 9y agoBecause then every site would need to include a CSS + HTML rendering library to be executed in this VM - it would be like every site needing to include their JS framework of choice except much heavier.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoNo they wouldn't need to. They'd just have to advertise CSS + HTML, and the app browser would just use their internal CSS + HTML engine (possibly written in WASM for better sandboxing). There are probably a whole spectrum between those two extremes (all the code in the server, or all the code in the client).
- mrighele 9y agoI was thinking about something more like a "flash plugin": you may have to install once (or it might be bundled with the installer) and then "it just works". The main difference would be that it would be sandboxed and so limited on what it can do.
- bobajeff 9y agoThis isn't just a problem with Web standards. Think of how few complete implementations of C, C++, Python, Java there are. So yeah the web is complex but so are most popular runtimes.
- corndoge 9y agoThe difference is that the web was originally designed to show documents, not build applications. The failings of the web are entirely a result of turning the browser into a VM for Javascript applivations.
- bobajeff 9y agoI like the idea of having the web just being a static document format with hyperlinks and embeddable objects. No DOM just a tag for some narrowly defined supported formats (eg. .form, .game, .social, .store)
- mattgreenrocks 9y agoSize is not a requirement of a programming language: look at Lisp, Smalltalk, Lua, etc to see simple systems that can be fully comprehended and are quite powerful. If anything, the monstrosities produced by committees are less powerful and less beautiful. (That we put up with them says more about us.)
- chr1 9y agoThe comparison with linux distros isn't quite fair, as they are not full reimplementations of the same standard. They are are better compared with chromium based browsers, which are easy to create and of which there are many. What do you suggest to do to make competition easy? We could throw out most of features, but then the resulting standard won't be useful, and almost no one will use it.
- amelius 9y ago> Linux distros are a fantastic example of this. I'm still looking for a Linux distro that runs on my phone without hassles.
- gue5t 9y agoThis is because hardware manufacturers don't upstream drivers.
- CodeMage 9y agoOr, for that matter, one that I can use for gaming.
- MadcapJake 9y agoWhat are you talking about? I've been gaming exclusively on Linux distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, SteamOS and Solus) for the last few years and it's been great. Site/community gamingonlinux.com is a testament to Linux gaming being a viable platform.
- qplex 9y agoThe sad truth is that some great titles only run on Windows.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoIf no one writes game for any given platform, is it the platform's fault? Network effect don't explain everything, but they do explain a lot.
- ekianjo 9y agoThere is more than 3000 games on Linux on Steam right now. A lot of it is indie, but still thats a lot of games.
- ekianjo 9y agoi have used at least 4 different distros for gaming so I have no idea what your comment is supposed to be about.
- amelius 9y agoI think we should stop writing code, and start thinking about the future, and write draft specs for an open web, and build a platform to discuss those specs. Mozilla is great because they have good management, not just because they have great coders. The rest of us should take an example if this. This means that we should stop scratching our itches, and do some real thinking and have discussions before engaging in our next side project.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago> "start thinking about the future, and write draft specs for an open web..." There has been tons of attempts at this. Maybe we should start examining why these attempts have failed to succeed.
- sparkie 9y ago“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Fuller
- krapp 9y agoOne possible reason is that a truly open web would include things advocates for an open web don't want, such as advertising and commercial interests, or javascript.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoExcellent point. I fear many attempts at the open web failed because they were a little too anti-capitalist or FOSS-purist and ignored basic economic realities.
- ethagnawl 9y ago> they have good management In light of recent events, this would seem to be up for debate.
- a3_nm 9y ago> you need a corporation backing you to maintain one of the most critical pieces of web software My understanding is that Mozilla is supposed to be a nonprofit first and foremost: the Mozilla Foundation. The for-profit Mozilla Corporation is a subsidiary which is owned by the Foundation. I don't know whether this is still reflected in practice nowadays, but this is how it's supposed to be structured...
- scott_karana 9y agoLinux distros are a terrible example. Not only do they all rely on Torvalds and everyone else for the kernel (heavily funded by donations, companies, etc), but most Linux distributions are just cosmetic variations of the largest upstream distros. If Debian died tomorrow, Ubuntu is on life support.
- racer-v 9y ago> most Linux distributions are just cosmetic variations of the largest upstream distros. Plenty are not. I am impressed by how usable community-based (non-corporate) distros are (e.g. Gentoo, Arch). This is truly indigenous technology. > they all rely on Torvalds and everyone else for the kernel (heavily funded by donations, companies, etc) This is an interesting thought. I believe the Linux kernel would continue to be viable on a purely volunteer basis, without corporate subsidies; I can't prove it though.
- gregknicholson 9y agoWithout corporate subsidies, corporate subsidies would soon reappear. If it's useful enough, corporations will pay to continue having it.
- scott_karana 9y agoI suspect you're right, but it would certainly be a tectonic event, and could potentially affect Linux's competitiveness until equilibrium recovered. And you're right about "most" being wrong. "Many" would have been a better word, particularly if talking about the most popular. (Another non-upstream-reliant distro that I find fascinating is GoboLinux. Very against the grain/orthodoxy!)
- monob 9y agoKernels aren't any more important than compilers, xorg, user space utilities and so on. That Linux managed to get its name on the whole stack doesn't mean much. You might as well be complaining that linux distributions are vulnerable to power outages. If anything the major distributions are defined by their package managers, of which there is a large and healthy number - aptitude, dnf, pacman, protage, and a heap of weird and wonderful other ones with minuscule usage.
- nippoo 9y agoExcept all Linux distros rely on the Linux kernel and repackage a vast number of GNU utilities which are maintained by... hundreds and hundreds of engineers. If GNU/Linux were to die, so would all the distros, because it’s far too much work for any individual distro to maintain all that codebase. In much the same way, the intensive bit of maintenance work with Firefox is the rendering engine; there exist lots of “distros” (forks) of Firefox but they all rely on the same underlying codebase. It’s just not viable to have more than a small handful of rendering engines, much in the same way that there are only a very small handful of operating systems that can run on modern hardware.
- racer-v 9y ago> If GNU/Linux were to die But there is no such entity as GNU/Linux. It's hundreds and hundreds of independently working engineers who would all have to be hit by buses at the same time.
- kllrnohj 9y ago10 companies are responsible for 57% of the changes to Linux. This is better than the typical 1 company responsible for the majority of changes in a browser, but it's not remotely close to "hundreds and hundreds of independently working engineers". Volunteers only make up ~8% of the changes. What we don't have is any browser that's a multi-company project, though. WebKit used to almost be that, but then the blink fork happened. The closest currently would I suppose be Chromium as it's also backed by Opera.
- racer-v 9y agoI think we're in agreement that Linux is in a better state than the browser. To nit-pick at your argument, Linux development is driven by people who are interested in working on it; many of those are lucky enough to have employers who encourage them to use a company email address to submit changes, and part of their working hours. Nothing indicates they wouldn't still be contributing without the @intel.com attached to their name. Furthermore in the study you are referencing, the "8% volunteers" is larger than any company's contribution besides Intel and RedHat - even more if you add in the individual "consultants". https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/the-top-10-developers-and-companies-contributing-to-the-linux-kernel-in-2015-2016/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/the-top-10-developers-a...
- skybrian 9y agoSeems like we should expect that in a competitive market, production values will keep rising until it's no longer easy to compete? So the mystery isn't why browsers are so competitive, it's why other niches don't attract strong competitors.
- userbinator 9y agoThat's how we ended up in this mess. You can't compete in the web browser battles unless you have hundreds of full time engineers behind you. That's a failure of the web. I continue to find it ironic that Mozilla (and to a lesser extent, Google) have been pretty much continuously complaining about Microsoft/IE "holding back the Web", with a lot of people in agreement, when MS/IE's lack of support for the latest standards (not authored by them, naturally) is what keeps the former from having too much power over the Web as a whole. Imagine the company with huge browser marketshare rejecting all proposals to add new and more complex things to the standard, or refusing to implement them. If you want free, open systems, competition needs to be easy. By MS/IE "holding back the Web", it's actually making it easier for alternative browsers to compete, and I think that's a good thing. Consider that the non-mainstream alternatives like NetSurf and Dillo are probably at a similar level of Web standards support as IE6/7. Now that I think about it, I actually miss the Internet when the combination of XP and IE6 ruled --- certainly some sites tried to push the boundaries, but a lot of the rest remained "un-appified" and usable from other simple browsers too, with a bigger emphasis on content...
- feelin_googley 9y ago"Shouldn't we consider it a giant, massive red flag that you need a corporation backing you to maintain one of the most critical pieces of web software?" Yes. Interestingly Mozilla Foundation is not asking for donations. Mozilla Corporation is selling traffic to ad-supported search engines, and profiting handsomely. Instead they are asking for user cooperation in their experiments. Why not create a different breed of browser that does not expose users to advertising. Profit motive? Let users support it with donations. This should be the mission.
- rlanday 9y agoIt might interest you that most Linux development is, in fact, done by corporations, and not by broke-ass developers funded by donations.
- shrimp_emoji 9y ago>Shouldn't we consider it a giant, massive red flag that you need a corporation backing you to maintain one of the most critical pieces of web software? That's the price of doing business, isn't it? It's why communism doesn't pan out as well as capitalism. What's that a red flag against? The human animal? I agree--let's replace 'em with super AI instead or something, but, in the interim... >we need to live in an ecosystem where making our own platforms is easy enough that you can have 10-20 viable options simultaneously supported. Linux distros are a fantastic example of this. They are not. Pale Moon is about as "viable" against Firefox or Chrome as Ubuntu or Mint are "viable" against Windows or MacOS for the average user. (And one of those [the better, much more popular one] has a corporation backing it!)
- Endy 9y ago> Pale Moon is about as "viable" against Firefox or Chrome as Ubuntu or Mint are "viable" against Windows or MacOS for the average user. (And one of those [the better, much more popular one] has a corporation backing it!) Funny, I appreciate the Pale Moon community (I'm "officially" part of it since I use the browser) more than I appreciate or support anything to do with Mozilla for years now. I don't see it being non-viable, because there are plenty of people who are actively involved in providing a better browser with specific goals. And, there are plenty more people on top of that who act as concerned watchdogs to make sure the browser doesn't lose sight of those goals. That's what Mozilla lost. When the powerusers turned into an echo chamber, Mozilla lost the way. When the community openly approved of the offloading of plugins (the start of multi-process nonsense), the new interface, the move to WebExtensions... this is the fault of the people who kept saying, 'yes keep changing stop being Mozilla stop being Firefox be Chrome-2'.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rifung 9y ago> Linux distros are a fantastic example of this. It's easy enough to create a viable linux distro that there are 5+ popular ones, and if you don't like those there are 10+ less popular ones which are perfectly viable and reasonable choices for an OS. But isn't this the same as all the Chromium/Firefox forks? I mean I understand they aren't as popular as the major players but you could say the same about all the Linux distributions compared to Windows or OS X.