5 ms·

It left a sour taste in my mouth that Microsoft joined Chrome instead of investing in FireFox and helping them advance their multi-process architecture quicker.

ams6110 8y ago
Microsoft is in the ad business now.
- cestith 8y ago
  Microsoft is largely in the PaaS business. Amazon is, too. It helps these companies to grow usage of outsourced hosting for third-party applications, much of which are web-based applications. They're often web-based not just at the user interface level but at the API and data handling levels. Web standards are actually good for business when you're charging all comers for processor hours at your data center.
no_wizard 8y ago
I wish someone from Mozilla or MS would comment on this, to be honest. Were they even considered? Historically, I've heard from various sources that Mozilla may not work at the same pace as some of the large corporations do in upstreaming patches and releases to the code base. This has (according to what I have heard, which may simply rest on rumor/speculation/heresey, mind you) kept a lot of large entities from getting on board. I've also heard that in building Quantum this is less of an issue, but their code base is a mess, and chromium's is incredibly well documented and clean by comparison. Anecdotally, I would be inclined to agree with my second statement up front, after just browsing the two, but please compare for yourself https://github.com/chromium/chromium https://github.com/chromium/chromium https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev
- snek 8y ago
  microsoft switched to chromium because they want better control/integration with electron apps and the windows store. firefox wasn't on the table for them.
  - no_wizard 8y ago
    I really don't think this is it, if I'm being completely frank, because they already have an enormous amount of up front work done with making Windows PWA friend: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa I also am willing to surmise that they are going to put in alot of work re-working all their APIs that are exposed as Edge based interfaces into whatever engine they and up with here (namely chromium), so I don't think it would have been beyond them to put in the work to do something like they did with node and chakra core: https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore (which, btw, for now isn't dead: https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 likely for the reasoning I mentioned above) I just don't buy it. I don't think easy electron compatibility is the main drive here.
    - snek 8y ago
      This was the reason I was given from a dev on the edge team. Do with that what you will.
skybrian 8y ago
This is kind of weird, because if there is anything Microsoft doesn't like, they can patch it and make it work differently. Just like Apple did with KHTML and Google did with Webkit. I don't really get why people judge source code by politics rather than "stealing" (forking) from the best.
- zaarn 8y ago
  Writing and maintaining a modern webbrowser isn't cheap or easy; exactly why MS switched to Chromium as an engine. Google is the main power behind all Chromium development and there have already been plenty of examples of the devs going "our way or the highway" with noone forking the browser engine. Upcoming is the new change to block adblockers from working properly in chrome. I see nobody willing to fork chromium over that.
fixermark 8y ago
Is there any bad blood left over from the days that Mozilla supported the antitrust suit against MS? You'd think a business would do whatever maximized value and ignore past negative interactions, but businesses are made of people.
verdverm 8y ago
Is having a Chromium "kernel" such a bad thing? We don't complain there isn't sufficient competition for the Linux "kernel" More eyes and hands on a single open source code base is better use of resources and leads to a better output.
- collinmanderson 8y ago
  I think the issue is that Google still has full control over the source. Maybe we just need to pull an io.js on chromium, though Microsoft would need to be on board.

ams6110 8y ago

Microsoft is in the ad business now.

cestith 8y ago
Microsoft is largely in the PaaS business. Amazon is, too. It helps these companies to grow usage of outsourced hosting for third-party applications, much of which are web-based applications. They're often web-based not just at the user interface level but at the API and data handling levels. Web standards are actually good for business when you're charging all comers for processor hours at your data center.

no_wizard 8y ago

I wish someone from Mozilla or MS would comment on this, to be honest. Were they even considered? Historically, I've heard from various sources that Mozilla may not work at the same pace as some of the large corporations do in upstreaming patches and releases to the code base. This has (according to what I have heard, which may simply rest on rumor/speculation/heresey, mind you) kept a lot of large entities from getting on board. I've also heard that in building Quantum this is less of an issue, but their code base is a mess, and chromium's is incredibly well documented and clean by comparison. Anecdotally, I would be inclined to agree with my second statement up front, after just browsing the two, but please compare for yourself https://github.com/chromium/chromium https://github.com/chromium/chromium https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev

snek 8y ago
microsoft switched to chromium because they want better control/integration with electron apps and the windows store. firefox wasn't on the table for them.
- no_wizard 8y ago
  I really don't think this is it, if I'm being completely frank, because they already have an enormous amount of up front work done with making Windows PWA friend: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa I also am willing to surmise that they are going to put in alot of work re-working all their APIs that are exposed as Edge based interfaces into whatever engine they and up with here (namely chromium), so I don't think it would have been beyond them to put in the work to do something like they did with node and chakra core: https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore (which, btw, for now isn't dead: https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 likely for the reasoning I mentioned above) I just don't buy it. I don't think easy electron compatibility is the main drive here.
  - snek 8y ago
    This was the reason I was given from a dev on the edge team. Do with that what you will.

skybrian 8y ago

This is kind of weird, because if there is anything Microsoft doesn't like, they can patch it and make it work differently. Just like Apple did with KHTML and Google did with Webkit. I don't really get why people judge source code by politics rather than "stealing" (forking) from the best.

zaarn 8y ago
Writing and maintaining a modern webbrowser isn't cheap or easy; exactly why MS switched to Chromium as an engine. Google is the main power behind all Chromium development and there have already been plenty of examples of the devs going "our way or the highway" with noone forking the browser engine. Upcoming is the new change to block adblockers from working properly in chrome. I see nobody willing to fork chromium over that.

fixermark 8y ago

Is there any bad blood left over from the days that Mozilla supported the antitrust suit against MS? You'd think a business would do whatever maximized value and ignore past negative interactions, but businesses are made of people.

verdverm 8y ago

Is having a Chromium "kernel" such a bad thing? We don't complain there isn't sufficient competition for the Linux "kernel" More eyes and hands on a single open source code base is better use of resources and leads to a better output.

collinmanderson 8y ago
I think the issue is that Google still has full control over the source. Maybe we just need to pull an io.js on chromium, though Microsoft would need to be on board.