7 ms·

The servo team has been (either mostly or entirely, I’m not sure) laid off, so presumably the project is dead.

Kelteseth 6y ago
> project is dead That's quite a drastic statement. Maybe the devs find another company that sponsors the development of servo?
- winter_squirrel 6y ago
  How many other companies with the capital to fund such development have a need for a new browser engine and would be willing to fund a team of engineers to work on such an engine vs just using chromium?
  - jeswin 6y ago
    Samsung, LG, many Chinese TV and mobile phone manufacturers etc. Samsung was a contributor to the Servo project, but I'm not sure to what extent they were helping.
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      LG holds the remainder of the Palm WebOS assets, and has been doing decent things with them. So there's at least partially a history of them doing this kind of thing. Maybe there's a slight chance they might have an interest.
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        WebOS used WebKit last time I checked.
  - mrec 6y ago
    Microsoft might have done. Picking Chromium as the basis for their new Edge a couple of years ago, instead of Mozilla/Servo, was a disappointment at the time and I suspect will look even worse in future retrospectives. MS also seem to have a lot more interest in Rust than Google do.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      Yes, picking something that was useable 3 years ago to build a product released 2 years ago instead of an alternative that isn't close to being done NOW was surely a massive strategic miscalculation.
      - mrec 6y ago
        By "Mozilla/Servo" I meant "the Mozilla Firefox codebase along with Servo as its research testbed", not just Servo itself (which AFAIK was never intended to be a generally-shippable browser). Could have been clearer, yes.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  I guess anything is possible, but why would anyone other than Mozilla want to develop Servo?
  - DJHenk 6y ago
    I think any big company who does not like Google's dominance on the web would want to do that. The reason they all switch to a chromium engine is not that they don't care, it's because it was too hard/expensive to develop their own engine. If Servo has any potential in that sense, I don't see why a company like Microsoft would not want to contribute to that.
    - brianush1 6y ago
      Microsoft has made two working browser engines: Trident and EdgeHTML. They've killed both in favor of Chromium; I don't see how it would cost them less to develop Servo than to have kept working on EdgeHTML.
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        I said at the time that Microsoft should have stepped into to sponsor Firefox, and make a firefox-based IE. Surely between the two of them Chrome could get some better competition.
      - gsnedders 6y ago
        EdgeHTML was a fork of Trident, as much as they liked to trumpet it as a new chapter. A fair bit did change, but it was far from a new browser engine. (Much longer ago, they were also responsible for Tasman.)
    - lovelearning 6y ago
      I think MS thinks very differently. Some months ago, one of their PMs said: "It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really 'cared' about the web, they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than five percent?" [1] [1] : https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-give-up-on-firefox-and-go-with-chromium-too/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-g...
coldtea 6y ago
Mozilla should have ousted the executives, Cxx's and secretarial stuff -- not their sole chance of ever making their browser engine better... What's the deal anyway, is Mozzila a non profit for the development of the Firefox browser and an open FOSS web standards based web engine, or a sandbox for business types to play with and implement various BS ideas (ads, VPN, mobile OS, etc)?
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Mozilla Corporation, which develops Firefox, is a for-profit business. It just so happens that 100% of its shares are owned by the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    The sooner the profit corp dies off and eats humble pie then, the better. An actual community project should rise from this state of affairs, with tanginble, browser-oriented goals, not something dependent on Google's money... Here's the person who announced the firings... Nothing to do with development or FOSS, some laywer ex-Netscape employee: Winifred Mitchell Baker (born 1959) is the Executive Chairwoman and CEO of the Mozilla Foundation and of Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet applications, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Baker was trained as a lawyer. She coordinates business and policy issues and sits on both the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors and the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors. It's like the leeches that hang on to NGOs for a salaried office career, and don't do activism themselves... For all his faults, at least Brendan Eich was an actual developer, and with important contributions to the web and Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      > Nothing to do with development or FOSS Not exactly nothing to do with FOSS. She wrote the MPL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker Having said that, I do think these recent layoffs reflect badly on her if she is indeed responsible for them.

> project is dead That's quite a drastic statement. Maybe the devs find another company that sponsors the development of servo?

winter_squirrel 6y ago
How many other companies with the capital to fund such development have a need for a new browser engine and would be willing to fund a team of engineers to work on such an engine vs just using chromium?
- jeswin 6y ago
  Samsung, LG, many Chinese TV and mobile phone manufacturers etc. Samsung was a contributor to the Servo project, but I'm not sure to what extent they were helping.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    LG holds the remainder of the Palm WebOS assets, and has been doing decent things with them. So there's at least partially a history of them doing this kind of thing. Maybe there's a slight chance they might have an interest.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      WebOS used WebKit last time I checked.
- mrec 6y ago
  Microsoft might have done. Picking Chromium as the basis for their new Edge a couple of years ago, instead of Mozilla/Servo, was a disappointment at the time and I suspect will look even worse in future retrospectives. MS also seem to have a lot more interest in Rust than Google do.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    Yes, picking something that was useable 3 years ago to build a product released 2 years ago instead of an alternative that isn't close to being done NOW was surely a massive strategic miscalculation.
    - mrec 6y ago
      By "Mozilla/Servo" I meant "the Mozilla Firefox codebase along with Servo as its research testbed", not just Servo itself (which AFAIK was never intended to be a generally-shippable browser). Could have been clearer, yes.
umanwizard 6y ago
I guess anything is possible, but why would anyone other than Mozilla want to develop Servo?
- DJHenk 6y ago
  I think any big company who does not like Google's dominance on the web would want to do that. The reason they all switch to a chromium engine is not that they don't care, it's because it was too hard/expensive to develop their own engine. If Servo has any potential in that sense, I don't see why a company like Microsoft would not want to contribute to that.
  - brianush1 6y ago
    Microsoft has made two working browser engines: Trident and EdgeHTML. They've killed both in favor of Chromium; I don't see how it would cost them less to develop Servo than to have kept working on EdgeHTML.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      I said at the time that Microsoft should have stepped into to sponsor Firefox, and make a firefox-based IE. Surely between the two of them Chrome could get some better competition.
    - gsnedders 6y ago
      EdgeHTML was a fork of Trident, as much as they liked to trumpet it as a new chapter. A fair bit did change, but it was far from a new browser engine. (Much longer ago, they were also responsible for Tasman.)
  - lovelearning 6y ago
    I think MS thinks very differently. Some months ago, one of their PMs said: "It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really 'cared' about the web, they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than five percent?" [1] [1] : https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-give-up-on-firefox-and-go-with-chromium-too/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-g...

coldtea 6y ago

Mozilla should have ousted the executives, Cxx's and secretarial stuff -- not their sole chance of ever making their browser engine better... What's the deal anyway, is Mozzila a non profit for the development of the Firefox browser and an open FOSS web standards based web engine, or a sandbox for business types to play with and implement various BS ideas (ads, VPN, mobile OS, etc)?

umanwizard 6y ago
Mozilla Corporation, which develops Firefox, is a for-profit business. It just so happens that 100% of its shares are owned by the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit.
- coldtea 6y ago
  The sooner the profit corp dies off and eats humble pie then, the better. An actual community project should rise from this state of affairs, with tanginble, browser-oriented goals, not something dependent on Google's money... Here's the person who announced the firings... Nothing to do with development or FOSS, some laywer ex-Netscape employee: Winifred Mitchell Baker (born 1959) is the Executive Chairwoman and CEO of the Mozilla Foundation and of Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet applications, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Baker was trained as a lawyer. She coordinates business and policy issues and sits on both the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors and the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors. It's like the leeches that hang on to NGOs for a salaried office career, and don't do activism themselves... For all his faults, at least Brendan Eich was an actual developer, and with important contributions to the web and Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    > Nothing to do with development or FOSS Not exactly nothing to do with FOSS. She wrote the MPL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker Having said that, I do think these recent layoffs reflect badly on her if she is indeed responsible for them.