7 ms·

In a few weeks most of the developers on the Servo team will get another job. The project could be picked up by other people later but only with a significant l

by lykahb 6y ago

In a few weeks most of the developers on the Servo team will get another job. The project could be picked up by other people later but only with a significant loss of knowledge and momentum. Now is the critical time for a another company to step in. Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google. This could be a chance for them to get a competitive independent browser again.

anaganisk 6y ago
Didn't they just revamp Edge with Chromium? Why would they want to revamp it again with an engine that barely has a market share.
- haakon 6y ago
  Servo is a research project. Microsoft spends a ton on research.
  - NegativeLatency 6y ago
    Would they spend it on a project that was written in Rust rather than one of their own languages though?
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      Microsoft is already supporting the Rust project, so, yes, I would not expect that to be a disqualifying reason.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Are any of their langauges a good fit for something like Servo? I haven't used C# a huge amount but everytime I do I find myself being more productive than writing C++ but ultimately slightly worried about performance and correctness (the biggest thing that stood out is the absolutely awful immutability in C#)
      - oaiey 6y ago
        Latest C# versions added a lot of language and library features allowing efficient writing of high performance code. And if you want to go a step further, unity has shown how (burst compiler)
      - domenicd 6y ago
        They had a project called "Midori" which was a new operating system (I believe including browser?) written in a C# derivative. The blog posts on it are fascinating stuff, diving into some greenfield decisions for both language design and OS design. http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ It's interesting to compare what we know of "Midori C#" to Rust.
        steveklabnik 6y ago
        Joe spoke on this topic at RustConf a few years back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k
    - ponker 6y ago
      Sure. Microsoft is a pretty unpredictable company these days. They are supporting all kinds of weird and wonderful things. I’m sure there is some ruthless business reason behind all of it but I don’t care if it helps the projects.
- monoideism 6y ago
  "competitive independent browser again" The point would be the technology and independence from Google, not the market share.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Sure. At the same time, is it really smart for them to just completely abandon the idea of independence? There's a lot that a browser can do for a company. Google has built GSuite and ChromeOS around Chrome - the integration with the browser is absurd and right up Microsoft's alley. Microsoft could build Azure Active Directory, O365, Windows, etc, around a next gen browser and I think they'd be smart to do so.
  - treis 6y ago
    > Sure. At the same time, is it really smart for them to just completely abandon the idea of independence? It is. Chrome is so dominant at this point they're the de facto web standard. Other browsers have to put in significant effort just to play catch up and can't really offer any new renderer/js feature without Chrome's blessing. Plus, we have a decade's worth of evidence that Chromium is just flat out better than the competition. Even if we set aside the problems with market share the Chromium team has consistently put out a faster engine than Firefox or IE. Adopting Chromium allows you to (mostly) avoid putting effort into the rendering engine allowing you to focus on other features to differentiate yourself.
    - staticassertion 6y ago
      > Other browsers have to put in significant effort just to play catch up and can't really offer any new renderer/js feature without Chrome's blessing. Microsoft still runs the dominant operating system! They have a huge opportunity here to complete. The same way Chrome advertises on Google.com, Microsoft can provide the default fucking browser that is HUGE. > Plus, we have a decade's worth of evidence that Chromium Chrome is 12 years old. It's been super popular for less than a decade. Its multiprocess architecture, by far its most long term scalable feature, was behind Internet Explorer's (they started multiproc trend with, iirc, IE8). > Even if we set aside the problems with market share the Chromium team has consistently put out a faster engine than Firefox or IE. Acquire Servo, do better? That's my entire point.
      - solarkraft 6y ago
justapassenger 6y ago
> Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google Why? They’re more supportive of open source than they were in 2001, yes. But Google and Facebook are also big in this area. And MS business still relays a lot on vendor lock in to a great extent
- derefr 6y ago
  Google and Facebook both have incentives to turn "browsing the web generally" into "interacting with their properties specifically", so that they can capture your eyeballs. They both continually extend into areas that seek to replace large swathes of the web with interactions within their walled gardens, so that they can then monetize those interactions. (Amazon has this incentive too, but they're just kind of incompetent at the execution, so people don't worry as much about them. See: the Kindle Fire tablet.) Meanwhile, Microsoft doesn't currently own any property that operates by trying to replace "eyeballs on the web generally" with "eyeballs on that property specifically" to then sell those eyeballs to advertisers. They have Bing, Cortana, GitHub, Skype, maybe TikTok soon. None of those things will really change that stance. They're not "against" the web. Apple is in the middle on this spectrum. Apple doesn't make money off web eyeballs, but they do make money off native app eyeballs (iAds), and also off native-app sales generally. So they're motivated-enough in providing a decent web experience to be the main sponsors of the WebKit FOSS project; but they're also motivated to create APIs that allow their third-party devs to replace web experiences with native app experiences.
  - WoodenChair 6y ago
    > Apple doesn't make money off web eyeballs, but they do make money off native app eyeballs (iAds) Apple shutdown iAd in 2016 https://developer.apple.com/support/iad/ https://developer.apple.com/support/iad/
untog 6y ago
MS just decided to give up their independent browser. I really don't think they're about to turn around and do it again.
- BLanen 6y ago
  And Microsoft getting much influence in the Chromium project is unlikely. Of course google could be forced to by governments' actions.
  - sroussey 6y ago
    Microsoft could fork blink just like Google forked Apples WebKit which was forked from KHTML. Likely in < 5yrs.
    - hinkley 6y ago
      Has Apple done something that makes forking WebKit (today) no longer a viable option?
    - gsnedders 6y ago
      When Google forked WebKit, while Google was landing more commits in WebKit than Apple, it wasn't an overwhelmingly huge gulf. Today, in Chromium, Microsoft are a very small percentage of commits. Google still accounts for over 90%. If Microsoft wanted to fork Chromium, they'd need to vastly increase their investment if they wanted to keep up with Chromium.
      - sroussey 6y ago
        Thus the 5yr remark.
- bradstewart 6y ago
  Put it under Microsoft Research for a while. Hedging your bets on something like this doesn't seem like a horrible idea.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Microft should have rebranded firefox as IE. They already should 0 vision or threw in the towel. Don't look at theme for help.
craigsmansion 6y ago
> Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google. That would be precious: Microsoft taking Mozilla browser developers onboard, creating a browser, shipping it by default bundled with their OS, and being able to claim it's to prevent monopolies. It would also be nice for those highly skilled developers who actually believed in the open web to be able to give the middle finger to those in middle and upper management for whom Mozilla is merely a stepping stone to some cozier job at a proprietary software house whilst running Mozilla into the ground.
- sergiomattei 6y ago
  I mean, didn't they already try building their own browser engine (EdgeHTML/Chakra) and failed? I don't see Microsoft ever adopting a strategy like this. It'd be nice, but given the disaster that Edge turned out to be — it's highly unlikely.
  - Const-me 6y ago
    I've used it for years before Windows Update pushed the new Chromium-based one. It worked well for me, was faster and consumed less memory than the new one. The only problem with EdgeHTML was google abusing their monopoly, read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824
    - garmaine 6y ago
      FYI you can revert to the old EdgeHTML-based browser, with a one-liner in an admin console.
      - Const-me 6y ago
        I’ve already upgraded to 32GB RAM, migrated bookmarks, found new extensions. But thanks, will do on a laptop where I have less stuff to migrate, slower CPU with less memory, and sometimes care about power consumption. To anyone interested, here’s the manual: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-sysupdate-access-old-edge https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-s...
chrisseaton 6y ago
> In a few weeks most of the developers on the Servo team will get another job. There's a pandemic, probably a global recession, massive tech layoffs everywhere, and tech interviewing is an absolute nightmare no matter how good you are. I'm not sure I'd be as confident unfortunately.
- bpicolo 6y ago
  The hiring market for more senior roles seems fairly healthy, buts seems like more junior roles are tougher. The industry started the year with fairly more jobs than heads to fill them.
zelly 6y ago
As experienced developers they will find new jobs somehow. But it won't be to work on Servo. > Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google. Microsoft gave up on browsers a long time ago. If someone would want to use Servo outside of a hobby project, it would be Google to integrate it into Chrome. The chances of that happening is almost zero.

by lykahb 6y ago

anaganisk 6y ago

Didn't they just revamp Edge with Chromium? Why would they want to revamp it again with an engine that barely has a market share.

haakon 6y ago
Servo is a research project. Microsoft spends a ton on research.
- NegativeLatency 6y ago
  Would they spend it on a project that was written in Rust rather than one of their own languages though?
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Microsoft is already supporting the Rust project, so, yes, I would not expect that to be a disqualifying reason.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Are any of their langauges a good fit for something like Servo? I haven't used C# a huge amount but everytime I do I find myself being more productive than writing C++ but ultimately slightly worried about performance and correctness (the biggest thing that stood out is the absolutely awful immutability in C#)
    - oaiey 6y ago
      Latest C# versions added a lot of language and library features allowing efficient writing of high performance code. And if you want to go a step further, unity has shown how (burst compiler)
    - domenicd 6y ago
      They had a project called "Midori" which was a new operating system (I believe including browser?) written in a C# derivative. The blog posts on it are fascinating stuff, diving into some greenfield decisions for both language design and OS design. http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ It's interesting to compare what we know of "Midori C#" to Rust.
      - steveklabnik 6y ago
        Joe spoke on this topic at RustConf a few years back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k
  - ponker 6y ago
    Sure. Microsoft is a pretty unpredictable company these days. They are supporting all kinds of weird and wonderful things. I’m sure there is some ruthless business reason behind all of it but I don’t care if it helps the projects.
monoideism 6y ago
"competitive independent browser again" The point would be the technology and independence from Google, not the market share.
staticassertion 6y ago
Sure. At the same time, is it really smart for them to just completely abandon the idea of independence? There's a lot that a browser can do for a company. Google has built GSuite and ChromeOS around Chrome - the integration with the browser is absurd and right up Microsoft's alley. Microsoft could build Azure Active Directory, O365, Windows, etc, around a next gen browser and I think they'd be smart to do so.
- treis 6y ago
  > Sure. At the same time, is it really smart for them to just completely abandon the idea of independence? It is. Chrome is so dominant at this point they're the de facto web standard. Other browsers have to put in significant effort just to play catch up and can't really offer any new renderer/js feature without Chrome's blessing. Plus, we have a decade's worth of evidence that Chromium is just flat out better than the competition. Even if we set aside the problems with market share the Chromium team has consistently put out a faster engine than Firefox or IE. Adopting Chromium allows you to (mostly) avoid putting effort into the rendering engine allowing you to focus on other features to differentiate yourself.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    > Other browsers have to put in significant effort just to play catch up and can't really offer any new renderer/js feature without Chrome's blessing. Microsoft still runs the dominant operating system! They have a huge opportunity here to complete. The same way Chrome advertises on Google.com, Microsoft can provide the default fucking browser that is HUGE. > Plus, we have a decade's worth of evidence that Chromium Chrome is 12 years old. It's been super popular for less than a decade. Its multiprocess architecture, by far its most long term scalable feature, was behind Internet Explorer's (they started multiproc trend with, iirc, IE8). > Even if we set aside the problems with market share the Chromium team has consistently put out a faster engine than Firefox or IE. Acquire Servo, do better? That's my entire point.
    - solarkraft 6y ago

justapassenger 6y ago

> Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google Why? They’re more supportive of open source than they were in 2001, yes. But Google and Facebook are also big in this area. And MS business still relays a lot on vendor lock in to a great extent

derefr 6y ago
Google and Facebook both have incentives to turn "browsing the web generally" into "interacting with their properties specifically", so that they can capture your eyeballs. They both continually extend into areas that seek to replace large swathes of the web with interactions within their walled gardens, so that they can then monetize those interactions. (Amazon has this incentive too, but they're just kind of incompetent at the execution, so people don't worry as much about them. See: the Kindle Fire tablet.) Meanwhile, Microsoft doesn't currently own any property that operates by trying to replace "eyeballs on the web generally" with "eyeballs on that property specifically" to then sell those eyeballs to advertisers. They have Bing, Cortana, GitHub, Skype, maybe TikTok soon. None of those things will really change that stance. They're not "against" the web. Apple is in the middle on this spectrum. Apple doesn't make money off web eyeballs, but they do make money off native app eyeballs (iAds), and also off native-app sales generally. So they're motivated-enough in providing a decent web experience to be the main sponsors of the WebKit FOSS project; but they're also motivated to create APIs that allow their third-party devs to replace web experiences with native app experiences.
- WoodenChair 6y ago
  > Apple doesn't make money off web eyeballs, but they do make money off native app eyeballs (iAds) Apple shutdown iAd in 2016 https://developer.apple.com/support/iad/ https://developer.apple.com/support/iad/

untog 6y ago

MS just decided to give up their independent browser. I really don't think they're about to turn around and do it again.

BLanen 6y ago
And Microsoft getting much influence in the Chromium project is unlikely. Of course google could be forced to by governments' actions.
- sroussey 6y ago
  Microsoft could fork blink just like Google forked Apples WebKit which was forked from KHTML. Likely in < 5yrs.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Has Apple done something that makes forking WebKit (today) no longer a viable option?
  - gsnedders 6y ago
    When Google forked WebKit, while Google was landing more commits in WebKit than Apple, it wasn't an overwhelmingly huge gulf. Today, in Chromium, Microsoft are a very small percentage of commits. Google still accounts for over 90%. If Microsoft wanted to fork Chromium, they'd need to vastly increase their investment if they wanted to keep up with Chromium.
    - sroussey 6y ago
      Thus the 5yr remark.
bradstewart 6y ago
Put it under Microsoft Research for a while. Hedging your bets on something like this doesn't seem like a horrible idea.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Microft should have rebranded firefox as IE. They already should 0 vision or threw in the towel. Don't look at theme for help.

craigsmansion 6y ago

> Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google. That would be precious: Microsoft taking Mozilla browser developers onboard, creating a browser, shipping it by default bundled with their OS, and being able to claim it's to prevent monopolies. It would also be nice for those highly skilled developers who actually believed in the open web to be able to give the middle finger to those in middle and upper management for whom Mozilla is merely a stepping stone to some cozier job at a proprietary software house whilst running Mozilla into the ground.

sergiomattei 6y ago
I mean, didn't they already try building their own browser engine (EdgeHTML/Chakra) and failed? I don't see Microsoft ever adopting a strategy like this. It'd be nice, but given the disaster that Edge turned out to be — it's highly unlikely.
- Const-me 6y ago
  I've used it for years before Windows Update pushed the new Chromium-based one. It worked well for me, was faster and consumed less memory than the new one. The only problem with EdgeHTML was google abusing their monopoly, read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824
  - garmaine 6y ago
    FYI you can revert to the old EdgeHTML-based browser, with a one-liner in an admin console.
    - Const-me 6y ago
      I’ve already upgraded to 32GB RAM, migrated bookmarks, found new extensions. But thanks, will do on a laptop where I have less stuff to migrate, slower CPU with less memory, and sometimes care about power consumption. To anyone interested, here’s the manual: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-sysupdate-access-old-edge https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-s...

chrisseaton 6y ago

> In a few weeks most of the developers on the Servo team will get another job. There's a pandemic, probably a global recession, massive tech layoffs everywhere, and tech interviewing is an absolute nightmare no matter how good you are. I'm not sure I'd be as confident unfortunately.

bpicolo 6y ago
The hiring market for more senior roles seems fairly healthy, buts seems like more junior roles are tougher. The industry started the year with fairly more jobs than heads to fill them.

zelly 6y ago

As experienced developers they will find new jobs somehow. But it won't be to work on Servo. > Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google. Microsoft gave up on browsers a long time ago. If someone would want to use Servo outside of a hobby project, it would be Google to integrate it into Chrome. The chances of that happening is almost zero.