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>and Management division may force in future to ditch Gecko and adopt Webkit/Blink in the hope that it could bring more userbase (just my thought) to lessen mai

>and Management division may force in future to ditch Gecko and adopt Webkit/Blink in the hope that it could bring more userbase (just my thought) to lessen maintainance and focus on revenue. They laid off most people working on Servo, so the adoption of WebKit/Blink seems rather likely.

orclev 6y ago
I certainly hope it doesn't come to that. Servo was really starting to show serious improvements in both memory usage and speed relative to Gecko and Webkit. It would be a shame to see Firefox devolve into just another rebranded Webkit browser, particularly since everyone loses when things devolve to a monoculture.
jdashg 6y ago
Servo was never actually the heir-apparent to Gecko.
- kevincox 6y ago
  Never officially. But I think once they started to migrate components into Firefox it seemed obvious that the experiment was a "success" and that it was on the path to replacing gecko (starting piece by piece and maybe eventually making a switchover).
  - dblohm7 6y ago
    Mozilla developer here. The Gecko team was mostly spared from the layoffs. There is no intention to cease Gecko development.
    - fabrice_d 6y ago
      I really hope this is true, but there as been absolutely zero clear communication from Mozilla VP and above managers about being committed to Gecko. Why is Firefox CTO not writing a blog post about that?
- nanagojo 6y ago
  You sure? https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung-collaborate-on-next-generation-web-browser-engine/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung... > Servo is an attempt to rebuild the Web browser from the ground up on modern hardware, rethinking old assumptions along the way.
  - dralley 6y ago
    1) That was written in 2013 2) It was an attempt to rebuild a browser engine up from the ground up on modern hardware - and large parts of that work landed in Firefox. I've tracked their progress for quite some time. There was never a concrete plan to replace the DOM handling components of Gecko with the DOM handling components of Servo.
    - btrask 6y ago
      It was written in 2013... when Servo was announced. Servo was originally intended to replace Gecko. Anything else is a retcon. Saying "large parts of that work landed in Firefox" is misleading. A browser engine is a huge thing, and most of Servo is not in Firefox. If you just want to replace a few parts, creating an entirely new engine from scratch is far from the most efficient way. Why does this matter? Well, because decisions have consequences. Way back in 2013, they were feeling pressure from Chrome, and decided the best way to compete was to rewrite the browser engine (in a brand new language to boot). The original engine stagnated, and here we are 7 years later. What a colossal failure.
      - dralley 6y ago
        > It was written in 2013... when Servo was announced. Servo was originally intended to replace Gecko. Anything else is a retcon. Here is a quote from the Servo wiki from 2014, which is the earliest snapshot present in the WaybackMachine archives. >Servo is explicitly not aiming to create a full Web browser (except for demonstration and experimentation purposes). Rather it is focused on creating a solid, embeddable engine. Although Servo is a research project, it is designed to be "productizable"—the code that we write should be of high enough quality that it could eventually be shipped to users. https://web.archive.org/web/20140718030420/https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Design https://web.archive.org/web/20140718030420/https://github.co... The words "Firefox" or "Gecko" do not appear a single time in the blog post you cited originally. This is because there were no plans to replace Gecko with Servo at that point in time. They did plan for that possibility, and it was probably a minor goal, but the primary goal was research, as they stated in both the blog post and the wiki entry. They were hoping that they could replace parts of Gecko, I'm sure, but it was never a given.
fanatic2pope 6y ago
If they switched to webkit there'd be no more reason to use it over degoogled chromium.
- chaosharmonic 6y ago
  I mean, a WebKit-based Firefox would at least be a distinct engine, and a cross-platform one at that. (WebKit isn't very well-represented on Windows in particular.) Contrast a Blink-based FF, which would basically just be Brave.
- xnyan 6y ago
  Unless there are very significant differences that are noticeable to mass user base, the engine is not a relevant factor in browser market share. When chrome came charging in, Microsoft had let IE fall so far behind that even to my 74-year-old opa, chrome was noticeably better. People largely don't choose firefox over non-degoogled chrome today. All browsers on iOS are reskinned safari with different accounts for synced bookmarks and tabs, and yet people choose to use different iOS browsers for various reasons, the browser's engine not among them. It pains me to think about, but from a realpolitik perspective it makes zero sense for Mozilla not to slap an orange fox on chromium and call it a day,
  - thayne 6y ago
    For me, and everyone I know personally that uses Firefox, the primary motivation for using Firefox is because it uses a non webkit/blink engine, and we want browser diversity. If that goes away we there is a lot less reason for us to stick with Firefox. Although I suopose there is still manifest v3... I fear that if Firefox switched to webkit or blink, they might lose a significant number of existing users without a clear way to win back more.
nl 6y ago
I wonder what the future is for Rust?
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/08/18/laying-the-foundation-for-rusts-future.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/08/18/laying-the-foundation-...
nanagojo 6y ago
The writing is on the wall at this stage. The current Mozilla have no will to keep maintaining Gecko, which in their eyes is seen as burning money which could be spent on "Product".

orclev 6y ago

I certainly hope it doesn't come to that. Servo was really starting to show serious improvements in both memory usage and speed relative to Gecko and Webkit. It would be a shame to see Firefox devolve into just another rebranded Webkit browser, particularly since everyone loses when things devolve to a monoculture.

jdashg 6y ago

Servo was never actually the heir-apparent to Gecko.

kevincox 6y ago
Never officially. But I think once they started to migrate components into Firefox it seemed obvious that the experiment was a "success" and that it was on the path to replacing gecko (starting piece by piece and maybe eventually making a switchover).
- dblohm7 6y ago
  Mozilla developer here. The Gecko team was mostly spared from the layoffs. There is no intention to cease Gecko development.
  - fabrice_d 6y ago
    I really hope this is true, but there as been absolutely zero clear communication from Mozilla VP and above managers about being committed to Gecko. Why is Firefox CTO not writing a blog post about that?
nanagojo 6y ago
You sure? https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung-collaborate-on-next-generation-web-browser-engine/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung... > Servo is an attempt to rebuild the Web browser from the ground up on modern hardware, rethinking old assumptions along the way.
- dralley 6y ago
  1) That was written in 2013 2) It was an attempt to rebuild a browser engine up from the ground up on modern hardware - and large parts of that work landed in Firefox. I've tracked their progress for quite some time. There was never a concrete plan to replace the DOM handling components of Gecko with the DOM handling components of Servo.
  - btrask 6y ago
    It was written in 2013... when Servo was announced. Servo was originally intended to replace Gecko. Anything else is a retcon. Saying "large parts of that work landed in Firefox" is misleading. A browser engine is a huge thing, and most of Servo is not in Firefox. If you just want to replace a few parts, creating an entirely new engine from scratch is far from the most efficient way. Why does this matter? Well, because decisions have consequences. Way back in 2013, they were feeling pressure from Chrome, and decided the best way to compete was to rewrite the browser engine (in a brand new language to boot). The original engine stagnated, and here we are 7 years later. What a colossal failure.
    - dralley 6y ago
      > It was written in 2013... when Servo was announced. Servo was originally intended to replace Gecko. Anything else is a retcon. Here is a quote from the Servo wiki from 2014, which is the earliest snapshot present in the WaybackMachine archives. >Servo is explicitly not aiming to create a full Web browser (except for demonstration and experimentation purposes). Rather it is focused on creating a solid, embeddable engine. Although Servo is a research project, it is designed to be "productizable"—the code that we write should be of high enough quality that it could eventually be shipped to users. https://web.archive.org/web/20140718030420/https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Design https://web.archive.org/web/20140718030420/https://github.co... The words "Firefox" or "Gecko" do not appear a single time in the blog post you cited originally. This is because there were no plans to replace Gecko with Servo at that point in time. They did plan for that possibility, and it was probably a minor goal, but the primary goal was research, as they stated in both the blog post and the wiki entry. They were hoping that they could replace parts of Gecko, I'm sure, but it was never a given.

fanatic2pope 6y ago

If they switched to webkit there'd be no more reason to use it over degoogled chromium.

chaosharmonic 6y ago
I mean, a WebKit-based Firefox would at least be a distinct engine, and a cross-platform one at that. (WebKit isn't very well-represented on Windows in particular.) Contrast a Blink-based FF, which would basically just be Brave.
xnyan 6y ago
Unless there are very significant differences that are noticeable to mass user base, the engine is not a relevant factor in browser market share. When chrome came charging in, Microsoft had let IE fall so far behind that even to my 74-year-old opa, chrome was noticeably better. People largely don't choose firefox over non-degoogled chrome today. All browsers on iOS are reskinned safari with different accounts for synced bookmarks and tabs, and yet people choose to use different iOS browsers for various reasons, the browser's engine not among them. It pains me to think about, but from a realpolitik perspective it makes zero sense for Mozilla not to slap an orange fox on chromium and call it a day,
- thayne 6y ago
  For me, and everyone I know personally that uses Firefox, the primary motivation for using Firefox is because it uses a non webkit/blink engine, and we want browser diversity. If that goes away we there is a lot less reason for us to stick with Firefox. Although I suopose there is still manifest v3... I fear that if Firefox switched to webkit or blink, they might lose a significant number of existing users without a clear way to win back more.

nl 6y ago

I wonder what the future is for Rust?

steveklabnik 6y ago
https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/08/18/laying-the-foundation-for-rusts-future.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/08/18/laying-the-foundation-...

nanagojo 6y ago

The writing is on the wall at this stage. The current Mozilla have no will to keep maintaining Gecko, which in their eyes is seen as burning money which could be spent on "Product".