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Servo was never actually the heir-apparent to Gecko.

by jdashg 6y ago

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.
      - btrask 6y ago
        Thanks for taking the time to reply! In your quote, they didn't want to create a full browser, but they did want to create a full engine. And it was designed to be "productizable." I think it supports what I'm saying. Servo was the last big plan from Mozilla to turn things around. Since then, we've just gotten Pocket, random bundled add-ons, etc. It seems like they are mostly just content to slide into irrelevance. And I am very sad about that. I do honestly wish Servo had succeeded, although I thought it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to. Also, while I'm airing grievances, I think it's very likely that having a few big chunks of Firefox/Gecko be written in Rust is going to be a maintenance burden that will slow down development even more. Now that Mozilla has laid off the Rust and Servo people, what are they going to do?

Servo was never actually the heir-apparent to Gecko.

by jdashg 6y ago

Servo was never actually the heir-apparent to Gecko.

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.
    - btrask 6y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to reply! In your quote, they didn't want to create a full browser, but they did want to create a full engine. And it was designed to be "productizable." I think it supports what I'm saying. Servo was the last big plan from Mozilla to turn things around. Since then, we've just gotten Pocket, random bundled add-ons, etc. It seems like they are mostly just content to slide into irrelevance. And I am very sad about that. I do honestly wish Servo had succeeded, although I thought it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to. Also, while I'm airing grievances, I think it's very likely that having a few big chunks of Firefox/Gecko be written in Rust is going to be a maintenance burden that will slow down development even more. Now that Mozilla has laid off the Rust and Servo people, what are they going to do?