6 ms·

This article is patently ridiculous. As if the article's central claim was not dubious enough, it opens with this: > "Linus Torvalds is perhaps best known as t

by ajxs 6y ago

This article is patently ridiculous. As if the article's central claim was not dubious enough, it opens with this: > "Linus Torvalds is perhaps best known as the creator of Linux, but he has arguably had a bigger impact as the inventor of Git" I had to check that this wasn't an April fool's day post. Linux powers a large proportion of servers on the internet, and has done so for a long time now. The popularity of Git is a relatively recent phenomenon. > "Mozilla has seen better days. There was a time when it was indispensable to web freedom." It's more indispensable to web freedom now than it has ever been. > "there was real concern about the web's future with its primary gateway owned by one big, proprietary company" I guess they've never heard of Google Chrome? A browser run by a company that's far scarier than Microsoft ever was in that period. The implications of a Google Chrome monopoly in the browser market on user freedom and privacy far outweigh the moral implications of Internet Explorer's monopoly. Not to mention the implications for web standards. Microsoft uses Blink in their Edge browser. If Mozilla were to concede in this area, Google would become the de-facto owner of web standards.

xiphias2 6y ago
Internet Explorer wasn't just morally wrong. It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support. Web developers had to choose if they want to support the broken IE6 or the much more logical and easier to develop for web standards. It was a painful long time for web devs with lots of lost developer productivity until Firefox and Chrome came to the rescue. The amount of money MS lost for not continuing IE development is staggering though.
- taeric 6y ago
  This is somewhat disingenuous. IE was trying to strong arm web standards in much the way that chrome does today. Just back then, few folks would have it from ms. That said, div, span, xmlhttprequest... All of those came from ie, if I am not mistaken. Now, I confess I have grown to not like divs and spans. That said, I am very amenable to "border-box", which is kind of hilarious in historical context. I also remember IE actually supported fieldset and legend in sane ways well before netscape. Which was very annoying. Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. The Netscape team was faltering. Only reason folks didn't like the IE team is the rest of MS was acting in very bad faith with clear embrace and extinguish as a goal for the browser market. Which ultimately left Opera as the biggest loser who otherwise had an amazing product.
  - saurik 6y ago
    A long time ago I wrote an extensive comment--with tons of documented references--here showing how broken everyone has the story of IE: Microsoft was in fact the savior that came to save us from the world of Netscape... Mozilla was great, and had to save us from the new world of post-antitrust Microsoft (which now had a dominant platform they were too afraid to maintain); but Netscape was just as much of a bully as anyone else :(, and so the W3C was pumped about MS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 (edit:) I just remembered that many years later I gave a talk that contained a follow-up to some of the thoughts about Microsoft (it is a big part of the talk, but not the beginning or the end). https://vimeo.com/310654342 https://vimeo.com/310654342 (edit again:) OMG people seem to be enjoying this comment, but I stupidly linked to the wrong old comment up there (and even that link is weird: the best part of that thread is a few parents up from that link)... and it is so sad as the actual comment was one I was so proud of... here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113
  - wyqydsyq 6y ago
    > Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. Yes for a while there they were doing a great job of implementing Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish philosophy by intentionally avoiding web standards conformance and instead focusing on proprietary features (ActiveX plugins etc) in attempt to make IE "better" than the competition
    - taeric 6y ago
      This is actually compatible with what I was saying. The ie team was building a decent product. If it was being sold, it would have been a healthy competitor in the field. Instead, the company pushed it for free to basically burn the market.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  "It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support." Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic in order to prodcuce Internet Explorer. What were the "standards" at the time Mosaic was released. What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Perhaps I am wrong but I sometimes think there would be no Chrome without that help from former Mozilla employees.
  - cxr 6y ago
    There are some really insidious errors in this comment. It's close enough to the truth that it runs the risk of being taken at face value, despite the errors. > Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic Not quite. They used Spyglass Mosaic, which shared only the name. Spyglass Mosaic was a from-scratch implementation. https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html > What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Not quite. Early Firefox development resembled Linux: multiple industry actors collaborating on a single codebase—pretty unlike the way it works today, where a single (bumbling) corporation is almost totally responsible for marketing, product direction, and development. Google was one of the biggest contributors to Firefox development. The Firefox lead was a Google employee being paid to do just that. When Google decided to do Chrome, they pulled their engineers off Firefox, with parallels to what later happened with the WebKit -> Blink fork: an initial cooperative effort, followed by their chafing at the overheads of collaboration and the lack of total control, followed by breaking away to do their own thing. If there was any amount of poaching/brain drain that should be mentioned but no one really talks about, it's how many ex-Mozilla Corp folks left for Facebook and is partially responsible for the engineering culture there.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
      Spyglass, Inc. licensed Mosaic from NCSA. Microsft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass. Microsoft did make some modifications to Spyglass's "from-scratch" implementation in order to produce Internet Explorer. Sounds like Mozillians are not so concerned about user privacy if they went to work at Facebook.
jhvkjhk 6y ago
> Linux powers a large proportion of servers on the internet, and has done so for a long time now. The popularity of Git is a relatively recent phenomenon. Isn’t Linux become popular in recent years too? At first they use Unix to run servers, you can even encounter some sites running Unix nowadays. I kind of agree with the saying “Linus has a bigger impact as the inventor of Git”, because we can use git for Windows/Mac OS/BSD software, while Linux can only run Linux Apps.
- scaladev 6y ago
  It's just silly. Get outside your desktop bubble. Linux powers literally billions of smartphones, a similar amount of embedded devices, millions of servers in large datacenters, etc etc. git is one VCS among many, even if it is the most popular and the best in many respects. It's one of the many tools used by pretty much a single profession. To me it's a bit like saying that a circular saw has had more impact on the world than Linux.
- croes 6y ago
  How many people use Android smartphones and how many use git? Seems more like a reflection of the author's bubble.
  - jhvkjhk 6y ago
    I see, I forgot Android when I'm defending for git.
- est31 6y ago
  Btw through Wine, Linux can also run Windows apps.
wyqydsyq 6y ago
> I had to check that this wasn't an April fool's day post. Linux powers a large proportion of servers on the internet, and has done so for a long time now. The popularity of Git is a relatively recent phenomenon. Linux might be used for the majority of web servers, sure, however Git is used for version controlling the significant majority of software produced today. I would argue something that is used by nearly every software development team/company across the entire planet has a much greater impact than something that is used by nearly every server across the planet. Linux also sees more heavy competition from the likes of Windows and *BSD, where git has essentially dominated it's market with things like CVS, SVN and Mercurial becoming increasingly abandoned, and only niche proprietary systems like Perforce still competing for usage
- viraptor 6y ago
  It's got a big impact, but mercurial was released pretty much the same month as git. Git got more popular, likely helped by Linus already being known. If we didn't get git, we'd use something else without issues. And you can use something else right now. Linux on the other hand just doesn't have an alternative equal in features.
  - preommr 6y ago
    > Linux on the other hand just doesn't have an alternative equal in features. The absolute disrespect towards microkernels. Shameful.
    - rauli_ 6y ago
      Or BSDs.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      Is there any microkernel distribution right now which supports cuda? Or hardware-offloaded network drivers?
  - infogulch 6y ago
    I'm not sure I agree. git has a particularly lucid underlying data model which is the reason why it has endured so long (despite its objectively awful ux), and still sets the bar for cryptographically secure SCMs.
0xy 6y ago
Firefox as a browser is rapidly becoming irrelevant, and it's not "indispensable to web freedom" when they tear down privacy by implementing the Chrome team's privacy disaster APIs in full such as AudioContext and others that are used almost exclusively by fingerprinting scripts running on DoubleClick's distribution network. Mozilla is complicit in this behavior, and they cave time and time and time again.
- roca 6y ago
  Every Web game with sound uses AudioContext. Emulators use it. Etc etc. Lots of platform features are useful for fingerprinting, unfortunately, because software, but they're not deliberate attempts to tear down privacy.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    The prime difference of course is that web games actually play audio, whereas most abusers of this never play audio. Why does a site with no audio need this information with no notification or permission from the user? I also beg to differ, AudioContext has a horrible security model (it's non-existent). Browsers don't even care if the website even needs it.
    - roca 6y ago
      The browser can't tell the difference between a site that legitimately "needs Web Audio" and a site that doesn't.
- toper-centage 6y ago
  What if I told you that both can be true? Firefox might be both fundamental to Internet freedom, but also losing relevance. Which is a big problem...
kwertyoowiyop 6y ago
In this article, “arguably” is used in its new journalistic purpose as a synonym of “not.”
bad_username 6y ago
> It's more indispensable to web freedom now than it has ever been. "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms. Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation. " ( https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d... ) No, I think today's Mozilla is harmful to web freedom.
- ajxs 6y ago
  I was conscious of this when I wrote that. It's a shame that the Mozilla of today serves as the thin line separating us from an effective Google monopoly on web-standards. I know that Brave's userbase has grown recently, however I refuse to see using a Chromium-based browser as a solution to ensuring web freedom.

by ajxs 6y ago

xiphias2 6y ago

Internet Explorer wasn't just morally wrong. It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support. Web developers had to choose if they want to support the broken IE6 or the much more logical and easier to develop for web standards. It was a painful long time for web devs with lots of lost developer productivity until Firefox and Chrome came to the rescue. The amount of money MS lost for not continuing IE development is staggering though.

taeric 6y ago
This is somewhat disingenuous. IE was trying to strong arm web standards in much the way that chrome does today. Just back then, few folks would have it from ms. That said, div, span, xmlhttprequest... All of those came from ie, if I am not mistaken. Now, I confess I have grown to not like divs and spans. That said, I am very amenable to "border-box", which is kind of hilarious in historical context. I also remember IE actually supported fieldset and legend in sane ways well before netscape. Which was very annoying. Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. The Netscape team was faltering. Only reason folks didn't like the IE team is the rest of MS was acting in very bad faith with clear embrace and extinguish as a goal for the browser market. Which ultimately left Opera as the biggest loser who otherwise had an amazing product.
- saurik 6y ago
  A long time ago I wrote an extensive comment--with tons of documented references--here showing how broken everyone has the story of IE: Microsoft was in fact the savior that came to save us from the world of Netscape... Mozilla was great, and had to save us from the new world of post-antitrust Microsoft (which now had a dominant platform they were too afraid to maintain); but Netscape was just as much of a bully as anyone else :(, and so the W3C was pumped about MS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 (edit:) I just remembered that many years later I gave a talk that contained a follow-up to some of the thoughts about Microsoft (it is a big part of the talk, but not the beginning or the end). https://vimeo.com/310654342 https://vimeo.com/310654342 (edit again:) OMG people seem to be enjoying this comment, but I stupidly linked to the wrong old comment up there (and even that link is weird: the best part of that thread is a few parents up from that link)... and it is so sad as the actual comment was one I was so proud of... here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113
- wyqydsyq 6y ago
  > Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. Yes for a while there they were doing a great job of implementing Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish philosophy by intentionally avoiding web standards conformance and instead focusing on proprietary features (ActiveX plugins etc) in attempt to make IE "better" than the competition
  - taeric 6y ago
    This is actually compatible with what I was saying. The ie team was building a decent product. If it was being sold, it would have been a healthy competitor in the field. Instead, the company pushed it for free to basically burn the market.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support." Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic in order to prodcuce Internet Explorer. What were the "standards" at the time Mosaic was released. What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Perhaps I am wrong but I sometimes think there would be no Chrome without that help from former Mozilla employees.
- cxr 6y ago
  There are some really insidious errors in this comment. It's close enough to the truth that it runs the risk of being taken at face value, despite the errors. > Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic Not quite. They used Spyglass Mosaic, which shared only the name. Spyglass Mosaic was a from-scratch implementation. https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html > What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Not quite. Early Firefox development resembled Linux: multiple industry actors collaborating on a single codebase—pretty unlike the way it works today, where a single (bumbling) corporation is almost totally responsible for marketing, product direction, and development. Google was one of the biggest contributors to Firefox development. The Firefox lead was a Google employee being paid to do just that. When Google decided to do Chrome, they pulled their engineers off Firefox, with parallels to what later happened with the WebKit -> Blink fork: an initial cooperative effort, followed by their chafing at the overheads of collaboration and the lack of total control, followed by breaking away to do their own thing. If there was any amount of poaching/brain drain that should be mentioned but no one really talks about, it's how many ex-Mozilla Corp folks left for Facebook and is partially responsible for the engineering culture there.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    Spyglass, Inc. licensed Mosaic from NCSA. Microsft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass. Microsoft did make some modifications to Spyglass's "from-scratch" implementation in order to produce Internet Explorer. Sounds like Mozillians are not so concerned about user privacy if they went to work at Facebook.

jhvkjhk 6y ago

> Linux powers a large proportion of servers on the internet, and has done so for a long time now. The popularity of Git is a relatively recent phenomenon. Isn’t Linux become popular in recent years too? At first they use Unix to run servers, you can even encounter some sites running Unix nowadays. I kind of agree with the saying “Linus has a bigger impact as the inventor of Git”, because we can use git for Windows/Mac OS/BSD software, while Linux can only run Linux Apps.

scaladev 6y ago
It's just silly. Get outside your desktop bubble. Linux powers literally billions of smartphones, a similar amount of embedded devices, millions of servers in large datacenters, etc etc. git is one VCS among many, even if it is the most popular and the best in many respects. It's one of the many tools used by pretty much a single profession. To me it's a bit like saying that a circular saw has had more impact on the world than Linux.
croes 6y ago
How many people use Android smartphones and how many use git? Seems more like a reflection of the author's bubble.
- jhvkjhk 6y ago
  I see, I forgot Android when I'm defending for git.
est31 6y ago
Btw through Wine, Linux can also run Windows apps.

wyqydsyq 6y ago

> I had to check that this wasn't an April fool's day post. Linux powers a large proportion of servers on the internet, and has done so for a long time now. The popularity of Git is a relatively recent phenomenon. Linux might be used for the majority of web servers, sure, however Git is used for version controlling the significant majority of software produced today. I would argue something that is used by nearly every software development team/company across the entire planet has a much greater impact than something that is used by nearly every server across the planet. Linux also sees more heavy competition from the likes of Windows and *BSD, where git has essentially dominated it's market with things like CVS, SVN and Mercurial becoming increasingly abandoned, and only niche proprietary systems like Perforce still competing for usage

viraptor 6y ago
It's got a big impact, but mercurial was released pretty much the same month as git. Git got more popular, likely helped by Linus already being known. If we didn't get git, we'd use something else without issues. And you can use something else right now. Linux on the other hand just doesn't have an alternative equal in features.
- preommr 6y ago
  > Linux on the other hand just doesn't have an alternative equal in features. The absolute disrespect towards microkernels. Shameful.
  - rauli_ 6y ago
    Or BSDs.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    Is there any microkernel distribution right now which supports cuda? Or hardware-offloaded network drivers?
- infogulch 6y ago
  I'm not sure I agree. git has a particularly lucid underlying data model which is the reason why it has endured so long (despite its objectively awful ux), and still sets the bar for cryptographically secure SCMs.

0xy 6y ago

Firefox as a browser is rapidly becoming irrelevant, and it's not "indispensable to web freedom" when they tear down privacy by implementing the Chrome team's privacy disaster APIs in full such as AudioContext and others that are used almost exclusively by fingerprinting scripts running on DoubleClick's distribution network. Mozilla is complicit in this behavior, and they cave time and time and time again.

roca 6y ago
Every Web game with sound uses AudioContext. Emulators use it. Etc etc. Lots of platform features are useful for fingerprinting, unfortunately, because software, but they're not deliberate attempts to tear down privacy.
- 0xy 6y ago
  The prime difference of course is that web games actually play audio, whereas most abusers of this never play audio. Why does a site with no audio need this information with no notification or permission from the user? I also beg to differ, AudioContext has a horrible security model (it's non-existent). Browsers don't even care if the website even needs it.
  - roca 6y ago
    The browser can't tell the difference between a site that legitimately "needs Web Audio" and a site that doesn't.
toper-centage 6y ago
What if I told you that both can be true? Firefox might be both fundamental to Internet freedom, but also losing relevance. Which is a big problem...

kwertyoowiyop 6y ago

In this article, “arguably” is used in its new journalistic purpose as a synonym of “not.”

bad_username 6y ago

> It's more indispensable to web freedom now than it has ever been. "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms. Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation. " ( https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d... ) No, I think today's Mozilla is harmful to web freedom.

ajxs 6y ago
I was conscious of this when I wrote that. It's a shame that the Mozilla of today serves as the thin line separating us from an effective Google monopoly on web-standards. I know that Brave's userbase has grown recently, however I refuse to see using a Chromium-based browser as a solution to ensuring web freedom.