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Just a nitpick, but I'm pretty sure Opera was gutted of engineers as well after their acquisition fiasco with that Chinese outfit. I don't think they had as muc

Just a nitpick, but I'm pretty sure Opera was gutted of engineers as well after their acquisition fiasco with that Chinese outfit. I don't think they had as much manpower as the good ol days AND not enough manpower to compete with the old engine. I'm on mobile or I'd go find a source, but I'm fairly certain some key people left before all that went down. Not that maintaining a web browser is easy, but they WERE doing it, to varying success.

tachyonbeam 5y ago
It's not just Opera though. Microsoft Edge is using also Webkit. I'm legit worried that if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture.
- krapp 5y ago
  >I'm legit worried that if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture. Does that really matter much, if it's open source? A lot of software converges on one or a few standard libraries or applications.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    It'd be quite a huge and significant step in the web becoming a single stack or implementation, rather than a set of open standards with various interoperable implementations.
  - insulanus 5y ago
    Yes, it matters a lot. One of the reasons people want open source is to be able to "fork away" from a popular project, if the leadership team of that project takes a direction that people disagree with. Obviously this goal is impossible to meet, if the project is closed-source, or has an onerous license. There is another cost that people don't talk about as much, and that is the cost to understand a large, alien codebase enough to be able to understand and change it. If the effort to contribute is too high, you can't get a second group of programmers to rally around the fork, and the new project will fizzle. As an example, Google understands the economics of code very well. They know that there is little threat to market dominance for them to release Android or Chromium as open source.
- adenozine 5y ago
  Sure, I wasn't addressing that though. I just meant that it's a little inaccurate to say Opera couldn't do it because of the turmoil and turnover, and that's on top of the fact that browser engines are immensely technical projects. I'm worried about that as well, but it's not really fair to attribute blame to most people at Opera, especially prior to the China thing. Things were okay there for a long time before that.
- cxr 5y ago
  > Microsoft Edge is using also Webkit. No, it's not. > if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture Not a risk. Chrome dominates, and it uses Blink, not WebKit. (Yes, the distinction matters, and no, it is not a distinction that is minor/negligible/insubstantial.)

tachyonbeam 5y ago

It's not just Opera though. Microsoft Edge is using also Webkit. I'm legit worried that if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture.

krapp 5y ago
>I'm legit worried that if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture. Does that really matter much, if it's open source? A lot of software converges on one or a few standard libraries or applications.
- OJFord 5y ago
  It'd be quite a huge and significant step in the web becoming a single stack or implementation, rather than a set of open standards with various interoperable implementations.
- insulanus 5y ago
  Yes, it matters a lot. One of the reasons people want open source is to be able to "fork away" from a popular project, if the leadership team of that project takes a direction that people disagree with. Obviously this goal is impossible to meet, if the project is closed-source, or has an onerous license. There is another cost that people don't talk about as much, and that is the cost to understand a large, alien codebase enough to be able to understand and change it. If the effort to contribute is too high, you can't get a second group of programmers to rally around the fork, and the new project will fizzle. As an example, Google understands the economics of code very well. They know that there is little threat to market dominance for them to release Android or Chromium as open source.
adenozine 5y ago
Sure, I wasn't addressing that though. I just meant that it's a little inaccurate to say Opera couldn't do it because of the turmoil and turnover, and that's on top of the fact that browser engines are immensely technical projects. I'm worried about that as well, but it's not really fair to attribute blame to most people at Opera, especially prior to the China thing. Things were okay there for a long time before that.
cxr 5y ago
> Microsoft Edge is using also Webkit. No, it's not. > if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture Not a risk. Chrome dominates, and it uses Blink, not WebKit. (Yes, the distinction matters, and no, it is not a distinction that is minor/negligible/insubstantial.)