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Firefox and Safari do engage early, and they do participate in discussions. GitHub comments are a very small visible part of it. However, Chrome simply inundat

Firefox and Safari do engage early, and they do participate in discussions. GitHub comments are a very small visible part of it. However, Chrome simply inundates them with APIs. There are 50 to 100 new APIs that Chrome releases with each new version. And a new version comes out once every two months. So, Firefox and Safari have to be "actively engaged in discussions" on 300 to 600 new APIs a year [1]. This is not sustainable in any way, shape, or form. Hell, Microsoft gave up on developing a browser of their own, and they are definitely not lacking in resources. How is Mozilla expected to cope? Safari has decided to set their own pace, and flat out refuse APIs that breach security and privacy, because by this time Chrome teams should really know better (if only they cared). So, no, it's not true that Mozilla and Safari are "not engaged at an early stage". They are, to the best of their abilities and resources. But they also have browsers to develop, and in the end there are only so many hours in the day. [1] https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence

pimterry 5y ago
I hear you, I'm not saying it's easy! Firefox especially desperately needs more funding here (and Apple more competition, on mobile at least). That said, that API count is referring to individual methods & fields (see https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/catalog https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/catalog) not whole specifications. I'm mainly concerned about them reviewing and making contributions to write these specs, rather the work to fully implement them, so that at least they end up with something they might be happy implementing in future. Either way, if every few months Chrome can genuinely churn out hundreds of APIs that developers genuinely want and use (a big caveat!) and Firefox/Safari can't keep up, then that's game over. Chromium has the market share, people will start using these APIs, serving a relatively worse and worse version for the slower browsers (if they bother), and eventually the older browsers will either have to implement them to according to these defacto standards, design & implement a sufficiently better alternative somehow, or die (for the average user, at least). Firefox beat IE last time because it took the 2nd option: it had better alternatives to Microsoft's non-standard web technologies (primarily: consistent APIs backed by clear standards and good tools that solved the same problems) and thereby managed to capture web developers and lead the compatibility game, rather than following. I don't see how they can do the same again if they can't propose workable alternatives to new standards other than 'defer' or 'reject'.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Either way, if every few months Chrome can genuinely churn out hundreds of APIs that developers genuinely want and use (a big caveat!) and Firefox/Safari can't keep up, then that's game over. It very much is, and has been for a while: Google completely dominates all of web-related standards bodies. And the specs that are rushed to completion in Chrome are more likely than not to be fully authored by Googlers only (sometimes with egregious disregard for standards work, see WebHID [1]). [1] Issue https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#issuecomment-753864467 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#is... and timeline https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27512354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27512354
  - pimterry 5y ago
    Ok, if we take this as given then non-Chromium is dead. Yikes. I'm not convinced it's a lost cause yet, but yes it looks like a very plausible future imo. Assuming that then, if we want healthy web standards then it sounds like the only option is to shut down Firefox et al ASAP (or make it another chromium wrapper) and spend that engineer time & money instead getting involved in these specs and Chromium development to try and provide non-Google input and ideas, and somehow transform Chromium itself into a community endeavour. If there's an inevitable chromium monopoly then that seems like the only choice. Unless something else blocks the chromium monopoly, e.g. Google antitrust of some sort, but that doesn't seem imminent (for Chrome specifically). A somewhat bleak future, but if this becomes inevitable then that seems like the best option unfortunately.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      I think that this may as well be a pendulum: many browsers, IE6 monopoly, many browsers, Chrome monopoly. We may yet swing back to many browsers at some point in the future :)

pimterry 5y ago

I hear you, I'm not saying it's easy! Firefox especially desperately needs more funding here (and Apple more competition, on mobile at least). That said, that API count is referring to individual methods & fields (see https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/catalog https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/catalog) not whole specifications. I'm mainly concerned about them reviewing and making contributions to write these specs, rather the work to fully implement them, so that at least they end up with something they might be happy implementing in future. Either way, if every few months Chrome can genuinely churn out hundreds of APIs that developers genuinely want and use (a big caveat!) and Firefox/Safari can't keep up, then that's game over. Chromium has the market share, people will start using these APIs, serving a relatively worse and worse version for the slower browsers (if they bother), and eventually the older browsers will either have to implement them to according to these defacto standards, design & implement a sufficiently better alternative somehow, or die (for the average user, at least). Firefox beat IE last time because it took the 2nd option: it had better alternatives to Microsoft's non-standard web technologies (primarily: consistent APIs backed by clear standards and good tools that solved the same problems) and thereby managed to capture web developers and lead the compatibility game, rather than following. I don't see how they can do the same again if they can't propose workable alternatives to new standards other than 'defer' or 'reject'.

dmitriid 5y ago
> Either way, if every few months Chrome can genuinely churn out hundreds of APIs that developers genuinely want and use (a big caveat!) and Firefox/Safari can't keep up, then that's game over. It very much is, and has been for a while: Google completely dominates all of web-related standards bodies. And the specs that are rushed to completion in Chrome are more likely than not to be fully authored by Googlers only (sometimes with egregious disregard for standards work, see WebHID [1]). [1] Issue https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#issuecomment-753864467 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/459#is... and timeline https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27512354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27512354
- pimterry 5y ago
  Ok, if we take this as given then non-Chromium is dead. Yikes. I'm not convinced it's a lost cause yet, but yes it looks like a very plausible future imo. Assuming that then, if we want healthy web standards then it sounds like the only option is to shut down Firefox et al ASAP (or make it another chromium wrapper) and spend that engineer time & money instead getting involved in these specs and Chromium development to try and provide non-Google input and ideas, and somehow transform Chromium itself into a community endeavour. If there's an inevitable chromium monopoly then that seems like the only choice. Unless something else blocks the chromium monopoly, e.g. Google antitrust of some sort, but that doesn't seem imminent (for Chrome specifically). A somewhat bleak future, but if this becomes inevitable then that seems like the best option unfortunately.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    I think that this may as well be a pendulum: many browsers, IE6 monopoly, many browsers, Chrome monopoly. We may yet swing back to many browsers at some point in the future :)