4 ms·

You may be right, and you may not be. It has to be good that there are more than exactly one engine, it means there is a discussion, some level of "forced openn

by bambax 5y ago

You may be right, and you may not be. It has to be good that there are more than exactly one engine, it means there is a discussion, some level of "forced openness". That wouldn't be possible if web developers could simply rely on undocumented quirks of a sole browser. It's possible that FF will die. But I think that would be extremely sad. For one, Manifest V3 would be forced upon the entire web => no more uOrigin.

roenxi 5y ago
> It has to be good that there are more than exactly one engine... Well, that is kinda the point. No, it doesn't. It might be worse than having one great de-facto standard engine. Having 2+ splits web developers in what they choose to support. In this instance, we literally have a young company (Brave Software, Inc) that chose to go head-to-head with Google. Their CEO is deeply entwined with the history of first Netscape then Mozilla/Firefox. They went with Chromium. That is a pretty searing indictment of the "an independent engine is important" argument. If Eich doesn't think Firefox is up for the challenge, what exactly is the gameplan here? Nobody is saying Mozilla has to die, whatever that means. But if there is an advantage to its existence that advantage is difficult to spot. Firefox doesn't even have the thriving extension ecosystem it could once boast about - they killed most of it off. There is nothing useful there except a different set of quirks.
- bambax 5y ago
  > Nobody is saying Mozilla has to die, whatever that means. To die means having so few users that development is abandoned and the teams disbanded. It could happen; I wish it doesn't; you seem to wish it does... because it would make the life of web developers a little simpler? But I don't think that's true; I think it's the opposite: web development would be a little more difficult if/when everything is controlled by just one company who decides unilaterally what can be done and what can't.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    There is no risk of everything being controlled by one company. That is why it is acceptable for there to only be one browser engine. Observe that Brave, inc is using the chromium engine in a way that opposes Google. Mozilla has developed a bunch of great features in the last few years. If they were developing on Chromium, most of the internet would have access to them. Instead, only a minor subset do. This is a bad strategy.
    - roca 5y ago
      I don't think you understand how Chromium works. Google makes all the important decisions. People have advocated for independent governance (e.g. some kind of Chromium Foundation) but Google isn't interested. E.g. Brave opposes Google in some ways but they have no say in the development of Web standards implemented by Chromium.
      - roenxi 5y ago
        It is open source. If someone doesn't like a decision they can fork the codebase. Mozilla's Gecko has been beaten down to sub-double-digit market share, they're less relevant right now than when IE6 was >75% of the market. They have no power to influence the direction the web moves in. And yet life is going on better than ever. If you want a counterbalance to stop Google making the important decisions, Firefox has failed spectacularly. And yet Google doesn't have any power to move the web in a direction it doesn't want to go - because their engine is open source and that is what actually matters here.
        matrus 5y ago
        To make any dent to Google's dominance over the web a potential fork would first have to gain any noticeable traction. This seems highly unlikely if well funded companies like Microsoft or Mozilla weren't able to leverage their properties (Windows in Microsoft's case) or their brand (Mozilla) so far. Plus, any major fork of Chromium would have to compete with Chrome's vast development budget.
        roca 5y ago
- roca 5y ago
  Using Gecko (or Webkit) would have added extra risk for Brave. When you're starting a company, especially a browser company that's going to take on Google at some level, you need to minimize all unnecessary risks. I don't blame Brendan for doing that. Plus, when Brendan started Brave, Firefox was further behind in performance and architecture than it is now. Plus, Brendan's departure from Mozilla was somewhat messy and I don't blame him for not wanting to keep a Mozilla dependency. > Having 2+ splits web developers in what they choose to support. Having one engine, Chromium, would mean Google gets a completely free hand to make almost all decisions about how the Web works. Also, Web sites would have no chance of noticing they depend on Chromium bugs --- very bad for the future of the Web (and for Chromium). Now, Webkit is also a very viable engine. The problem with relying on Apple is that they have a powerful disincentive to let the Web platform be a viable competitor to iOS. This is why Mozilla matters.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Hi roc, just FYI we started Brave in 2015 based on Gecko, using the Graphene multiprocess/sandboxing code from that era's FirefoxOS. We switched late in the year after listing all the problems to solve (DRM was one, many others) in order to compete with Chrome. Mozilla or my departure was not an issue.
BrendanEich 5y ago
No, Manifest V2 support remains internally and for "Enterprise Chrome" customers. Therefore we at Brave have promised that we would support V2 on by default for extensions including uBO (not needed on Brave) and uMatrix. HTH

by bambax 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

> It has to be good that there are more than exactly one engine... Well, that is kinda the point. No, it doesn't. It might be worse than having one great de-facto standard engine. Having 2+ splits web developers in what they choose to support. In this instance, we literally have a young company (Brave Software, Inc) that chose to go head-to-head with Google. Their CEO is deeply entwined with the history of first Netscape then Mozilla/Firefox. They went with Chromium. That is a pretty searing indictment of the "an independent engine is important" argument. If Eich doesn't think Firefox is up for the challenge, what exactly is the gameplan here? Nobody is saying Mozilla has to die, whatever that means. But if there is an advantage to its existence that advantage is difficult to spot. Firefox doesn't even have the thriving extension ecosystem it could once boast about - they killed most of it off. There is nothing useful there except a different set of quirks.

bambax 5y ago
> Nobody is saying Mozilla has to die, whatever that means. To die means having so few users that development is abandoned and the teams disbanded. It could happen; I wish it doesn't; you seem to wish it does... because it would make the life of web developers a little simpler? But I don't think that's true; I think it's the opposite: web development would be a little more difficult if/when everything is controlled by just one company who decides unilaterally what can be done and what can't.
- roenxi 5y ago
  There is no risk of everything being controlled by one company. That is why it is acceptable for there to only be one browser engine. Observe that Brave, inc is using the chromium engine in a way that opposes Google. Mozilla has developed a bunch of great features in the last few years. If they were developing on Chromium, most of the internet would have access to them. Instead, only a minor subset do. This is a bad strategy.
  - roca 5y ago
    I don't think you understand how Chromium works. Google makes all the important decisions. People have advocated for independent governance (e.g. some kind of Chromium Foundation) but Google isn't interested. E.g. Brave opposes Google in some ways but they have no say in the development of Web standards implemented by Chromium.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      It is open source. If someone doesn't like a decision they can fork the codebase. Mozilla's Gecko has been beaten down to sub-double-digit market share, they're less relevant right now than when IE6 was >75% of the market. They have no power to influence the direction the web moves in. And yet life is going on better than ever. If you want a counterbalance to stop Google making the important decisions, Firefox has failed spectacularly. And yet Google doesn't have any power to move the web in a direction it doesn't want to go - because their engine is open source and that is what actually matters here.
      - matrus 5y ago
        To make any dent to Google's dominance over the web a potential fork would first have to gain any noticeable traction. This seems highly unlikely if well funded companies like Microsoft or Mozilla weren't able to leverage their properties (Windows in Microsoft's case) or their brand (Mozilla) so far. Plus, any major fork of Chromium would have to compete with Chrome's vast development budget.
      - roca 5y ago
roca 5y ago
Using Gecko (or Webkit) would have added extra risk for Brave. When you're starting a company, especially a browser company that's going to take on Google at some level, you need to minimize all unnecessary risks. I don't blame Brendan for doing that. Plus, when Brendan started Brave, Firefox was further behind in performance and architecture than it is now. Plus, Brendan's departure from Mozilla was somewhat messy and I don't blame him for not wanting to keep a Mozilla dependency. > Having 2+ splits web developers in what they choose to support. Having one engine, Chromium, would mean Google gets a completely free hand to make almost all decisions about how the Web works. Also, Web sites would have no chance of noticing they depend on Chromium bugs --- very bad for the future of the Web (and for Chromium). Now, Webkit is also a very viable engine. The problem with relying on Apple is that they have a powerful disincentive to let the Web platform be a viable competitor to iOS. This is why Mozilla matters.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  Hi roc, just FYI we started Brave in 2015 based on Gecko, using the Graphene multiprocess/sandboxing code from that era's FirefoxOS. We switched late in the year after listing all the problems to solve (DRM was one, many others) in order to compete with Chrome. Mozilla or my departure was not an issue.

BrendanEich 5y ago

No, Manifest V2 support remains internally and for "Enterprise Chrome" customers. Therefore we at Brave have promised that we would support V2 on by default for extensions including uBO (not needed on Brave) and uMatrix. HTH