5 ms·

Damn. And we lost Servo just when it was getting close to being not shitty. While everything else is moving towards more shitty.

by edoceo 5y ago

tomxor 5y ago
We lost the servo team, but isn't servo complete enough to simmer in maintenance?
- kroltan 5y ago
  Not nearly complete enough if you want a browser. MAYBE, if you want a browsing engine / "webview".
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    That's exactly what Servo was/is, an embeddable browser engine. It was never aiming to build a usable reference servo browser with the engine. The packaged nightly binaries were just to demo the current state of the embeddable engine which is why they were so barebones.
    - kroltan 5y ago
      Yes, you're correct, but the ancestor comments kind of implied it being a hope for browsers at large. Bad phrasing from my part too, sorry.
  - tomxor 5y ago
    Ahh, i'm talking about the surviving parts that were adopted by Firefox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software)#Quantum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software)#Quantum I remember it clearly because Firefox got a big performance boost in it's renderer when quantum was released, often it's faster than Chrome.
  - simfoo 5y ago
    What features would a browser need on top of regular webview APIs?
- dralley 5y ago
  No, not even close.
  - tomxor 5y ago
    Why not, It's in Firefox, I'm literally looking at it right now.
    - kroltan 5y ago
      Some parts of Servo are in Firefox, but not the whole thing. Swapping your VW Beetle's wheels for a Ferrari's doesn't make it a Ferrari! Even if it improves handling (or whatever I'm not a car person, it's just an accessible analogy)
    - dralley 5y ago
      No it isn't. Some parts of Servo were adopted into Firefox, but "Servo" is not in Firefox. If you compile servo and point it at the homepage of google, I doubt it renders right now. It was constantly broken even when it had a full-time staff.
kelnos 5y ago
Servo was never supposed to be a browser. It was a testbed for new browser tech/components, some of which got ported into Firefox. I had hopes that Servo would also be an embeddable browser engine, but not sure if that was ever a serious goal. Servo still exists and has been spun out of Mozilla's org (https://github.com/servo/servo/ https://github.com/servo/servo/). Certainly development will be slower without a dedicated, paid team behind it, but it's still alive (last merge to master was 9 days ago). And perhaps without Mozilla's direct control, it will actually end up becoming the browser you hoped it would be.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  I give Firefox browser engine 5 years top before Mozilla becomes Chromium based. Servo WAS meant to be the future had Mozilla continued to fund its development, there is no way around that fact. Yes, it was experimental, but so where every other browser engines/forks when they started. Mozilla lost a lot of goodwill when they fired Servo team and most of the Rust developers.
  - drran 5y ago
    Why we need two Chrome's?
    - kelnos 5y ago
      I don't think we do, but I think there's value in another large-minority browser that is based on Blink (not Chromium). It should have all the compatibility that Chrome has, but none of the privacy issues. Mozilla could potentially pull that off, but it'd likely mean more or less starting from scratch (not sure how much of the UI they could reuse, if any), so I wouldn't expect that to happen except as a last resort. I do feel like most of the arguments against Firefox boil down to either website compatibility or performance issues. Using Blink as their rendering engine would kill the first concern completely. I'm not sure if Firefox's current performance issues (real or imagined) are due to the rendering engine or UI, so not sure where that would land.
octopoc 5y ago
There is some activity in the donations: https://crowdfunding.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/projects/servo https://crowdfunding.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/projects/servo
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
Not sure why you're saying Servo, we still have Firefox.
- xvilka 5y ago
  Firefox only can compete with Chrome/Chromium-based clones only if it has a unique edge (pun intended). Being completely written in Rust is that edge, reducing work required for debugging, while Chromium team would be still busy with memory bugs, etc. Thus the complete port/rewrite is the only future it has. Genius Mozilla management voluntarily gave it up.

Damn. And we lost Servo just when it was getting close to being not shitty. While everything else is moving towards more shitty.

by edoceo 5y ago

Damn. And we lost Servo just when it was getting close to being not shitty. While everything else is moving towards more shitty.

tomxor 5y ago

We lost the servo team, but isn't servo complete enough to simmer in maintenance?

kroltan 5y ago
Not nearly complete enough if you want a browser. MAYBE, if you want a browsing engine / "webview".
- zamadatix 5y ago
  That's exactly what Servo was/is, an embeddable browser engine. It was never aiming to build a usable reference servo browser with the engine. The packaged nightly binaries were just to demo the current state of the embeddable engine which is why they were so barebones.
  - kroltan 5y ago
    Yes, you're correct, but the ancestor comments kind of implied it being a hope for browsers at large. Bad phrasing from my part too, sorry.
- tomxor 5y ago
  Ahh, i'm talking about the surviving parts that were adopted by Firefox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software)#Quantum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software)#Quantum I remember it clearly because Firefox got a big performance boost in it's renderer when quantum was released, often it's faster than Chrome.
- simfoo 5y ago
  What features would a browser need on top of regular webview APIs?
dralley 5y ago
No, not even close.
- tomxor 5y ago
  Why not, It's in Firefox, I'm literally looking at it right now.
  - kroltan 5y ago
    Some parts of Servo are in Firefox, but not the whole thing. Swapping your VW Beetle's wheels for a Ferrari's doesn't make it a Ferrari! Even if it improves handling (or whatever I'm not a car person, it's just an accessible analogy)
  - dralley 5y ago
    No it isn't. Some parts of Servo were adopted into Firefox, but "Servo" is not in Firefox. If you compile servo and point it at the homepage of google, I doubt it renders right now. It was constantly broken even when it had a full-time staff.

kelnos 5y ago

Servo was never supposed to be a browser. It was a testbed for new browser tech/components, some of which got ported into Firefox. I had hopes that Servo would also be an embeddable browser engine, but not sure if that was ever a serious goal. Servo still exists and has been spun out of Mozilla's org (https://github.com/servo/servo/ https://github.com/servo/servo/). Certainly development will be slower without a dedicated, paid team behind it, but it's still alive (last merge to master was 9 days ago). And perhaps without Mozilla's direct control, it will actually end up becoming the browser you hoped it would be.

throw_m239339 5y ago
I give Firefox browser engine 5 years top before Mozilla becomes Chromium based. Servo WAS meant to be the future had Mozilla continued to fund its development, there is no way around that fact. Yes, it was experimental, but so where every other browser engines/forks when they started. Mozilla lost a lot of goodwill when they fired Servo team and most of the Rust developers.
- drran 5y ago
  Why we need two Chrome's?
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I don't think we do, but I think there's value in another large-minority browser that is based on Blink (not Chromium). It should have all the compatibility that Chrome has, but none of the privacy issues. Mozilla could potentially pull that off, but it'd likely mean more or less starting from scratch (not sure how much of the UI they could reuse, if any), so I wouldn't expect that to happen except as a last resort. I do feel like most of the arguments against Firefox boil down to either website compatibility or performance issues. Using Blink as their rendering engine would kill the first concern completely. I'm not sure if Firefox's current performance issues (real or imagined) are due to the rendering engine or UI, so not sure where that would land.

octopoc 5y ago

There is some activity in the donations: https://crowdfunding.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/projects/servo https://crowdfunding.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/projects/servo

downWidOutaFite 5y ago

Not sure why you're saying Servo, we still have Firefox.

xvilka 5y ago
Firefox only can compete with Chrome/Chromium-based clones only if it has a unique edge (pun intended). Being completely written in Rust is that edge, reducing work required for debugging, while Chromium team would be still busy with memory bugs, etc. Thus the complete port/rewrite is the only future it has. Genius Mozilla management voluntarily gave it up.