8 ms·

Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for Mozilla, to stop with their fruitless rewrite and catch up with Chrome, or die like Netscape did.

pornel 5y ago
What a mean and pointless comment. It's just a bug. It's not even a "fruitless rewrite" — this bug is in C++ code. And the implementation of HTTP/3, that was Google QUIC, is required for chasing Chrome's "fire and motion".
- rossmohax 5y ago
  For Mozilla as a company, as a business, is there a benefit of pouring resources into own web engine?
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    That's the wrong way to think about it. Mozilla isn't a for profit business, they are a non-profit with a mission. The right question is, does pouring resources into their own web page align with their mission statement? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
    - sp332 5y ago
      This is incorrect. The Mozilla Foundation (the non-profit) owns the Mozilla Corporation, which is for-profit and does Firefox development. The Corporation is the one that gets money from Google, and sends millions of dollars per year to the Foundation.
      - cptskippy 5y ago
        Is it though? https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2005/08/mozilla-foundation-forms-new-organization-to-further-the-creation-of-free-open-source-internet-software-including-the-award-winning-mozilla-firefox-browser/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2005/08/mozilla-foundation-fo... > The Mozilla Corporation is a taxable subsidiary that serves the non-profit, public benefit goals of its parent, the Mozilla Foundation, and the vast Mozilla community. The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation. The constructs are for regulatory and financial hand waving.
        sp332 5y ago
        Well, Mitchell Baker gets millions of dollars a year while the browser market share continues to decline. So there's some profit motive involved.
        cptskippy 5y ago
        So no it becomes a grievance about CEO compensation for poor performance?
      - dblohm7 5y ago
        Technically you are correct in that the corporate entity that is Mozilla Corporation is registered as a for-profit company. However, since its sole shareholder is a non-profit Foundation, it is able to invest differently than a typical corporation. For example, there is no pressure from the Foundation to "maximize shareholder value."
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Eh, I mean yeah it is a bug and bugs happen, but one does have to wonder how a bug this visible and immediately detected by so many users wasn't caught in any kind of testing. Is Mozilla in the Microsoftian habit of just not testing the code they push at all?
  - sp332 5y ago
    If this affects Firefox 96, then it made it through Nightly and Developer Edition, and at least four weeks of wide deployment in Beta before being promoted to the release version.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  HTTP/3 is QUIC but it is not Google's QUIC aka gQUIC. The IETF's QUIC working group developed this protocol over several years, and it isn't much like gQUIC as a result. Most obviously gQUIC pre-dates TLS 1.3 and so it has its own cryptography layer, in the standard QUIC that's provided by the TLS 1.3 engine, so almost all TLS 1.3 work can be reused.
  - anderspitman 5y ago
    But do you think the final design of QUIC is more closely aligned with anyone's incentives more than Google's?
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      How so?
      - anderspitman 5y ago
        I'm not referring to anything specific, just the general tendency for systems to change over time to match the preferences of the entities with the most influence. Sometimes this is beneficial for others, sometimes it's detrimental. The point is that the evolution of the internet is now primarily selecting for what big tech wants. This is much more obvious with the web. Everyone uses Chromium, so the web as a standard is now effectively whatever Google decides it is. See Widevine. FWIW I don't see anything specific wrong with QUIC. I'm quite excited about it and think it will be good for the internet.
        tialaramex 5y ago
        But you could apply this vague feeling (that big companies change the world) to everything. Is it really Apple's Donald Trump presidency? Google's Democratic Backsliding and Facebook's Climate Change? I don't think it's useful to distinguish "big tech" in this regard from say, the Military Industrial Complex's outsize influence on our world, or the way Malls bulldozed America's distinctive local businesses, or the way Hollywood decides how much of the world imagines things. And I especially don't see value in assigning them name ownership of things that were done by large numbers of individuals working together just because it so happens that you find it easier to remember "Google" than say Jana Iyengar or Martin Thomson (editors of QUIC, neither of whom work for Google). Unlike the W3C corporations can't actually participate in the IETF, which is a human activity and so is done by humans. Corporations can, and do, pay their employees to participate, but everybody is welcome and, as outfits like EDCO discovered, just flooding the IETF with bodies doesn't achieve anything except make you look stupid. (EDCO wanted TLS 1.3 to have defective encryption because it would be easier than doing their jobs properly).
cptskippy 5y ago
> to stop with their fruitless rewrite What are they rewriting? > catch up with Chrome The standards driven development that Mozilla fostered in the aughts is mostly gone. Today the standards are mostly written by the dominant browser and everyone else just plays catch up.

pornel 5y ago

What a mean and pointless comment. It's just a bug. It's not even a "fruitless rewrite" — this bug is in C++ code. And the implementation of HTTP/3, that was Google QUIC, is required for chasing Chrome's "fire and motion".

rossmohax 5y ago
For Mozilla as a company, as a business, is there a benefit of pouring resources into own web engine?
- cptskippy 5y ago
  That's the wrong way to think about it. Mozilla isn't a for profit business, they are a non-profit with a mission. The right question is, does pouring resources into their own web page align with their mission statement? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
  - sp332 5y ago
    This is incorrect. The Mozilla Foundation (the non-profit) owns the Mozilla Corporation, which is for-profit and does Firefox development. The Corporation is the one that gets money from Google, and sends millions of dollars per year to the Foundation.
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      Is it though? https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2005/08/mozilla-foundation-forms-new-organization-to-further-the-creation-of-free-open-source-internet-software-including-the-award-winning-mozilla-firefox-browser/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2005/08/mozilla-foundation-fo... > The Mozilla Corporation is a taxable subsidiary that serves the non-profit, public benefit goals of its parent, the Mozilla Foundation, and the vast Mozilla community. The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation. The constructs are for regulatory and financial hand waving.
      - sp332 5y ago
        Well, Mitchell Baker gets millions of dollars a year while the browser market share continues to decline. So there's some profit motive involved.
        cptskippy 5y ago
        So no it becomes a grievance about CEO compensation for poor performance?
    - dblohm7 5y ago
      Technically you are correct in that the corporate entity that is Mozilla Corporation is registered as a for-profit company. However, since its sole shareholder is a non-profit Foundation, it is able to invest differently than a typical corporation. For example, there is no pressure from the Foundation to "maximize shareholder value."
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Eh, I mean yeah it is a bug and bugs happen, but one does have to wonder how a bug this visible and immediately detected by so many users wasn't caught in any kind of testing. Is Mozilla in the Microsoftian habit of just not testing the code they push at all?
- sp332 5y ago
  If this affects Firefox 96, then it made it through Nightly and Developer Edition, and at least four weeks of wide deployment in Beta before being promoted to the release version.
tialaramex 5y ago
HTTP/3 is QUIC but it is not Google's QUIC aka gQUIC. The IETF's QUIC working group developed this protocol over several years, and it isn't much like gQUIC as a result. Most obviously gQUIC pre-dates TLS 1.3 and so it has its own cryptography layer, in the standard QUIC that's provided by the TLS 1.3 engine, so almost all TLS 1.3 work can be reused.
- anderspitman 5y ago
  But do you think the final design of QUIC is more closely aligned with anyone's incentives more than Google's?
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    How so?
    - anderspitman 5y ago
      I'm not referring to anything specific, just the general tendency for systems to change over time to match the preferences of the entities with the most influence. Sometimes this is beneficial for others, sometimes it's detrimental. The point is that the evolution of the internet is now primarily selecting for what big tech wants. This is much more obvious with the web. Everyone uses Chromium, so the web as a standard is now effectively whatever Google decides it is. See Widevine. FWIW I don't see anything specific wrong with QUIC. I'm quite excited about it and think it will be good for the internet.
      - tialaramex 5y ago
        But you could apply this vague feeling (that big companies change the world) to everything. Is it really Apple's Donald Trump presidency? Google's Democratic Backsliding and Facebook's Climate Change? I don't think it's useful to distinguish "big tech" in this regard from say, the Military Industrial Complex's outsize influence on our world, or the way Malls bulldozed America's distinctive local businesses, or the way Hollywood decides how much of the world imagines things. And I especially don't see value in assigning them name ownership of things that were done by large numbers of individuals working together just because it so happens that you find it easier to remember "Google" than say Jana Iyengar or Martin Thomson (editors of QUIC, neither of whom work for Google). Unlike the W3C corporations can't actually participate in the IETF, which is a human activity and so is done by humans. Corporations can, and do, pay their employees to participate, but everybody is welcome and, as outfits like EDCO discovered, just flooding the IETF with bodies doesn't achieve anything except make you look stupid. (EDCO wanted TLS 1.3 to have defective encryption because it would be easier than doing their jobs properly).

cptskippy 5y ago

> to stop with their fruitless rewrite What are they rewriting? > catch up with Chrome The standards driven development that Mozilla fostered in the aughts is mostly gone. Today the standards are mostly written by the dominant browser and everyone else just plays catch up.