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>You could make a feature-slim browser, but it would never reach wide adoption, because non-technical people would still need to open one of the big ones to do
by jasode 5y ago
>You could make a feature-slim browser, but it would never reach wide adoption, because non-technical people would still need to open one of the big ones to do their online banking, or make video calls, or whatever.
A prime example of that practical reality is ex-Mozilla founder/programmer Brendan Eich having to switch Brave's forked code from Firefox to Chromium ... because one of the reasons is "Chromium can play Netflix videos":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062636
Similar to Eich's decision, other entities like Opera and Microsoft gave up on trying to maintain their own proprietary browser engines and just decided to fork Chromium. If Microsoft with billions sees no strategic need to invest in their own Trident/Edge browser and are willing to switch to a competitor's browser as a baseline, that should give an idea of how daunting a task it is for a hypothetical group of FOSS programmers to code an alternative browser.
EDIT reply to: >Gecko is just relatively unfriendly to embed in an app.
That may be true but that difficulty didn't stop Eich/Brave from using Gecko at first. His comment said they had to switch to Chromium because of performance issues and the DRM to watch things like Netflix.
- michaelcampbell 5y ago> because one of the reasons is "Chromium can play Netflix videos" Is that a recent issue (or fix on FF)? I watch NF on Firefox all the time. Windows, Mac and Linux all.
- debugnik 5y agoFirefox has been using widevine since 2016, but the comment says they switched away from Gecko in late 2015. Prior to that, the comment explains: > Mozilla had an Adobe deal that did not extend to non-Firefox Gecko embeddings.
- swills 5y agoYou're not using open source code to watch Widevine.
- sp332 5y agoGecko is just relatively unfriendly to embed in an app. That's one reason Mozilla is working on Servo.
- easrng 5y agoThere's still Tor browser which is a hardened Firefox fork.
- duped 5y agoMozilla laid off the Servo team over a year ago, and it was never more friendly to embed
- sb057 5y agoMozilla axed the Servo team and the project is dead in the water as far as anyone can tell.
- bhelkey 5y agoIn this thread Servo is axed and Servo is finished. It appears that the servo team was fired but the repo is still seeing some development [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/directhex/status/1293352458308198401?s=19 https://twitter.com/directhex/status/1293352458308198401?s=1...
- kitsunesoba 5y agoThis is bigger than some think. There were a lot more Gecko browsers back when you didn’t have to buy into XUL/XULRunner or fork Firefox to use it. RIP Camino and K-Meleon.
- skinnymuch 5y agoServo is finished. A debugger tool, Replay.io, featured here, that I use, is a Firefox/Gecko fork. Which is nice.
- bhelkey 5y agoIn this thread Servo is axed and Servo is finished. It appears that the servo team was fired but the repo is still seeing some development [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/directhex/status/1293352458308198401?s=19 https://twitter.com/directhex/status/1293352458308198401?s=1...