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I think that's a bit too far - for example, Thunderbird is a great web client. I do think they should have found a way to hold onto the Servo team and make that

I think that's a bit too far - for example, Thunderbird is a great web client. I do think they should have found a way to hold onto the Servo team and make that engine more useable and better than the base chromium engine. If they had been able to keep the Rust foundation on board, it would have also made sense. However, I do agree that their leadership has made terrible decisions and they've absolutely focused on the wrong products.

Brakenshire 5y ago
The obvious thing to do was continue to invest in Servo. If they could have produced a parallel layout engine, which could provide app like animations without fiddling on desktop and Android, and then make that easy to embed, they could have made real inroads into blink/webkit.
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  Yeah but Mozilla has been subverted, since the current CEO got on they are a lightning rod for Google against browser monopoly legal attention, while trying everything possible to neuter them from being a real threat. Thus she cut the thing most likely to provide a real threat to chrome.
- ameminator 5y ago
  You're absolutely right. The fact that so many other browsers are based on chromium, is a blatant condemnation of how the Servo engine has not met an important demand. If Servo was properly useable outside of Firefox, we would have seen more open-source browsers use it.
selfhoster11 5y ago
Thunderbird was on my mind when I was writing this. I think it ultimately comes down to whether they can afford any missteps or side concerns at all - and if the answer is "no", then Thunderbird must be cut loose no matter its value. It can always be mothballed until the times get better, or it can even be given "on loan" for some fixed duration to another trusted FOSS foundation and re-adopted when the time is up. As good as Thunderbird is, I wouldn't want it to be anywhere near the top of Mozilla's priorities list right now.
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  Thunderbird has always been their opportunity to demonstrate their stack is a general ecosystem, but it's headaches show that their stack isn't a good ecosystem for anything that isn't Firefox. They shouldn't be trying to build thunderbird for its own sake, they should be demonstrating their equivalent for electron and feel pressured to make it no worse for users than the current Thunderbird, but attractive/stable enough for outside developers to choose over electron/etc.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    For the record, I disagree with the assessment that they should be building an Electron email client. Most users are already using a paid/monetised Electron email client, a soon to become Electron client (like is supposedly planned for Microsoft Outlook), or a webmail interface. Electron clients cannot compete on deep technically obscure feature sets, simply because they didn't have 20 years to accumulate them. They cannot compete on latency. Thunderbird should remain native.
    - smorgusofborg 5y ago
      I think you are using dichotomies inappropriately to invoke the standard biases that have trapped the Mozilla community. Something that competes with electron is not electron. Non-native includes RLBox which is now going to secure Firefox according to Mozilla. Mozilla is on record regretting thunderbird's poor Integration with the Firefox stack as a trial for thunderbird devs and a tax slowing Firefox engineering. This holding pattern has gone on and on because no one wants to establish the correct API layer to maintain as an inherent tax for Firefox engineering that enables all F/OSS to reuse the NS* stack correctly with good documentation. In the long term this means chromium has an ecosystem and Mozilla's stable ecosystem consists of just one browser. However flawed chromium is, it has no competition for most developers and competition with WebKit for a handful.
    - iggldiggl 5y ago
      > Thunderbird should remain native. Er, you do realise that Thunderbird isn't exactly native, either, what with it being based on XUL (or whatever's still left of that these days) and Gecko?

Brakenshire 5y ago

The obvious thing to do was continue to invest in Servo. If they could have produced a parallel layout engine, which could provide app like animations without fiddling on desktop and Android, and then make that easy to embed, they could have made real inroads into blink/webkit.

hackerfromthefu 5y ago
Yeah but Mozilla has been subverted, since the current CEO got on they are a lightning rod for Google against browser monopoly legal attention, while trying everything possible to neuter them from being a real threat. Thus she cut the thing most likely to provide a real threat to chrome.
ameminator 5y ago
You're absolutely right. The fact that so many other browsers are based on chromium, is a blatant condemnation of how the Servo engine has not met an important demand. If Servo was properly useable outside of Firefox, we would have seen more open-source browsers use it.

selfhoster11 5y ago

Thunderbird was on my mind when I was writing this. I think it ultimately comes down to whether they can afford any missteps or side concerns at all - and if the answer is "no", then Thunderbird must be cut loose no matter its value. It can always be mothballed until the times get better, or it can even be given "on loan" for some fixed duration to another trusted FOSS foundation and re-adopted when the time is up. As good as Thunderbird is, I wouldn't want it to be anywhere near the top of Mozilla's priorities list right now.

smorgusofborg 5y ago
Thunderbird has always been their opportunity to demonstrate their stack is a general ecosystem, but it's headaches show that their stack isn't a good ecosystem for anything that isn't Firefox. They shouldn't be trying to build thunderbird for its own sake, they should be demonstrating their equivalent for electron and feel pressured to make it no worse for users than the current Thunderbird, but attractive/stable enough for outside developers to choose over electron/etc.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  For the record, I disagree with the assessment that they should be building an Electron email client. Most users are already using a paid/monetised Electron email client, a soon to become Electron client (like is supposedly planned for Microsoft Outlook), or a webmail interface. Electron clients cannot compete on deep technically obscure feature sets, simply because they didn't have 20 years to accumulate them. They cannot compete on latency. Thunderbird should remain native.
  - smorgusofborg 5y ago
    I think you are using dichotomies inappropriately to invoke the standard biases that have trapped the Mozilla community. Something that competes with electron is not electron. Non-native includes RLBox which is now going to secure Firefox according to Mozilla. Mozilla is on record regretting thunderbird's poor Integration with the Firefox stack as a trial for thunderbird devs and a tax slowing Firefox engineering. This holding pattern has gone on and on because no one wants to establish the correct API layer to maintain as an inherent tax for Firefox engineering that enables all F/OSS to reuse the NS* stack correctly with good documentation. In the long term this means chromium has an ecosystem and Mozilla's stable ecosystem consists of just one browser. However flawed chromium is, it has no competition for most developers and competition with WebKit for a handful.
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    > Thunderbird should remain native. Er, you do realise that Thunderbird isn't exactly native, either, what with it being based on XUL (or whatever's still left of that these days) and Gecko?