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Mozilla let go a large number of developers recently.

dralley 5y ago
They were, for the most part, not Firefox developers though. Most of them were working full time on Rust or research projects like Servo.
- dleslie 5y ago
  Servo was the experimental renderer that may have become the future renderer for Firefox. Without an experimental/skunkworks team the development of Firefox will remain iterative and focused on maintenance and feature parity. Firing the Servo team was Firefox tapping out. That's it. From here on out expect it to be nothing more than a vehicle to serve comarketing needs of the broader Mozilla organization.
  - dralley 5y ago
    I have commits in the Servo project, I know what it is. Probably better than you do. The parts of Servo that could easily be integrated in Firefox are already integrated into Firefox. The remaining parts, like the layout engine for example, had a lot of design flaws and they were in the early stages of completely rewriting it when the project was cancelled. https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020 https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020 So when you say "may have been", that needs to be read with the understanding that it literally would have been years before that investment _might_ pay off, and that's a hard sell when everyone is screaming that Firefox ought to be improved now. I'm disappointed about it nonetheless though, it was a fun and welcoming project for outsiders. And I thought that Pathfinder was pretty close to being usable, so that's disappointing too.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      I understood that those flaws existed. If Servo were just an iterative improvement those flaws would be scandalous, but the flaws are to be expected because it was a radical experiment. The whole point of having an experimental feature team is to have someone working on things that may not pay off, because some of the time those efforts will push the product forward by strides; AFAIK, Mozilla has no such team for Firefox anymore. Those opportunities to easily integrate experimental-borne improvements simply no longer exist for Mozilla. Firefox is a dead product; there's no serious efforts underway to meaningfully improve its user share. Mozilla is obviously, openly pivoting its focus towards other services and goals.

They were, for the most part, not Firefox developers though. Most of them were working full time on Rust or research projects like Servo.

dleslie 5y ago
Servo was the experimental renderer that may have become the future renderer for Firefox. Without an experimental/skunkworks team the development of Firefox will remain iterative and focused on maintenance and feature parity. Firing the Servo team was Firefox tapping out. That's it. From here on out expect it to be nothing more than a vehicle to serve comarketing needs of the broader Mozilla organization.
- dralley 5y ago
  I have commits in the Servo project, I know what it is. Probably better than you do. The parts of Servo that could easily be integrated in Firefox are already integrated into Firefox. The remaining parts, like the layout engine for example, had a lot of design flaws and they were in the early stages of completely rewriting it when the project was cancelled. https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020 https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020 So when you say "may have been", that needs to be read with the understanding that it literally would have been years before that investment _might_ pay off, and that's a hard sell when everyone is screaming that Firefox ought to be improved now. I'm disappointed about it nonetheless though, it was a fun and welcoming project for outsiders. And I thought that Pathfinder was pretty close to being usable, so that's disappointing too.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    I understood that those flaws existed. If Servo were just an iterative improvement those flaws would be scandalous, but the flaws are to be expected because it was a radical experiment. The whole point of having an experimental feature team is to have someone working on things that may not pay off, because some of the time those efforts will push the product forward by strides; AFAIK, Mozilla has no such team for Firefox anymore. Those opportunities to easily integrate experimental-borne improvements simply no longer exist for Mozilla. Firefox is a dead product; there's no serious efforts underway to meaningfully improve its user share. Mozilla is obviously, openly pivoting its focus towards other services and goals.