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Yet Another Chromium Fork. In a way, it's almost a shame Chrome was open sourced through Chromium. Maybe if it weren't, we'd have a healthier, more diverse brow

Yet Another Chromium Fork. In a way, it's almost a shame Chrome was open sourced through Chromium. Maybe if it weren't, we'd have a healthier, more diverse browser ecosystem.

Aeolun 5y ago
As much as I lament the same thing. I think it’s more likely we’d just have nothing.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 5y ago
  Maybe. There's no way to tell, of course.
  - runjake 5y ago
    Well, we could look at history. For example, Internet Explorer’s former dominance.
- yywwbbn 5y ago
  I doubt Chrome would be in a position it is if it wasn’t open source. After all blink just started off as a fork of webkit (which was a fork of KHTML..). Had they had to build a browser from scratch it would had taken them years to have something that could compete with IE, FF and Safari. Also Apple didn’t seem to be very interested in promoting the Windows version of Safari, so it was basically the only webkit browser most people would even has access to.
adamnemecek 5y ago
Writing a browser from scratch is hard.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Hard is underselling it. At this point it’s borderline impossible. It’s unlikely we will ever see a new browser.
  - p1peridine 5y ago
    Why, licensing/proprietary issues?
    - cyral 5y ago
      That's one. Just look at some of the specs that have to be implemented. There are so many most devs have probably never even heard of. It's really mind boggling the amount of work required to create a full browser from scratch. List of web APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API Canvas API spec: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/canvas.html https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/canvas.html Take one look at the docs for just rendering text and any sane developer would probably give up: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-3/ https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-3/
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      Web browsers are the most complex codebases in existence. Firefox contains more lines of code than Linux. It would require probably 100 developers just to keep up with new features being added. Then going back and catching up on the already existing components is virtually impossible. Mozilla had a project called Servo which aimed at replacing just a small slither of Firefox and the project ran for years with a huge monetary investment and eventually was canceled.
      - vladvasiliu 5y ago
        > Mozilla had a project called Servo which aimed at replacing just a small slither of Firefox and the project ran for years with a huge monetary investment and eventually was canceled. Haven't some parts of it been integrated in Firefox? The project does still seem to go on, although outside of Mozilla: https://github.com/servo/servo https://github.com/servo/servo
        Gigachad 5y ago
        I think some CSS stuff did get merged. But if you look at the insights tab you can see the project is moving at 3% of its previous rate. Mozilla got rid of the servo team so I assume it’s only hobbiests still working on it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Yet Another Chromium Fork. In a way, it's almost a shame Chrome was open sourced through Chromium. Maybe if it weren't, we'd have a healthier, more diverse browser ecosystem.

Aeolun 5y ago

As much as I lament the same thing. I think it’s more likely we’d just have nothing.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 5y ago
Maybe. There's no way to tell, of course.
- runjake 5y ago
  Well, we could look at history. For example, Internet Explorer’s former dominance.
yywwbbn 5y ago
I doubt Chrome would be in a position it is if it wasn’t open source. After all blink just started off as a fork of webkit (which was a fork of KHTML..). Had they had to build a browser from scratch it would had taken them years to have something that could compete with IE, FF and Safari. Also Apple didn’t seem to be very interested in promoting the Windows version of Safari, so it was basically the only webkit browser most people would even has access to.

adamnemecek 5y ago

Writing a browser from scratch is hard.

Gigachad 5y ago
Hard is underselling it. At this point it’s borderline impossible. It’s unlikely we will ever see a new browser.
- p1peridine 5y ago
  Why, licensing/proprietary issues?
  - cyral 5y ago
    That's one. Just look at some of the specs that have to be implemented. There are so many most devs have probably never even heard of. It's really mind boggling the amount of work required to create a full browser from scratch. List of web APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API Canvas API spec: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/canvas.html https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/canvas.html Take one look at the docs for just rendering text and any sane developer would probably give up: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-3/ https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-3/
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Web browsers are the most complex codebases in existence. Firefox contains more lines of code than Linux. It would require probably 100 developers just to keep up with new features being added. Then going back and catching up on the already existing components is virtually impossible. Mozilla had a project called Servo which aimed at replacing just a small slither of Firefox and the project ran for years with a huge monetary investment and eventually was canceled.
    - vladvasiliu 5y ago
      > Mozilla had a project called Servo which aimed at replacing just a small slither of Firefox and the project ran for years with a huge monetary investment and eventually was canceled. Haven't some parts of it been integrated in Firefox? The project does still seem to go on, although outside of Mozilla: https://github.com/servo/servo https://github.com/servo/servo
      - Gigachad 5y ago
        I think some CSS stuff did get merged. But if you look at the insights tab you can see the project is moving at 3% of its previous rate. Mozilla got rid of the servo team so I assume it’s only hobbiests still working on it.

deleted 5y ago

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