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Interesting. Igalia is going to have 4 people working on Servo starting this month: https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/ https://people

by jyxent 4y ago

Interesting. Igalia is going to have 4 people working on Servo starting this month: https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/ https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards. What is the business use case for this? As in, if each of those people costs $100k/yr, that's $400k/yr+ How will this product make (whoever is paying for it) money (profit)? If that answer is "it won't, not everything needs to make money", that's totally fine. Could you then explain why this company is willing to shell out at least $400k/yr to have 4 people work on it? What do they get out of it (if not money)?
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Might want to read the company's profile for more info: https://www.igalia.com/about/history https://www.igalia.com/about/history They are an open source software consultancy. "Since 2010, Igalia has become the world’s leading web engines consultancy, and has been a top contributor to the WebKit and Chromium projects. Thanks to our excellent work, Igalia has since been accepted as a member of associations including the W3C, GENIVI, Automotive Grade Linux, the Khronos Group, and ECMA International." But off the top of my head with their focus on embeddable IOT devices, that alone is a good business case. Having CSS/HTML available to render to OLEDs, eink displays, smart watches, etc, would be super nice.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    What does this buy for your IoT use case that Chromium doesn’t?
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      Chromium doesn't run on most embeddables and is very memory and power hungry.
      - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
        How big is the market for people running watered down web browsers on embeddables? Do you have any example usecases off the top of your head?
        chrisco255 4y ago
        Sorry, I'm not going to write a whitepaper for you, you'll have to do that research yourself if that's a field you're interested in getting into. I already mentioned smart watches, but could be e-readers, e-ink tablets like Remarkable, diagnostic screens, etc.
    - flohofwoe 4y ago
      Less bloat? How easy is it to strip Chromium down if you only want HTML+CSS for instance? (I would guess: not trivial)
- fabrice_d 4y ago
  They have mid-term goals at https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/#/8 https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/... : "Web engine for some narrow use cases in small embedded devices (IoT)" Given Igalia work on Webkit embedding, looks like they want to see if Servo could be a viable alternative in some contexts.
- captainmuon 4y ago
  So sad that something useful only gets done when there is a business case for it.

by jyxent 4y ago

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards. What is the business use case for this? As in, if each of those people costs $100k/yr, that's $400k/yr+ How will this product make (whoever is paying for it) money (profit)? If that answer is "it won't, not everything needs to make money", that's totally fine. Could you then explain why this company is willing to shell out at least $400k/yr to have 4 people work on it? What do they get out of it (if not money)?

chrisco255 4y ago
Might want to read the company's profile for more info: https://www.igalia.com/about/history https://www.igalia.com/about/history They are an open source software consultancy. "Since 2010, Igalia has become the world’s leading web engines consultancy, and has been a top contributor to the WebKit and Chromium projects. Thanks to our excellent work, Igalia has since been accepted as a member of associations including the W3C, GENIVI, Automotive Grade Linux, the Khronos Group, and ECMA International." But off the top of my head with their focus on embeddable IOT devices, that alone is a good business case. Having CSS/HTML available to render to OLEDs, eink displays, smart watches, etc, would be super nice.
- TylerE 4y ago
  What does this buy for your IoT use case that Chromium doesn’t?
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    Chromium doesn't run on most embeddables and is very memory and power hungry.
    - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
      How big is the market for people running watered down web browsers on embeddables? Do you have any example usecases off the top of your head?
      - chrisco255 4y ago
        Sorry, I'm not going to write a whitepaper for you, you'll have to do that research yourself if that's a field you're interested in getting into. I already mentioned smart watches, but could be e-readers, e-ink tablets like Remarkable, diagnostic screens, etc.
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Less bloat? How easy is it to strip Chromium down if you only want HTML+CSS for instance? (I would guess: not trivial)
fabrice_d 4y ago
They have mid-term goals at https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/#/8 https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/... : "Web engine for some narrow use cases in small embedded devices (IoT)" Given Igalia work on Webkit embedding, looks like they want to see if Servo could be a viable alternative in some contexts.
captainmuon 4y ago
So sad that something useful only gets done when there is a business case for it.