5 ms·

It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward we

It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward were great. It was really inspiring to see that such a cool R&D project was possible in a space as uncompetitive as web browsers.

mariusor 4y ago
I wish the first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser. To break the monopoly of WebKit/Blink browsers we need a competing rendering engine that is being developed outside the Google/Alphabet umbrella.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  Exactly - there are cases there where it wouldn't matter too much that it isn't complete yet.
- fabrice_d 4y ago
  Servo has always been easy to embed. Basically the host needs to provide a GL surface and input events, and gets some callbacks from Servo. Maybe I should revive the Gonk port[0]... [0] https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/ https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser That's the case. From homepage: > Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards.
  - mariusor 4y ago
    I thought that's the old blurb. In the article they specifically mention they want to work on CSS2: > The focus for 2023 is to improve the situation of the layout system in Servo, with the initial goal of getting basic CSS2 layout working. But seeing another comment in the thread, it looks like that was the last thing the developers that will be sponsored were working on anyway, so it makes sense to pick up where they have left off.
detaro 4y ago
How was Servo "shackled to Gecko"?
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  It was far obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. The decision to port WebRender came more or less at the same time when it was decided that Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage. It wasn't too hard to read between the lines for what was happening especially considering how political Mozilla is from the inside. The decision to stop the project some time later wasn't much of a surprise from then on.
  - orra 4y ago
    > It was far [from] obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. I don't know why you're so surprised. Creating a browser rendering engine with full feature parity is an absolutely gigantic project. Of course successful modules were merged into Gecko. > Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage. Mozilla doesn't have the same financial clout as Google. Of course Mozilla wanted a way to monetise Servo. R&D is great but they can't spend on R&D indefinitely.
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      > Creating a browser rendering engine with full feature parity is an absolutely gigantic project. So? Gecko was a mess and they had something actually exciting on their hand which was mostly untainted by their branding. They could have bet on it rather than chose to die a slow death while their money trickles to their highly pay executive team. > Of course Mozilla wanted a way to monetise Servo. R&D is great but they can't spend on R&D indefinitely. If that’s what they were looking for, that’s retrospectively an extremely poor decision. There was no money in VR. The issue with Mozilla management is that they have been so consistently terrible you never know if they are genuinely malicious or just completely inept. I generally feel little sympathy for Mozilla. They killed all their interesting projects, squandered money in dubious half-assed investments and managed to make themselves hard to deal with as a community member through a combination of weird rigidity and repeated communication mismanagement. I would be very happy to see Servo find a new lease on life however. That’s what great R&D looks like.
tomstockmail 4y ago
One of Igalia's, the team funding this new Servo development, projects is Servo-based Wolvic[1] which is a continuation of the Firefox VR project: >A few months ago, we announced we would be taking over stewardship of what was then the Firefox Reality project, spinning off a new browser based on Reality’s foundations that would follow its own evolutionary path: Wolvic. [1] https://www.igalia.com/2022/07/08/Wolvic-1.0.html https://www.igalia.com/2022/07/08/Wolvic-1.0.html
- TingPing 4y ago
  Wolvic uses Gecko.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vfclists 4y ago
If its any consolation Mozilla will never threaten the browser engine that is used by the company that provides the lion's share of its income, just saying.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Technically Mozilla incomes come from being a foil to Google for an hypothetical antitrust probe. At this point both Gecko and Firefox are utterly irrelevant.

mariusor 4y ago

I wish the first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser. To break the monopoly of WebKit/Blink browsers we need a competing rendering engine that is being developed outside the Google/Alphabet umbrella.

stuaxo 4y ago
Exactly - there are cases there where it wouldn't matter too much that it isn't complete yet.
fabrice_d 4y ago
Servo has always been easy to embed. Basically the host needs to provide a GL surface and input events, and gets some callbacks from Servo. Maybe I should revive the Gonk port[0]... [0] https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/ https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser That's the case. From homepage: > Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards.
- mariusor 4y ago
  I thought that's the old blurb. In the article they specifically mention they want to work on CSS2: > The focus for 2023 is to improve the situation of the layout system in Servo, with the initial goal of getting basic CSS2 layout working. But seeing another comment in the thread, it looks like that was the last thing the developers that will be sponsored were working on anyway, so it makes sense to pick up where they have left off.

detaro 4y ago

How was Servo "shackled to Gecko"?

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
It was far obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. The decision to port WebRender came more or less at the same time when it was decided that Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage. It wasn't too hard to read between the lines for what was happening especially considering how political Mozilla is from the inside. The decision to stop the project some time later wasn't much of a surprise from then on.
- orra 4y ago
  > It was far [from] obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. I don't know why you're so surprised. Creating a browser rendering engine with full feature parity is an absolutely gigantic project. Of course successful modules were merged into Gecko. > Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage. Mozilla doesn't have the same financial clout as Google. Of course Mozilla wanted a way to monetise Servo. R&D is great but they can't spend on R&D indefinitely.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    > Creating a browser rendering engine with full feature parity is an absolutely gigantic project. So? Gecko was a mess and they had something actually exciting on their hand which was mostly untainted by their branding. They could have bet on it rather than chose to die a slow death while their money trickles to their highly pay executive team. > Of course Mozilla wanted a way to monetise Servo. R&D is great but they can't spend on R&D indefinitely. If that’s what they were looking for, that’s retrospectively an extremely poor decision. There was no money in VR. The issue with Mozilla management is that they have been so consistently terrible you never know if they are genuinely malicious or just completely inept. I generally feel little sympathy for Mozilla. They killed all their interesting projects, squandered money in dubious half-assed investments and managed to make themselves hard to deal with as a community member through a combination of weird rigidity and repeated communication mismanagement. I would be very happy to see Servo find a new lease on life however. That’s what great R&D looks like.

tomstockmail 4y ago

One of Igalia's, the team funding this new Servo development, projects is Servo-based Wolvic[1] which is a continuation of the Firefox VR project: >A few months ago, we announced we would be taking over stewardship of what was then the Firefox Reality project, spinning off a new browser based on Reality’s foundations that would follow its own evolutionary path: Wolvic. [1] https://www.igalia.com/2022/07/08/Wolvic-1.0.html https://www.igalia.com/2022/07/08/Wolvic-1.0.html

TingPing 4y ago
Wolvic uses Gecko.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

vfclists 4y ago

If its any consolation Mozilla will never threaten the browser engine that is used by the company that provides the lion's share of its income, just saying.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Technically Mozilla incomes come from being a foil to Google for an hypothetical antitrust probe. At this point both Gecko and Firefox are utterly irrelevant.