4 ms·

Of all the baffling decisions Mozilla made over the past few years, abandoning Servo is the most incomprehensible one. Servo was a critical open source project,

by p-e-w 4y ago

Of all the baffling decisions Mozilla made over the past few years, abandoning Servo is the most incomprehensible one. Servo was a critical open source project, and had the potential to decide whether the "open web" will still be a thing 10 years from now. Unless continuing to work on Servo was literally threatening Mozilla's existence, cancelling it doesn't make any sense from a long-term perspective. Seeing this announcement, I'm cautiously optimistic about Servo's future, but it's hard to imagine it ever again picking up the momentum it once had. And considering that the web platform is becoming ever more complex, any hope of disrupting the browser engine oligopoly is probably lost by now.

ilyt 4y ago
If someone wanted to sneaklily ruin open source project and make sure it will never recover marketshare, Mozilla's decisionmaking would be basically instruction manual.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  Really makes you wonder, doesn't it? Intelligence agencies have budgets measured in the tens of billions of dollars, and an obvious interest in all security-critical software being controlled by "friendly" corporate entities. So, which one is the "conspiracy theory": That Firefox and similar software is being actively sabotaged by three-letter agencies, or that those agencies have nothing to do with Firefox's downfall despite that downfall furthering their goals? Somehow, the second option seems even less likely than the first.
  - Luker88 4y ago
    > Intelligence agencies No need to think about intelligence agencies, classic corporate greed is more than enough. Even without bribes Google did put a lot of money in mozilla, it takes very little to give hints like "do this or the money goes away". And then there's always classic incompetence, that can be indistinguishable from malice.
    - p-e-w 4y ago
      > Even without bribes Google did put a lot of money in mozilla, it takes very little to give hints like "do this or the money goes away". That could backfire pretty badly for Google though, if it became public. Not to mention, keeping a viable competitor is actually in Google's interest, because it helps them avoid antitrust action. Also, Mozilla has alternatives to Google for funding, such as Bing, which IIRC they had a lucrative deal with in the past.
      - vintermann 4y ago
        They need a minimum viable competitor. Big enough to stop significant claims of monopoly, but no bigger.
        ilyt 4y ago
        Well, it most likely is too small for that now.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Google pays mozilla so a huge monopoly lawsuit can be prevented. It is as critical to google as is to mozilla. These conteos are baseless.
silisili 4y ago
Mozilla insidiously turned from a tech org to a social justice org, which really made me sad. There's room in the world for both, but that particular co-opting was rather hard to watch. I feel at this point the organization runs on 90% counting on misleading donors, much like Wikipedia.
kaba0 4y ago
So they should have financed two independent browser engines as an already thin team, when not even Microsoft could manage a single engine? I am honestly baffled why open source projects are held to such Herculean standards.
- silisili 4y ago
  When you make all of your money from a browser, yes, you should focus all of your money there. Whether or not to finance two engines is up to the org, who have a proven track record of doing the worst possible thing, so why not.
- realusername 4y ago
  Edge's engine was okay at the end, they just decided that strategically it wasn't worth it.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  As components of servo became ready they were brought into Firefox, so this was the Firefox slowly getting rewritten with rust, a better multi threading and memory safety story.
- lenkite 4y ago
  Edge was amazing - its epub reader was super-fantabulous to the extent that it became my regular ebook reader. But Microsoft's boring CEO decided it was not a strategic use of developer effort and killed it. Edge should have been a cross platform browser from the start and it would have been a serious competitor to Chrome.
the_third_wave 4y ago
Mozilla-the-organisation became another victim of the social justice revolution when they ousted Brendan Eich and gave full reign to Mitchell Baker who - apart from increasing her own salary to unprecedented and certainly undeserved heights - steered the organisation away from its main goal of developing web technology towards social justice goals. She needs to be ousted before it is too late - if it isn't too late already.
aseipp 4y ago
> and had the potential to decide whether the "open web" will still be a thing 10 years from now. Not even close, but it's nice wishful thinking. The last thing that is holding back the tide of a Chrome-only web at this point is, ironically, Safari, especially since it is forced on iOS platforms. And you have people on this website and many others who actively want that to go away for various reasons! But Servo was never going to create the kind of platform leverage necessary to determine the future of "an open web" in any way like that, unless you think Google or Apple was going to adopt it. They weren't -- even ignoring the politics, multiple implementations are part of the deal with the Web, so for Google and Apple leveraging their existing verticals helps make the pill easier to swallow. The only viable alternative outcome, which is "Servo wholesale replaces parts of Gecko", would have left Mozilla in more or less the same spot they're in right now, with some shored up technical polish. That doesn't change anything in the grand scheme, though, no matter how much people here want to think otherwise. They would have remained where they are and continued to be just as marginal as you think they are now -- or whatever you think now, it would have been just as true. People on here constantly cry about Mozilla because they have their bizarre weird bones to pick (social justice blah blah, taking away unsigned extensions is a war crime, version number inflation -- it's all the same stupid forum bullshit that existed on Slashdot in 2004), whatever, but it doesn't really matter. The reality is nothing Mozilla has done in the past 15 years mattered as much as Google aggressively pushing Chrome did, by leveraging their existing moat on the web. Google might even pay for that in court at some point down the line, but as it stands right now, Mozilla could have funded 10 Servo-like projects and done everything every Hacker News poster wanted, and it wouldn't have made even the slightest change in this outcome. That said, Servo is still a very welcome project for many other reasons, so I'm glad to see it being picked back up. But don't kid yourself. Some technical spit-shine was never going to be the deciding keystone of the "open web" and its politics. That's just putting the cart before the horse.

by p-e-w 4y ago

ilyt 4y ago

If someone wanted to sneaklily ruin open source project and make sure it will never recover marketshare, Mozilla's decisionmaking would be basically instruction manual.

p-e-w 4y ago
Really makes you wonder, doesn't it? Intelligence agencies have budgets measured in the tens of billions of dollars, and an obvious interest in all security-critical software being controlled by "friendly" corporate entities. So, which one is the "conspiracy theory": That Firefox and similar software is being actively sabotaged by three-letter agencies, or that those agencies have nothing to do with Firefox's downfall despite that downfall furthering their goals? Somehow, the second option seems even less likely than the first.
- Luker88 4y ago
  > Intelligence agencies No need to think about intelligence agencies, classic corporate greed is more than enough. Even without bribes Google did put a lot of money in mozilla, it takes very little to give hints like "do this or the money goes away". And then there's always classic incompetence, that can be indistinguishable from malice.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    > Even without bribes Google did put a lot of money in mozilla, it takes very little to give hints like "do this or the money goes away". That could backfire pretty badly for Google though, if it became public. Not to mention, keeping a viable competitor is actually in Google's interest, because it helps them avoid antitrust action. Also, Mozilla has alternatives to Google for funding, such as Bing, which IIRC they had a lucrative deal with in the past.
    - vintermann 4y ago
      They need a minimum viable competitor. Big enough to stop significant claims of monopoly, but no bigger.
      - ilyt 4y ago
        Well, it most likely is too small for that now.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Google pays mozilla so a huge monopoly lawsuit can be prevented. It is as critical to google as is to mozilla. These conteos are baseless.

silisili 4y ago

Mozilla insidiously turned from a tech org to a social justice org, which really made me sad. There's room in the world for both, but that particular co-opting was rather hard to watch. I feel at this point the organization runs on 90% counting on misleading donors, much like Wikipedia.

kaba0 4y ago

So they should have financed two independent browser engines as an already thin team, when not even Microsoft could manage a single engine? I am honestly baffled why open source projects are held to such Herculean standards.

silisili 4y ago
When you make all of your money from a browser, yes, you should focus all of your money there. Whether or not to finance two engines is up to the org, who have a proven track record of doing the worst possible thing, so why not.
realusername 4y ago
Edge's engine was okay at the end, they just decided that strategically it wasn't worth it.
stuaxo 4y ago
As components of servo became ready they were brought into Firefox, so this was the Firefox slowly getting rewritten with rust, a better multi threading and memory safety story.
lenkite 4y ago
Edge was amazing - its epub reader was super-fantabulous to the extent that it became my regular ebook reader. But Microsoft's boring CEO decided it was not a strategic use of developer effort and killed it. Edge should have been a cross platform browser from the start and it would have been a serious competitor to Chrome.

the_third_wave 4y ago

Mozilla-the-organisation became another victim of the social justice revolution when they ousted Brendan Eich and gave full reign to Mitchell Baker who - apart from increasing her own salary to unprecedented and certainly undeserved heights - steered the organisation away from its main goal of developing web technology towards social justice goals. She needs to be ousted before it is too late - if it isn't too late already.

aseipp 4y ago

> and had the potential to decide whether the "open web" will still be a thing 10 years from now. Not even close, but it's nice wishful thinking. The last thing that is holding back the tide of a Chrome-only web at this point is, ironically, Safari, especially since it is forced on iOS platforms. And you have people on this website and many others who actively want that to go away for various reasons! But Servo was never going to create the kind of platform leverage necessary to determine the future of "an open web" in any way like that, unless you think Google or Apple was going to adopt it. They weren't -- even ignoring the politics, multiple implementations are part of the deal with the Web, so for Google and Apple leveraging their existing verticals helps make the pill easier to swallow. The only viable alternative outcome, which is "Servo wholesale replaces parts of Gecko", would have left Mozilla in more or less the same spot they're in right now, with some shored up technical polish. That doesn't change anything in the grand scheme, though, no matter how much people here want to think otherwise. They would have remained where they are and continued to be just as marginal as you think they are now -- or whatever you think now, it would have been just as true. People on here constantly cry about Mozilla because they have their bizarre weird bones to pick (social justice blah blah, taking away unsigned extensions is a war crime, version number inflation -- it's all the same stupid forum bullshit that existed on Slashdot in 2004), whatever, but it doesn't really matter. The reality is nothing Mozilla has done in the past 15 years mattered as much as Google aggressively pushing Chrome did, by leveraging their existing moat on the web. Google might even pay for that in court at some point down the line, but as it stands right now, Mozilla could have funded 10 Servo-like projects and done everything every Hacker News poster wanted, and it wouldn't have made even the slightest change in this outcome. That said, Servo is still a very welcome project for many other reasons, so I'm glad to see it being picked back up. But don't kid yourself. Some technical spit-shine was never going to be the deciding keystone of the "open web" and its politics. That's just putting the cart before the horse.