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Microsoft using blink/chromium is a good thing IMO. Once Apple is forced to open up iOS to other browsers, the blink/chromium monopoly will be complete. The o

Microsoft using blink/chromium is a good thing IMO. Once Apple is forced to open up iOS to other browsers, the blink/chromium monopoly will be complete. The only check on Google's ability to dictate what a web browser is will be the influence of companies like Microsoft, who are invested in blink/chromium and have the resources to potentially fork it if Google does something they don't like. I would not be surprised if we see a blink/chromium based Safari in the future so that Apple can join the party as well.

WorldMaker 4y ago
Your "dream" there fuels some of my nightmares. You may discount the potentially devasting threat of a possible massive ecological collapse from relying on one single implementation of web rendering because you don't think open source projects can die because "someone has the resources to potentially fork it", but open source is no guarantee. Beyond that, even discounting the threat of ecological collapse due to a single codebase, most of the web's best standards have come from lessons learned from multiple implementations. Without multiple implementations we lose a lot of guide rails away from bad single vendor "standards". Even if you think downstream players like Microsoft can act as a big enough check on Google's rubber stamp in standards boards like WHATWG, there's a huge difference between Microsoft developers evaluating potential standards because they have to build their own implementation of them versus just reading them in code review to accept an upstream PR they didn't need to write themselves. Also, as close to a single implementation as WebKit and Blink still sometimes are, it's hard to argue that Apple isn't already still a contributor to the WebKit/Blink/Chromium Hegemony. It doesn't matter if iOS opens up to other browsers or not right now while WebKit and Blink are still so close to mostly not matter. Apple is sort of protecting everyone from a true V8 (JS Engine) monopoly, but the renderer has always been close enough to not matter to those terrible web developers only testing websites in Chrome and assuming they work "everywhere" and supporting a "Works Only in Chrome" agenda.
- habith 4y ago
  Gecko and SpiderMonkey still exist, despite all of the terrible Blink/V8-only implementations out there…
  - int_19h 4y ago
    The problem is that the less popular they are, the more websites ignore them and optimize for Blink and WebKit.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Unfortunately, Firefox at this point looks like an incredible underdog or an endangered species.
    - trelane 4y ago
      again
    - fooker 4y ago
      That can be attributed to the Mozilla Foundation doing anything and everything other than focusing on Firefox.
      - WorldMaker 4y ago
        I tend to attribute it a lot more to Chrome's many years of deceitful marketing and bundling itself as adware in other products including Adobe products. Depending on your view of Firefox OS and if it was "Firefox enough", the "Mozilla Foundation doesn't focus enough on Firefox" is a relatively new complaint, but Firefox's biggest losses in market share happened well before even the Firefox OS effort. (And the Firefox OS effort was to try to keep a competitor against Android and its Chrome hegemony viable, so it was a direct reaction to lost market share. And the current complaints of "Mozilla isn't doing enough Firefox" today are all the complaints about the various ways that Mozilla is trying to diversify their revenue stream and that too seems obviously because of lost market share, not the cause of it.)
- gerash 4y ago
  Can someone explain what's the whole deal with this "diversity" of browser engines? Do people also like "diversity" in C++ compiler implementations with "diverse" quirks and bugs unique to each implementation? or the diversity of Python interpreters? What's the point other than incompatibility and head ache?
  - nailer 4y ago
    > Do people also like "diversity" in C++ compiler implementations Not a C developer (and welcome C devs to chime in here) but my understanding is yes. People were really happy when we went from GCC as being the standard compiler to LLVM. > the diversity of Python interpreters? Yes, back (a decade ago) when I used to hack Python it was pretty cool to be able to get IronPython and re-use a bunch of .net assemblies in a language I liked. Right now in TypeScript land people are enjoying deno provide competition to node.
    - gerash 4y ago
      For the GCC and Clang it's a case of a newer/better compiler architecture taking over an older one. At no point in time I see the advantage of keeping several implementations around just for the sake of "diversity".
      - nailer 4y ago
        Doesn't the new implementation have a better architecture? Isn't architecture the point they diverge?
      - WorldMaker 4y ago
        If it were just unequivocally "newer/better architecture" they wouldn't coexist side-by-side in the first place, one would have entirely replaced the other by now. Obviously, the differences between the two are much more complex than that. One reason they are expected to coexist for some time to come is exactly that a lot of Linux (in particular) applications and libraries require gcc specifics. The fact that there are "gcc specifics" that lock those applications and libraries to gcc and can't just "upgrade to the obviously newer/better architecture" is itself an argument for "diversity". C/C++ is "supposed to be" a portable language. If developers were keeping to standards and if clang were indeed objectively better architecture, then nothing should still be using gcc, right? Diversity is one way you encourage developers to stick to portable standards (because then they can use whichever compiler is fastest/better today and switch at-will as all the implementations compete to outperform each other).

WorldMaker 4y ago

Your "dream" there fuels some of my nightmares. You may discount the potentially devasting threat of a possible massive ecological collapse from relying on one single implementation of web rendering because you don't think open source projects can die because "someone has the resources to potentially fork it", but open source is no guarantee. Beyond that, even discounting the threat of ecological collapse due to a single codebase, most of the web's best standards have come from lessons learned from multiple implementations. Without multiple implementations we lose a lot of guide rails away from bad single vendor "standards". Even if you think downstream players like Microsoft can act as a big enough check on Google's rubber stamp in standards boards like WHATWG, there's a huge difference between Microsoft developers evaluating potential standards because they have to build their own implementation of them versus just reading them in code review to accept an upstream PR they didn't need to write themselves. Also, as close to a single implementation as WebKit and Blink still sometimes are, it's hard to argue that Apple isn't already still a contributor to the WebKit/Blink/Chromium Hegemony. It doesn't matter if iOS opens up to other browsers or not right now while WebKit and Blink are still so close to mostly not matter. Apple is sort of protecting everyone from a true V8 (JS Engine) monopoly, but the renderer has always been close enough to not matter to those terrible web developers only testing websites in Chrome and assuming they work "everywhere" and supporting a "Works Only in Chrome" agenda.

habith 4y ago
Gecko and SpiderMonkey still exist, despite all of the terrible Blink/V8-only implementations out there…
- int_19h 4y ago
  The problem is that the less popular they are, the more websites ignore them and optimize for Blink and WebKit.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Unfortunately, Firefox at this point looks like an incredible underdog or an endangered species.
  - trelane 4y ago
    again
  - fooker 4y ago
    That can be attributed to the Mozilla Foundation doing anything and everything other than focusing on Firefox.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      I tend to attribute it a lot more to Chrome's many years of deceitful marketing and bundling itself as adware in other products including Adobe products. Depending on your view of Firefox OS and if it was "Firefox enough", the "Mozilla Foundation doesn't focus enough on Firefox" is a relatively new complaint, but Firefox's biggest losses in market share happened well before even the Firefox OS effort. (And the Firefox OS effort was to try to keep a competitor against Android and its Chrome hegemony viable, so it was a direct reaction to lost market share. And the current complaints of "Mozilla isn't doing enough Firefox" today are all the complaints about the various ways that Mozilla is trying to diversify their revenue stream and that too seems obviously because of lost market share, not the cause of it.)
gerash 4y ago
Can someone explain what's the whole deal with this "diversity" of browser engines? Do people also like "diversity" in C++ compiler implementations with "diverse" quirks and bugs unique to each implementation? or the diversity of Python interpreters? What's the point other than incompatibility and head ache?
- nailer 4y ago
  > Do people also like "diversity" in C++ compiler implementations Not a C developer (and welcome C devs to chime in here) but my understanding is yes. People were really happy when we went from GCC as being the standard compiler to LLVM. > the diversity of Python interpreters? Yes, back (a decade ago) when I used to hack Python it was pretty cool to be able to get IronPython and re-use a bunch of .net assemblies in a language I liked. Right now in TypeScript land people are enjoying deno provide competition to node.
  - gerash 4y ago
    For the GCC and Clang it's a case of a newer/better compiler architecture taking over an older one. At no point in time I see the advantage of keeping several implementations around just for the sake of "diversity".
    - nailer 4y ago
      Doesn't the new implementation have a better architecture? Isn't architecture the point they diverge?
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      If it were just unequivocally "newer/better architecture" they wouldn't coexist side-by-side in the first place, one would have entirely replaced the other by now. Obviously, the differences between the two are much more complex than that. One reason they are expected to coexist for some time to come is exactly that a lot of Linux (in particular) applications and libraries require gcc specifics. The fact that there are "gcc specifics" that lock those applications and libraries to gcc and can't just "upgrade to the obviously newer/better architecture" is itself an argument for "diversity". C/C++ is "supposed to be" a portable language. If developers were keeping to standards and if clang were indeed objectively better architecture, then nothing should still be using gcc, right? Diversity is one way you encourage developers to stick to portable standards (because then they can use whichever compiler is fastest/better today and switch at-will as all the implementations compete to outperform each other).