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Is there any plan at Mozilla to eventually use Servo for Firefox or did them basically stopping working on it end any hope of that? Is the Servo team’s plan to

Is there any plan at Mozilla to eventually use Servo for Firefox or did them basically stopping working on it end any hope of that? Is the Servo team’s plan to build a new browser around it? It definitely could get interesting soon, I’ve been keenly watching the development of the Ladybird browser (which is also a from-scratch engine) so if there were potentially two viable new browser engines over the next few years that could really shake things up!

nicoburns 3y ago
Mozilla have already integrated a few key servo components into Firefox. Notably webrender, the rendering backend, and stylo, the style system. But they’ve effectively dropped all servo development at this point, and are not working on it further.
- tmikaeld 3y ago
  Huh? Why would they drop development of key components to their main product? What is Mozilla without Firefox? Update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkIX5ryZZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkIX5ryZZ4 Basically, Mozilla gave Servo employees the foot and the project was taken over by the linux foundation. Servo dev has been restarted (mostly) during 2023 and the changed Firefox made to their servo implemementation is now being added to servo in batches (ongoing). So Servo team is aiming to become a full featured (standalone) web platform (browser).
  - robin_reala 3y ago
    They integrated what they felt was worthwhile, and continue to develop and support those pieces internally to Firefox.
  - zaphar 3y ago
    Servo is not Firefox. It was always a testbed research platform. Stopping development of Servo does not mean stopping development of Firefox.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Longhanks 3y ago
    > What is Mozilla without Firefox? De facto? Google's puppet company to keep regulators happy.
    - chimeracoder 3y ago
      > De facto? Google's puppet company to keep regulators happy. If you think that's the case, then Google is clearly failing at that goal, since they've aggressively taken browser share directly from Firefox users to the point where Firefox may no longer be supported by government services.
  - kramerger 3y ago
    > project was taken over by the linux foundation Why? What is role of Linux Foundation anyway? (Beside spending members tons of spam and completely ignore GDPR?)
    - fabrice_d 3y ago
      Their role is mostly being a fiscal host to receive donations. Servo moved to the Linux Foundation Europe recently (https://servo.org/slides/2023-04-25-servo-and-linux-foundation-europe/ https://servo.org/slides/2023-04-25-servo-and-linux-foundati...), which should make it easier to receive grants from EU programs - this is a good thing!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cxr 3y ago
The undue focus and almost wistful romanticization/fetishization of Servo is frankly weird, especially when it comes from people with only a tenuous grasp of (let alone hands-on relationship with) browser engine internals. I'm talking about tech news writers and kind-of-but-not-really technical commenters on e.g. Reddit who confabulate their own lore in the spirit of those press accounts, etc. Firefox uses Gecko as its browser engine. The worthwhile parts of Servo are already in Firefox by way of Gecko. Servo is not The Answer to all of life's problems. Or, to answer your question more bluntly: "No. Stop asking."
- Ygg2 3y ago
  > Firefox uses Gecko as its browser engine. The worthwhile parts of Servo are already in Firefox by way of Gecko. And Gecko has been notoriously unembeddable. Which kinda helped the whole CEF spread. Not to mention Mozilla basically kneecapped Servo and Firefox by firing most of its devs in a purge.
  - crotchfire 3y ago
    Mozilla needs to hear this more often. There is only one browser, because browsers need to be embeddable, and Firefox isn't.
    - lmeyerov 3y ago
      Interesting to work through that On its face, it's a tough sustainability position for an org of Mozilla's size b/c browser revenue - today - is from controlling the search bar (and maybe now payments APIs?). By making Firefox embeddable, Mozilla gives that revenue to whoever is doing the embedding. Ex: Brave <> Chrome engine. Building for embedding developers can be super distracting if no sustainability, which isn't a problem for Google: They still make money from embedding by owning the embedding environments like Android. AFAICT, Mozilla failed to land in sizeable markets there. They tried to own & partner in the embedding envs -- e.g., FirefoxOS -- so maybe the trick is to get a more generous rev share for phone vendors wanting to break free of Google? Historically didn't seem to really work out, but maybe genAI w/ consumer/prosumer-grade UIs is reopening that door. Evolutions like that in turn may take quite an engineering & culture rethink as well, not easy to turn such a big & decentralized ship. I'll keep rooting for them!
capableweb 3y ago
> Is there any plan at Mozilla to eventually use Servo for Firefox or did them basically stopping working on it end any hope of that? Initially, I think Servo was never meant to be integrated wholesale into anything. It was a experiment playground to evaluate ideas without having them coupled to mainline Firefox, and be able to iterate on things quickly. Once the ideas were validated, they were integrated into Firefox without pulling in their entirety of Servo. The "Quantum Render project" is one example of this, where the WebRender compositor was first created in Servo, and eventually integrated into Firefox mainline.
- nicce 3y ago
  I remember the Quantum hype. Time flies. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/57 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...
  - worik 3y ago
    Hype? I guess It made Firefox competitive again
    - nicce 3y ago
      Hype can be deserved, not always dismissive
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    Yeah, incredible that there was a brief period of time where Mozilla almost made Firefox exciting again.

nicoburns 3y ago

Mozilla have already integrated a few key servo components into Firefox. Notably webrender, the rendering backend, and stylo, the style system. But they’ve effectively dropped all servo development at this point, and are not working on it further.

tmikaeld 3y ago
Huh? Why would they drop development of key components to their main product? What is Mozilla without Firefox? Update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkIX5ryZZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkIX5ryZZ4 Basically, Mozilla gave Servo employees the foot and the project was taken over by the linux foundation. Servo dev has been restarted (mostly) during 2023 and the changed Firefox made to their servo implemementation is now being added to servo in batches (ongoing). So Servo team is aiming to become a full featured (standalone) web platform (browser).
- robin_reala 3y ago
  They integrated what they felt was worthwhile, and continue to develop and support those pieces internally to Firefox.
- zaphar 3y ago
  Servo is not Firefox. It was always a testbed research platform. Stopping development of Servo does not mean stopping development of Firefox.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Longhanks 3y ago
  > What is Mozilla without Firefox? De facto? Google's puppet company to keep regulators happy.
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > De facto? Google's puppet company to keep regulators happy. If you think that's the case, then Google is clearly failing at that goal, since they've aggressively taken browser share directly from Firefox users to the point where Firefox may no longer be supported by government services.
- kramerger 3y ago
  > project was taken over by the linux foundation Why? What is role of Linux Foundation anyway? (Beside spending members tons of spam and completely ignore GDPR?)
  - fabrice_d 3y ago
    Their role is mostly being a fiscal host to receive donations. Servo moved to the Linux Foundation Europe recently (https://servo.org/slides/2023-04-25-servo-and-linux-foundation-europe/ https://servo.org/slides/2023-04-25-servo-and-linux-foundati...), which should make it easier to receive grants from EU programs - this is a good thing!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cxr 3y ago

The undue focus and almost wistful romanticization/fetishization of Servo is frankly weird, especially when it comes from people with only a tenuous grasp of (let alone hands-on relationship with) browser engine internals. I'm talking about tech news writers and kind-of-but-not-really technical commenters on e.g. Reddit who confabulate their own lore in the spirit of those press accounts, etc. Firefox uses Gecko as its browser engine. The worthwhile parts of Servo are already in Firefox by way of Gecko. Servo is not The Answer to all of life's problems. Or, to answer your question more bluntly: "No. Stop asking."

Ygg2 3y ago
> Firefox uses Gecko as its browser engine. The worthwhile parts of Servo are already in Firefox by way of Gecko. And Gecko has been notoriously unembeddable. Which kinda helped the whole CEF spread. Not to mention Mozilla basically kneecapped Servo and Firefox by firing most of its devs in a purge.
- crotchfire 3y ago
  Mozilla needs to hear this more often. There is only one browser, because browsers need to be embeddable, and Firefox isn't.
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    Interesting to work through that On its face, it's a tough sustainability position for an org of Mozilla's size b/c browser revenue - today - is from controlling the search bar (and maybe now payments APIs?). By making Firefox embeddable, Mozilla gives that revenue to whoever is doing the embedding. Ex: Brave <> Chrome engine. Building for embedding developers can be super distracting if no sustainability, which isn't a problem for Google: They still make money from embedding by owning the embedding environments like Android. AFAICT, Mozilla failed to land in sizeable markets there. They tried to own & partner in the embedding envs -- e.g., FirefoxOS -- so maybe the trick is to get a more generous rev share for phone vendors wanting to break free of Google? Historically didn't seem to really work out, but maybe genAI w/ consumer/prosumer-grade UIs is reopening that door. Evolutions like that in turn may take quite an engineering & culture rethink as well, not easy to turn such a big & decentralized ship. I'll keep rooting for them!

capableweb 3y ago

> Is there any plan at Mozilla to eventually use Servo for Firefox or did them basically stopping working on it end any hope of that? Initially, I think Servo was never meant to be integrated wholesale into anything. It was a experiment playground to evaluate ideas without having them coupled to mainline Firefox, and be able to iterate on things quickly. Once the ideas were validated, they were integrated into Firefox without pulling in their entirety of Servo. The "Quantum Render project" is one example of this, where the WebRender compositor was first created in Servo, and eventually integrated into Firefox mainline.

nicce 3y ago
I remember the Quantum hype. Time flies. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/57 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...
- worik 3y ago
  Hype? I guess It made Firefox competitive again
  - nicce 3y ago
    Hype can be deserved, not always dismissive
- insanitybit 3y ago
  Yeah, incredible that there was a brief period of time where Mozilla almost made Firefox exciting again.