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HN: "Mozilla has too many side projects that don't make the browser better" Also HN: "Mozilla should spend more than a decade and tens of millions of dollars o

HN: "Mozilla has too many side projects that don't make the browser better" Also HN: "Mozilla should spend more than a decade and tens of millions of dollars on a brand new browser engine that has no hope of replacing Gecko before it reaches 100% compatibility with a spec thousands (tens of thousands?) of lines long, not to mention the kind of "quirks" you see with websites in the wild, while they already lag behind Google with the browser engine they already have." People like cool R&D projects, and that's understandable - I like Servo too. But the fact that it was really cool doesn't compensate for the fact that it was not going to be production-ready any time soon and in that light it's understandable why it was cancelled. While some parts of Servo ended up being so successful that they were merged into Firefox, a lot of what remained only in Servo (and not in Firefox) was nowhere close. The layout component was by far the least mature of any part of Servo at the time (unlike Stylo and WebRender, I mean) and in fact it was going through the early stages of a brand-new rewrite of that component at the time the project was cancelled, partly because the experimental architecture ended up not being very suitable. https://servo.org/blog/2023/04/13/layout-2013-vs-2020/ https://servo.org/blog/2023/04/13/layout-2013-vs-2020/

demurgos 2y ago
> that has no hope of replacing Gecko before it reaches 100% compatibility with a spec thousands (tens of thousands?) of lines long When Servo was still managed by Mozilla, they were able to merge some components incrementally into the Firefox. Most famously, Stylo and WebRender were first developed in Servo. They could have kept Servo for experimentation and merge parts incrementally. It may also have enabled better embedding supporting which is a weak point of Firefox compared to Chrome; which is a long-term solution to remain relevant.
- dralley 2y ago
  I covered that. Sure, Stylo and WebRender were successful enough that they made it into Firefox, but the Layout component was very much not. Servo was in the middle of a clean-slate rewrite of the layout component because the initial architecture chosen in 2013 wasn't very good. The CSS engine and rendering engine are a lot easier to swap out than the remaining parts. Again, I get why people like Servo, but "in 10 years, maybe we'll be able to take on Electron" isn't that great of a value proposition for a huge R&D project by a company already struggling to remain relevant with their core projects.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    > "in 10 years, maybe we'll be able to take on Electron" isn't that great of a value proposition Perhaps not, but "in 10 years, we'll have a browser that's significantly faster and safer than the competition" is how you plan to still be relevant 10 years from now.
    - jokethrowaway 2y ago
      As much as I love servo and rust, you can't compete with Google and Chrome. Certainly not on performance. On safety you have a chance because bugs happen.
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        If you think Servo can't compete with Chrome on performance, please watch this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTURkjYJ_uk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTURkjYJ_uk
    - dralley 2y ago
      The browser engine is not what makes Firefox "relevant" or not. Their competitors are Apple, Google and Microsoft. The marketing budget for Chrome is larger than Mozilla's entire budget. "Google" is synonymous with the entire internet for a large fraction of the non-technical population. Every device you could buy on the market whether a PC, a tablet or a phone has one of their competitors browsers already pre-installed. Their primary leverage is unique features and functional adblockers, neither of which is impacted by the layout engine. And again, you're taking away resources from something that is already behind right now. The canonical example of massive long-term rewrites being a bad idea for the business is literally the precursor to Firefox. Gecko can be refactored in-place, including into Rust if they decided to do so.
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        > Their primary leverage is unique features and functional adblockers, neither of which is impacted by the layout engine. Yes, unique features like being written in a memory safe language and depending on memory safe implementations of image and video decode libraries are exactly what I care about in an all-knowing sandbox which touches network services and runs untrusted code on my computer. > And again, you're taking away resources from something that is already behind right now. Disagree. You're talking about every Mozilla project that's not Servo. Firefox/Servo development is Mozilla's core competency. One which they've abandoned.
WD-42 2y ago
True, I guess investing in the future viability of your core product doesn’t fit with how modern corporations are run. They should just keep launching bookmarking and vpn services that might make money RIGHT NOW.
- dralley 2y ago
  Does anybody argue that Google is negligent for not doing a complete rewrite of Blink, rather than doing the same incremental software development as everyone else? Did they suffer from their choice to use WebKit in the very beginning rather than do their own thing?
  - poulpy123 2y ago
    Every time google kills a project they are bashed for it, there is (was?) even a website dedicated to projects killed by Google. And anyway the core of Google isn't chrome, it's Google search
  - WD-42 2y ago
    Why would they need a rewrite? Blink is the market leader. Meanwhile daily driving gecko becomes a worse experience by the hour.
    - cozzyd 2y ago
      Doesn't matter how much slower gecko is when most of what chrome is doing is loading ads.

demurgos 2y ago

> that has no hope of replacing Gecko before it reaches 100% compatibility with a spec thousands (tens of thousands?) of lines long When Servo was still managed by Mozilla, they were able to merge some components incrementally into the Firefox. Most famously, Stylo and WebRender were first developed in Servo. They could have kept Servo for experimentation and merge parts incrementally. It may also have enabled better embedding supporting which is a weak point of Firefox compared to Chrome; which is a long-term solution to remain relevant.

dralley 2y ago
I covered that. Sure, Stylo and WebRender were successful enough that they made it into Firefox, but the Layout component was very much not. Servo was in the middle of a clean-slate rewrite of the layout component because the initial architecture chosen in 2013 wasn't very good. The CSS engine and rendering engine are a lot easier to swap out than the remaining parts. Again, I get why people like Servo, but "in 10 years, maybe we'll be able to take on Electron" isn't that great of a value proposition for a huge R&D project by a company already struggling to remain relevant with their core projects.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  > "in 10 years, maybe we'll be able to take on Electron" isn't that great of a value proposition Perhaps not, but "in 10 years, we'll have a browser that's significantly faster and safer than the competition" is how you plan to still be relevant 10 years from now.
  - jokethrowaway 2y ago
    As much as I love servo and rust, you can't compete with Google and Chrome. Certainly not on performance. On safety you have a chance because bugs happen.
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      If you think Servo can't compete with Chrome on performance, please watch this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTURkjYJ_uk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTURkjYJ_uk
  - dralley 2y ago
    The browser engine is not what makes Firefox "relevant" or not. Their competitors are Apple, Google and Microsoft. The marketing budget for Chrome is larger than Mozilla's entire budget. "Google" is synonymous with the entire internet for a large fraction of the non-technical population. Every device you could buy on the market whether a PC, a tablet or a phone has one of their competitors browsers already pre-installed. Their primary leverage is unique features and functional adblockers, neither of which is impacted by the layout engine. And again, you're taking away resources from something that is already behind right now. The canonical example of massive long-term rewrites being a bad idea for the business is literally the precursor to Firefox. Gecko can be refactored in-place, including into Rust if they decided to do so.
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      > Their primary leverage is unique features and functional adblockers, neither of which is impacted by the layout engine. Yes, unique features like being written in a memory safe language and depending on memory safe implementations of image and video decode libraries are exactly what I care about in an all-knowing sandbox which touches network services and runs untrusted code on my computer. > And again, you're taking away resources from something that is already behind right now. Disagree. You're talking about every Mozilla project that's not Servo. Firefox/Servo development is Mozilla's core competency. One which they've abandoned.

WD-42 2y ago

True, I guess investing in the future viability of your core product doesn’t fit with how modern corporations are run. They should just keep launching bookmarking and vpn services that might make money RIGHT NOW.

dralley 2y ago
Does anybody argue that Google is negligent for not doing a complete rewrite of Blink, rather than doing the same incremental software development as everyone else? Did they suffer from their choice to use WebKit in the very beginning rather than do their own thing?
- poulpy123 2y ago
  Every time google kills a project they are bashed for it, there is (was?) even a website dedicated to projects killed by Google. And anyway the core of Google isn't chrome, it's Google search
- WD-42 2y ago
  Why would they need a rewrite? Blink is the market leader. Meanwhile daily driving gecko becomes a worse experience by the hour.
  - cozzyd 2y ago
    Doesn't matter how much slower gecko is when most of what chrome is doing is loading ads.