4 ms·

I have a hard time believing Brendan's pledge to diversity given Mozilla's non-support for Gecko embedding. There's a number of Gecko-based browsers, e.g. Cami

I have a hard time believing Brendan's pledge to diversity given Mozilla's non-support for Gecko embedding. There's a number of Gecko-based browsers, e.g. Camino, and they've left their users in the lurch by ending support for Gecko embedding: http://caminobrowser.org/blog/2011/#mozembedding http://caminobrowser.org/blog/2011/#mozembedding Mike Pinkerton has for years been voicing rightful criticism that Mozilla is focussing on Firefox and nothing else, see e.g. this interview of 2006: http://mozillamemory.org/detailview.php?id=7277 http://mozillamemory.org/detailview.php?id=7277 If Mozilla really wants diversity, why haven't they made an effort to make Gecko attractive for embedding, thus providing an alternative to WebKit? Instead they've done the exact opposite.

fpgeek 14y ago
> If Mozilla really wants diversity, why haven't they made an effort to make Gecko attractive for embedding, thus providing an alternative to WebKit? I think Mozilla's announcement makes their reasoning fairly clear: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embedding/c_NMcO-N8wo/discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin... My summary is: - The old embedding infrastructure was difficult to use and expensive to maintain - It was also a technical dead end - Better embedding infrastructure depended on complex architectural changes to Firefox - Firefox is Mozilla's bread-and-butter, in terms of visibility, influence and revenue - Mozilla has ambitious goals and does not have infinite resources Forget for a moment that we're talking about Mozilla, Firefox and Gecko embedding. In a different context, what would you do?
- batgaijin 14y ago
  Yeah I think it's worth it once we have the rust-based one. I mean come on, Firefox isn't even distributed in 64-bit as an official option. It's really on it's last legs waiting for the next gust to carry it.
  - pcwalton 14y ago
    There are 64 bit versions of Firefox available for Mac and Linux.
  - zobzu 14y ago
    Chrome is 32 bits on Windows, by the way. Suppose it's on it's last legs too, uh! Oh and that http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/firefox-21.0a1.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer.exe http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates...
    - arkem 14y ago
      64 bit Chrome on Windows is a possibility, Justin Schuh is working on it https://plus.google.com/u/0/116560594978217291380/posts/d93Xj6biuxi https://plus.google.com/u/0/116560594978217291380/posts/d93X...
- Tloewald 14y ago
  The ambitious goals shouldn't be making a new OS then.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    Given the spread of the device APIs that Mozilla was forced to develop for Firefox OS, I think it is clear that Firefox OS has already done more for Mozilla's mission than maintaining the previous embeddings ever could.
    - Tloewald 14y ago
      "Our mission is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web." It's not clear to me that FireFox OS has done anything for Mozilla's mission. Indeed, the Firefox OS home page seems to indicate Firefox's goal is to provide carriers and OEMs with an alternative to Android, and help them maintain customer relationships. WTF? Open source vendor lockin?
Millennium 14y ago
Even when Mozilla supported Gecko-embedding, major devs rejected it time and again over the years, always in favor of WebKit or Presto. Even the Gnome folks had switched away well before embedding was deprecated. Frankly I think the Mozilla folks learned the wrong lesson from this, but they did learn something.
- zobzu 14y ago
  I think the code base is too hard to embed, stopping the support kinda made sense, since they want to stay relevant with finite resources.
- zem 14y ago
  what lesson do you believe they learnt, and why do you think it was the wrong one? they clearly noted that (a) the gecko component was hard and fiddly to embed and (b) fixing it would draw away scarce resources from more critical areas, so they decided to not waste both their and their users' time, and remove embedding support. i think it was the right way to go; as kibwen noted, servo can be designed around embedding support right from the beginning.
shmerl 14y ago
Gecko embedding is being worked on as a community project: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI I agree that Mozilla should start supporting it officially. Especially after they decided to kill mobile XUL Fennec off: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=831236 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=831236 With official Mozilla being too engrossed in Android, this remains the only alternative for normal mobile Linux to use Gecko.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
kibwen 14y ago
Mozilla appears to have thrown in the towel with regard to an embeddable Gecko. Fortunately, one of Servo's core goals is to be easily embeddable[1], and unlike Gecko can be engineered from the ground-up to make it happen. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/171ooy/servo_embedding/ http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/171ooy/servo_embedding...

fpgeek 14y ago

> If Mozilla really wants diversity, why haven't they made an effort to make Gecko attractive for embedding, thus providing an alternative to WebKit? I think Mozilla's announcement makes their reasoning fairly clear: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embedding/c_NMcO-N8wo/discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin... My summary is: - The old embedding infrastructure was difficult to use and expensive to maintain - It was also a technical dead end - Better embedding infrastructure depended on complex architectural changes to Firefox - Firefox is Mozilla's bread-and-butter, in terms of visibility, influence and revenue - Mozilla has ambitious goals and does not have infinite resources Forget for a moment that we're talking about Mozilla, Firefox and Gecko embedding. In a different context, what would you do?

batgaijin 14y ago
Yeah I think it's worth it once we have the rust-based one. I mean come on, Firefox isn't even distributed in 64-bit as an official option. It's really on it's last legs waiting for the next gust to carry it.
- pcwalton 14y ago
  There are 64 bit versions of Firefox available for Mac and Linux.
- zobzu 14y ago
  Chrome is 32 bits on Windows, by the way. Suppose it's on it's last legs too, uh! Oh and that http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/firefox-21.0a1.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer.exe http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates...
  - arkem 14y ago
    64 bit Chrome on Windows is a possibility, Justin Schuh is working on it https://plus.google.com/u/0/116560594978217291380/posts/d93Xj6biuxi https://plus.google.com/u/0/116560594978217291380/posts/d93X...
Tloewald 14y ago
The ambitious goals shouldn't be making a new OS then.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Given the spread of the device APIs that Mozilla was forced to develop for Firefox OS, I think it is clear that Firefox OS has already done more for Mozilla's mission than maintaining the previous embeddings ever could.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    "Our mission is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web." It's not clear to me that FireFox OS has done anything for Mozilla's mission. Indeed, the Firefox OS home page seems to indicate Firefox's goal is to provide carriers and OEMs with an alternative to Android, and help them maintain customer relationships. WTF? Open source vendor lockin?

Millennium 14y ago

Even when Mozilla supported Gecko-embedding, major devs rejected it time and again over the years, always in favor of WebKit or Presto. Even the Gnome folks had switched away well before embedding was deprecated. Frankly I think the Mozilla folks learned the wrong lesson from this, but they did learn something.

zobzu 14y ago
I think the code base is too hard to embed, stopping the support kinda made sense, since they want to stay relevant with finite resources.
zem 14y ago
what lesson do you believe they learnt, and why do you think it was the wrong one? they clearly noted that (a) the gecko component was hard and fiddly to embed and (b) fixing it would draw away scarce resources from more critical areas, so they decided to not waste both their and their users' time, and remove embedding support. i think it was the right way to go; as kibwen noted, servo can be designed around embedding support right from the beginning.

shmerl 14y ago

Gecko embedding is being worked on as a community project: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI I agree that Mozilla should start supporting it officially. Especially after they decided to kill mobile XUL Fennec off: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=831236 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=831236 With official Mozilla being too engrossed in Android, this remains the only alternative for normal mobile Linux to use Gecko.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

kibwen 14y ago

Mozilla appears to have thrown in the towel with regard to an embeddable Gecko. Fortunately, one of Servo's core goals is to be easily embeddable[1], and unlike Gecko can be engineered from the ground-up to make it happen. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/171ooy/servo_embedding/ http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/171ooy/servo_embedding...