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Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#81

Post by pas »

dxf wrote: post #25
fabricexpert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A huge win for web developers everywhere! And a huge loss for users everywhere. Now that Chrome is becoming the main web target, Google (an adtech company) basically controls the internet.

The article says the MSFT will be a significant contributor to Chromium. If anything, this means that Google will have _less_ control, as a second major internet player will be involved.

Who is the current Chromium project lead? What's the decision making process? How can MS employees participate? How can MS employees in the future go against the wishes of Google with regards to Chromium? Will we see revert wars?

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#82

Post by zbraniecki »

_nickwhite wrote: post #27

Could this be a bad thing for Firefox? Seems like Microsoft + Google is quite a rival to go against?

Firefox (by that I hope you mean Mozilla Project) cares about diversity and choice. Our Mozilla Manifesto [0] describes our vision of the balance between corporate and civic value of the Internet.

I speak for myself - I believe that decrease in diversity of implementations of the Web standard and drift toward a monopoly is harmful to our vision of the Internet and ultimately will hurt the Open Web.

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#83

Post by holtalanm »

mcgannon2007 wrote: post #63
simonsarris wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible The browser vendors taking the lead over standards committees is how we got this far into HTML5, especially including Apple's/Safari's decision to ditch flash, and the WHATWG actually moving us forward vs the W3C. Unless Blink has a history or an expectation of deprecating serious functionality in the future, is it really so bad if…

Because then any pull request introducing something into Chromium essentially becomes the web standard. For example, Google has a ton of influence on the project. If they want to, they can introduce something that benefits their services but eschews the web standard.

but if Microsoft is moving to Blink, wouldn't they, as well, have (as you say) influence on the project?

What, really, is a downside to having an open-source web engine that all browsers use? I'm failing to see one. The web would become less fragmented; the web standard would be (only slightly) irrelevant, and we would move forward without having to deal with browsers interpreting the spec/standard differently, which is what happens currently in a lot of cases.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#84

Post by VoxPelli »

Will Microsoft use V8 as the javascript engine then as well or continue to use Chakra?

If they won’t continue to use Chakra, what happens to that project then? It is open sourced and there’s work to make Node.js use it: https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore

All the more important to support Servo and Gecko – we can’t have all browsers be of WebKit origin – we rather need more initiatives like Servo, that reinvents the engine from scratch, optimized for modern environments.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#86

Post by pilif »

mrpippy wrote: post #53
negativegate wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see any mention of Windows 7 or that it won't be a UWP on Windows, are there more details somewhere?

Agreed. I see zero chance that Edge will suddenly be ported back to Windows 7. And it would be almost as big of a shock if the Chromium-based Edge is not UWP.

The blog post says it's coming to all supported versions of windows. Until 2020, that includes Windows 7 and 8

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#87

Post by burtonator »

A lot of you guys are lamenting this decision.

I'm insanely excited about it!

I've been working on a new reader and documentation manager for PDF and cached web content:

https://getpolarized.io/

It's based on Electron and targets Chromium.

What I'm hoping happens here is that this means more focus on Chromium and potentially more work on Electron + Carlo.

Electron is amazing but it's pretty bloated per app. If it's made lighter weight and something like Carlo can just use the OS installed browser in an isolated process you'll have the best of both worlds.

You can use web standards to build your apps and at the same time dock into native OS features without the massive bloat.

Right now Polar is about 100MB to download and uses about 200MB of RAM. Not the end of the world but also not super fun.

There's the issue of one central monoculture but there's still the opportunity to fork if chrome/edge gain too much market share.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#90

Post by ridiculous_fish »

VoxPelli wrote: post #72
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #37

Honest question: what is the population of committers (not contributors) on Chromium? Is there any significant number outside of Google? Is Chromium de-facto controlled by Google, or more community driven?

Considering that Samsung Internet, Brave, Opera, Electron etc is based on Chromium and at least Samsung Internet adding new features of their own to it, there are at least many other people working on the code base. I would guess that Microsoft would keep using Chorus rather than adopting V8, but if they aren’t, then V8 has contributions from eg. Node.js And as states in the article: Edge on Android and on ARM seems…

There's a crucial difference between "working on the code base" and having commit access. The committers are the gatekeepers and the steamrollers.

What I'm effectively asking is this:

1. If Google opts to steer Chromium in a way that the community finds objectionable, could the community stop it?

2. If the community opts to steer Chromium in a way that Google finds objectionable, could Google stop it?

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