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Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

blogs.windows.com

111–120 of 304 posts

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#111

If Microsoft knew that Edge in its current state is inferior, why did they try so hard to make every windows user switch to it? I mean there was this "startup growth hacking" kind of craziness from a corporation and sudden admittance of defeat... It's very confusing. Edit: We all know why they want everyone to switch don't we, but think about all the now admittedly false marketing! It's not like they stopped the aggr…

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Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#112
post #22

I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible. It's still better because Chromium is open-source, but I do worry that we're going to have a problem in the future with a lot of broken sites (YTMND-style).

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Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah, but if many people are working on the browser code and those people don’t like what Google is doing anymore, then they individually or collectively could fork the code, just like Google forked their engine from WebKit when they wanted to move in a different direction than apple

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

The answer to that is obvious. Of course not.

Google owns Chromium's repository. Even if the "community" decides to fork Chromium, Google owns Chrome, so any fork of Chromium is completely irrelevant. That's because people download and install Chrome and not obscure Chromium forks.

And that is why web standards are important ;-)

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#115
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have examples? I use Safari and don’t find this to be true. Given Safari is what people use in iOS, id expect this to be rarely the case (most sites will test on an iPhone).

Same here; I don't know if I've ever seen a site that works in Chrome but not Safari (I don't doubt they exist, I just don't tend to come across them).

As a MacOS Safari 12 user, I've recently come across several important sites where some functionality fails hard in Safari yet works in Chrome ie barclays.co.uk and easyjet.com

I don't have any proof but my suspicion is that I've seen more sites failing Safari since Mojave.

I really dislike (& distrust!) using Chrome now, especially for e-commerce sites or anything with SMS based 2FA as Safari's ability to pull codes automatically from messages is a godsend.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#117

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 reinvent…

I opened an issue to ask: https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore/issues/611

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#118
I'm still shocked that they went the Chromium route here. This would have been their chance to really, well, for lack of a better way of putting it:

stick it to Google [0]

I think it would have been far, far more impressive to use Quantum (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum) or WebKit (https://webkit.org), with the added benefit that nw.js is already up and going for the Webkit engine (and likely would have sufficed as an Electron replacement that they could drive forward, but I suppose they own Electron now with Github acquired)

For its not Apple anymore and certainly not Mozilla that is the prime competitor nowadays to Microsoft, its Google (With Chromebooks in the schools, and their small business and cloud offerings) and Amazon's Web Services division that are their main competitors now.

While I don't know how all the business logic went into this and ultimately came up with this being the best calculation at hand, I think this would have played better in the media too (especially if they leaned on Mozilla)

[0] I know Chromium != Google, but its pretty hard not to see that most of Chromium's development is downstream from Google and Google employs and/or otherwise has had some direct influence over the core team

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I generally agree with your sentiment on this. The only real downside I can think of is similar to the issues that motivated the renewed investment in OpenBGPD recently: that standards and ecosystems are made stronger when there is some level of competition and diversity.

For example, a security bug in chromium becomes vastly more dangerous if everyone is working off that code. That said, hopefully there’ll be fewer of those because everyone is focused on the same codebase.

The questions seem to be “how many browser engine implementations is truly necessary for a healthy ecosystem?” And “has the spec gotten so bad that it’s not feasible for the ecosystem to support a sufficient number of independent implementations?”

Seems like <5, and maybe <3 is the answer to the first, and the answer to the second is we’ll see what happens to servo in 2019...

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#120
post #6

I hope this move changes the hostile amount of google services that are baked into Chrome and Chromium. Not saying MS is any better, but at least there will be more choices for users and where before everything was hardcoded, now there will be an option to select and potentially expose more customization for us morals.

Which Google services are baked into Chromium?

The store comes to mind, but see, for example, the inox patchset[1], part of ungoogled-chromium[2], which tries to minimize what Chromium calls home for (e.g. a bunch of extensions, Google accounts, and a few services which sync data with/ping the Google servers).

[1] https://github.com/gcarq/inox-patchset

[2] https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

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