Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#231

Post by gsnedders » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:47 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #36

tombert wrote: 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).

> 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…

> 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.

That takes a somewhat limited in scope view as to what a web standard is; by most measures, what the WHATWG produces is as much a standard as anything the W3C does, and is certainly comparably useful to other implementers.

> Unless Blink has a history or an expectation of deprecating serious functionality in the future, is it really so bad if websites follow what's Chrome-compatible instead of 'a web standard'?

If someone wants to build a new web browser, can they do it without having to spend huge amounts of money on reverse-engineering Chrome and being bug compatible with it?

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#232

Post by gsnedders » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

tapoxi wrote: post #125

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #5

Man, this sucks. I really wish they had open sourced their new engine and stuck with it. I would have volunteered time porting it to Linux/POSIX as well.

I don't think they can. EdgeHTML is a fork of Trident (MSHTML), and that originated from code licensed from Spyglass.

Note they dropped the Spyglass licensing thing from the about prompt in IE7 (8? I don't quite remember), following an internal audit of the codebase. They certainly believe it to be free from Spyglass at this point.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#233

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:51 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #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 suffice…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#234

Post by withinrafael » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:52 PM UTC

sebazzz wrote: post #8

EdgeHTML is also used for embedding HTML into UWP, and controls have been released for WPF and Win32. I wonder what will be the story of that. Will that be transparently changed to Chrome, can it be changed to Chrome or will EdgeHTML be used only for that?

New controls for Chromium coming, but for now EdgeHTML controls will remain and get serviced. No major features.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#235

Post by gsnedders » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:53 PM UTC

ash_gti wrote: post #143

VoxPelli wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Obscure Chromium forks” – like Samsung Internet and Edge? Remember: Chromium itself is an “obscure fork” of WebKit...

Don't forget Opera is a re-skinned Chrome.

I mean it's re-skinned in the same way as Samsung Internet and I believe Edge will be: a totally different browser UI implementation around the same browser engine.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#236

Post by withinrafael » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:53 PM UTC

mrpippy wrote: post #159

mrpippy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I stand corrected--this is exactly what they're going to do. Take Win32 Chromium, rename it Edge, and build it for Win7, 8, and 10. What a huge blow to everyone at MS who believes in UWP. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128648/microsoft-edge-c...

It's important to remind folks the Universal Windows Platform includes Win32 apps.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#237

Post by gsnedders » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #181

alanfranzoni wrote: post #11

What I find a bit curious is that's a fully Chromium based browser, it's not simply based on the Blink rendering engine. So, it will be much closer (probably) to Chromium/Chrome than other blink-based browsers like Brave or Opera. I'd really like to understand the rationale behind this choice. What they'd like to leverage from Chromium that Blink alone wouldn't have?

Opera and Brave are both chromium-based, rather than just using the blink engine. The official webdriver plugin for opera [1], published by opera, refers to their browser as "chromium based". The brave browser [2] is open source and you can see it syncs from Chromium [1] https://github.com/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver [2] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser

Opera's built on top of the Chromium content API (approximately Blink plus things like networking, some OS integration stuff, etc.), rather than a fork of all the UI code; the UI is a completely separate implementation and shares nothing (and this is very obvious if you look at early releases of Chopera, with it having much fewer features than Chromium of the same period).

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#238

Post by jjgod » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #90

VoxPelli wrote: post #72

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?

In the past, some Opera employees do have commit access to Blink. When I was working on the content layer of Chromium (and some other parts) as an Opera employee I never had commit access, though I do get bug editing access (which is for triaging bugs).

Overall, it doesn't feel like there is a community at all, it's more like Google deciding everything then tell external contributors as a courtesy. I believe there can be technical influences driven by non-Google contributors but that's pretty rare.

That said, perhaps Microsoft can be an exception if their participation is big enough.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#239

Post by pkasting » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

alanfranzoni wrote: post #11

What I find a bit curious is that's a fully Chromium based browser, it's not simply based on the Blink rendering engine. So, it will be much closer (probably) to Chromium/Chrome than other blink-based browsers like Brave or Opera. I'd really like to understand the rationale behind this choice. What they'd like to leverage from Chromium that Blink alone wouldn't have?

I'm not aware of any third-party browsers using Blink that aren't actually using it via part of the Chromium stack, usually by including the content layer. Blink doesn't officially support direct embedding by anything other than the Chromium content layer.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#240

Post by krylon » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

garysahota93 wrote: post #142

It's crazy! This is not the Microsoft from ~5 years ago. They have really changed! Opening up to linux, cross-platform apps, open sourcing tech, open sourcing their patents(!), and now using open source chromium for MS Edge? Dam. I never thought I'd see the day...

It is an interesting time to be alive, that is for sure.