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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

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Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#121

Post by tarkin2 »

djhworld wrote: post #114

Does anyone know if the new stuff touted over the last few years (servo, webrender etc) is going to make it into the mainline Firefox release? I moved back to Firefox back when they released Quantum and was really excited about the plans to make it even better - the blog posts from Lin Clark around parallel layout engines, web render etc. made me really excited about the trajectory of FF [1] I know this stuff is comp…

Some of it already has made it into ff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164058

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#122

Post by dependenttypes »

tester756 wrote: post #57
KingOfCoders wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Firefox would just be slow as hell" Why is that? The problem is they get into to web standards game which is driven by Google to create pressure everyone else to spend millions on the newest standards. I don't need the newest standards, 2000 web works perfectly fine for me (except HTTPs). Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) They broke exetensions several…

>Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) How many is many? I'm using up to 10-20 and it never felt slow on worse setup.

I would consider 500+ as "many". 10-20 would be considered as "very few".

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#123

Post by walterbell »

kdavis wrote: post #109
mrweasel wrote: post #46

The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market? Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in se…

I was responsible for securing the funding for such tasks from the EU for Mozilla. This can work, e.g. [ https://browser.mt/ ]. However, the latest layoffs have basically gutted this plan.

Is there any chance of the EU funding a Firefox fork that is optimized for integration with other EU initiatives, e.g. data sovereignty and individual data ownership, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/11/1006555/eu-data-...? If a fork is too big a bridge to cross, how about extending the roadmap of an existing-but-neglected Web Standard, contributing reference implementation code to Firefox?

Mozilla wasn't built in a day, and neither will successors. Step one is to get funding for one person with a forward-looking vision and experience with the non-public history that got Firefox to this point. There is a narrow window to preserve a subset of the brain trust for core features (Servo?) before developers get scattered to the winds of other companies.

Finally, if Firefox will eventually lose to Chrome, perhaps we need to step back and look at core protocols (like the Gopher reboot) and new security models (e.g. running each browser tab in a hardware-isolated virtual machine). Extensibility was a core offering of Firefox. There may be new optima on the trade-off chart of security vs. power, when running on newer hardware.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#125

Post by pjmlp »

MattGaiser wrote: post #42
pjmlp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can find similar examples in Chrome, yet that doesn't detain some devs to worship it.

Yes, but Chrome is considered the default. If something doesn't work in Chrome, I will get in trouble with my boss for implementing it. If something doesn't work with Firefox, we tell the users to use Chrome.

So just like IE 6, some things never change in spite people telling otherwise.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#126

Post by pjmlp »

MattGaiser wrote: post #44
pjmlp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-IE generation is mostly to blame for that, they ended up adopting the behaviours they criticized so much.

IE made life miserable for developers. I am not sure we would have cared if it were not moribund.

Nope it was pretty great actually, then Microsoft thought they had won the war.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#127

Post by tannhaeuser »

goto11 wrote: post #102
tannhaeuser wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of this deal must involve radically simplifying the web and reflect on the EU's sponsorship of W3C via ERCIM. We've seen web tech becoming more complicated all the time, with self-acclaimed "standardization bodies" (WHATWG) acting as fig leaf for Google's take-over of the web. Now with Firefox on the brink to drop out, like all other "browser vendors" (Opera, MS) except Google before, and failing to crea…

How would you "radically simplify" the web without causing breakage?

Couple ideas:

- specify profiles that can be targetted by web developers and browser developers; demand web assets to be delivered in sane and portable formats (rather than a mish-mash of JSON configs and plugins)

- in public tenders, demand that web sites for public information don't become apps: announce sites requiring JavaScript as application/html

- promote, invest into new web frameworks for apps (not sites) that abstract/isolate from HTML+CSS as underlying rendering mechanisms such that these can run stand-alone (like applets used to); I kindof like React, but unfortunately it ties apps to browser runtimes which isn't adequate for apps most of the time IMO

- transfer specs to standardization bodies with fair representation and transparency

- push for energy-efficiency; require that sites with not that great information density can render on easily-produced devices before the end of times

- push distributed web tech

Going for complete backward-compat is impossible, but humans used to do just fine without today's web of shit. HTML is rooted in markup technology which had highly organized content representations since the late 1960s.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#128

Post by sciurus »

randompwd wrote: post #85
ThePhysicist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all stoked for publicly funded open-source software, but somehow The EU and most governments seem to be pretty bad at doing this. I recall numerous initiatives that aimed to create open-source ecosystems with massive amounts of public money (billions of euros for some projects) in the past, each and every one one of them ended up as a big disaster. The latest attempt at publicly funded software is Gaia-X, the EU'…

Why would the EU give even one cent where the C level execs and board members collect cushy pay-cheques and fire the "hard" skilled people? Who appoints the board of Mozilla? What will it take for them to be replaced? Can they even be replaced? It's apparent they're protecting a CEO who in any other organisation would have been canned years ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164834

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#129

Post by solstice »

joepie91_ wrote: post #60
KingOfCoders wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Firefox would just be slow as hell" Why is that? The problem is they get into to web standards game which is driven by Google to create pressure everyone else to spend millions on the newest standards. I don't need the newest standards, 2000 web works perfectly fine for me (except HTTPs). Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) They broke exetensions several…

> Why is that? Because Firefox's "powerful extension model" basically constituted direct access to its internals, which prevented the Firefox developers from making the architectural improvements that were so sorely needed to make it performant. > Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) Admittedly I'm on Linux, but I currently have approximately 7800 tabs open…

Not judging you, but why do you have so many tabs open?

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#130

Post by walterbell »

goto11 wrote: post #102
tannhaeuser wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of this deal must involve radically simplifying the web and reflect on the EU's sponsorship of W3C via ERCIM. We've seen web tech becoming more complicated all the time, with self-acclaimed "standardization bodies" (WHATWG) acting as fig leaf for Google's take-over of the web. Now with Firefox on the brink to drop out, like all other "browser vendors" (Opera, MS) except Google before, and failing to crea…

How would you "radically simplify" the web without causing breakage?

Start with a markdown-optimized browser that makes it easier to publish new static content with minimal attack surface.
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