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Servo’s new home

blog.servo.org

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Re: Servo’s new home

#131

Post by SimonSapin »

lucideer wrote: post #104

On the surface, this seems like great news. Does anyone have any insight into what level of influence Linux Foundation's Platinum Corporate Members have over it's priorities and direction? Beyond the obvious (Google), MS are invested in Blink and Tencent/QQ in Webkit. I guess there's scope for branching out in terms of engine use but... MS have already tried that quite a lot. I'm not saying that it's necessary for al…

Setting priorities and direction is the responsibility of the Technical Steering Committee: https://servo.org/governance/

The plan is to later have a Board responsible for financial decisions. Paid sponsorship to Servo (not just to LF) can grant a seat on the Board but not on the TSC.

Re: Servo’s new home

#132

Post by spankalee »

chubot wrote: post #125
nvrspyx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A third-option that I would like to see is extending the latter to an Electron alternative (aka using Servo as a cross-platform GUI). There's definitely positives to Electron, but it would be nice to see a more performant, less memory hungry, and more battery friendly alternative.

Has anyone tried Cobalt? It looks like something based on it could be an alternative to Electron. https://cobalt.foo/ It's meant for embedded but that probably just means it's easy to build and uses low memory. A high-performance, small-footprint platform that implements a subset of HTML5/CSS/JS to run applications, including the YouTube TV app.

Cobalt lags on modern web APIs pretty badly. I wouldn't recommend it.

Re: Servo’s new home

#133

Post by coldtea »

brabel wrote: post #129
Shared404 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Servo was more experimental research, with an eye towards possibly being integrated at some point.

Does Firefox have any Rust component at all if Servo is not apparently used at all by it, currently? People have been claiming Firefox components were written in Rust for ages, usually meaning Servo, but it seems now that those claims were just misleading.

They weren't misleading, and they didn't mean servo. Several Firefox parts are written in Rust. Stylo is the most famous, here's a list of various parts that have already shipped, and others that were/are in progress...

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation

Re: Servo’s new home

#134

Post by SimonSapin »

xiphias2 wrote: post #44
paulrouget wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal opinion is that, for a servo based browser, it's probably better to just use UWP/C++ on Windows, C/GTK on Linux, and SwiftUI on Mac, and just embed Servo via its C-API layer. Rust shine when it comes to building a safe and fast web engine. For the OS "glue" code, I would stick to whatever is best for each platform.

You missed Android. Firefox for mobile is so far behind Chrome, it’s unusable for me, most plugins don’t work. I would vote for HTML/CSS based browser (React / React Native?), though I know that a lot of operating system specific code needs to be written.

The C API has JNI bindings, which is relevant to Android. https://github.com/servo/servo/tree/master/ports/libsimplese...

Re: Servo’s new home

#135

Post by eznzt »

jfk13 wrote: post #50
sergiomattei wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also my concern. Everyone's cheering on, but I'm just thinking... What's the mission and end goal now? Previously it was doing research, with the possibility of landing in Firefox. Now that's highly unlikely.

Is it really so unlikely? Firefox integrates all kinds of components from elsewhere; why shouldn't it continue adopting parts of Servo where appropriate?

So the Servo developers will now work for free but Mozilla will start to leech from it? That would be uncool.

Re: Servo’s new home

#136

Post by xiphias2 »

ygjb wrote: post #100
LockAndLol wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm one of those who stopped donating to Mozilla once I realized none of the money donated could ever be used for developing the browser. I never donated to Mozilla for this precise reason. Now I'm seriously considering it. Edit: Done

The irony is that from both of these comments it implies you have a concern about the future and the stability of Firefox as both an open source project, and it's role in preventing a browser monoculture. Setting aside concerns about leadership, because IMO it's time for most of the current leadership to retire and make space for more innovative folks, Mozilla needs two things to preserve Firefox and Gecko, money and…

Donations to a corrupt organization helps to make it even more corrupt. Just look at any destroyed country where ,,outside help'' is coming. Stopping the money flow is the only way to change corrupt management to people who care even if there's less money involved.

Re: Servo’s new home

#137

Post by satya71 »

bsimpson wrote: post #79
an_opabinia wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s tough. People really do want Flash, it’s just Google Chrome now. The bigger question is when will Mobile Safari retire its WebKit fork? What role will Servo play in that inevitable end point?

Apple founded WebKit, so I doubt it will retire its repository. Are you asking for iOS and macOS Safari to converge, or for Apple to ship straight from the open-source HEAD?

Apple forked WebKit from KDE KHTML.

Re: Servo’s new home

#138

Post by wizzwizz4 »

munificent wrote: post #78
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla currently cares more about surviving than its main mission. And yes, it can't accomplish its mission if it dies, but don't they understand? If Mozilla falls, another will take its place. The way to kill Mozilla is from the inside: to quash its soul.

> Mozilla currently cares more about surviving than its main mission. In the open market, any organization that doesn't cares more about its survival than its mission will eventually be replaced by one that does. This is fundamental to the definition of "survival". > If Mozilla falls, another will take its place. The one that will take its place will be an organization that prioritizes survival, not its mission.

Organisations are made of people. There are enough people who care about Mozilla's mission that they'd do the things even if Mozilla didn't, and if they got together they could get at least 10% of the funding from non-Google people who currently donate to Mozilla, if Mozilla ceased to exist.

The only real downside is that they wouldn't have a seat on the WHATWG.

Re: Servo’s new home

#139

Post by jfk13 »

brabel wrote: post #129
Shared404 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Servo was more experimental research, with an eye towards possibly being integrated at some point.

Does Firefox have any Rust component at all if Servo is not apparently used at all by it, currently? People have been claiming Firefox components were written in Rust for ages, usually meaning Servo, but it seems now that those claims were just misleading.

> Does Firefox have any Rust component at all

Yes, lots (and increasing). E.g.:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/servo/component...

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/gfx/wr

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/third_party/rus...

Re: Servo’s new home

#140

Post by SimonSapin »

gigel82 wrote: post #99

Haven't heard of Servo before so was excited about the possibility of a lean new engine, but was pretty deflated when the preview build is 200Mb+ on disk (80Mb just for the main exe). It's possible some of it comes from the unoptimized extras like the JS engine, media libraries, etc.

I don’t recall that disk size was ever something we’ve optimized or tracked. Why is it important?
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