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Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

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Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#11

Post by nicoburns »

LinguaBrowse wrote: post #8
rektide wrote: post #6

This is my main fear with Flutter CanvasKit & "Towards a Modern Web Stack". https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22Towards%20a%20modern%20web%... They are using canvas & webgpu, & making their own rendering engine (borrowing Skia) to take web apps from part of a participatory open ecosystem where extensions & user-agency work, & turning the page into a giant animated screen. The best open ecosystem we have on the planet is…

I think there's potential in those ideas, if only they are not to the detriment of the Web (which is already working just fine). As an alternative to iOS and Android development, I welcome ground-up solutions as long as they can get text editing right. However, I bring that up as I can't see anyone ever making a ground-up text view as reliable as a browser or native one (consider CJK, RTL, and vertical text, and IME…

The Rust ecosystem (with cosmic text and parley) is well on the way to achieving this

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#13

Post by rvz »

photochemsyn wrote: post #5

The long-term solution seems to be to ditch iOS and Android on mobile devices entirely and replace them with fully featured operating systems based on Linux, e.g. https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

That isn't realistic. We already gave pure 'Linux-based' mobile devices and desktops a chance years ago and unfortunately, they haven't taken off commercially.

The only one that came out with a inkling of 'Linux' is ChromeOS and Android which both are not even fully open-source and will eventually be moving to Fuchsia-based OS and will ditch the Linux kernel.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#14

Post by muyuu »

LinguaBrowse wrote: post #7
photochemsyn wrote: post #5

The long-term solution seems to be to ditch iOS and Android on mobile devices entirely and replace them with fully featured operating systems based on Linux, e.g. https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

I like the idea of Ubuntu Touch (having worked with Ubuntu a lot), but even more so Firefox OS. As a web developer, the idea that "native" could simply mean "the Web platform" is really attractive.

Attractive-for-the-developer ideas are fine but attractive-for-the-user dominates. That's the sad lesson since the 80s and 90s OS wars and the early dominance of the market over the committee-standards that happened repeatedly with databases, with web browsers, with text editors, with spreadsheets, etc etc.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#15

Post by LinguaBrowse »

apsurd wrote: post #4

The main problem is who gets to decide on the one anointed approach. Diversity ends up being a good thing, and also makes everything more messy and more complex. Take your example of the Open Web. I wouldn't be in software without the Open Web. I hand-write HTML and CSS to this day! But many people hate the web stack. They hate the ergonomics and enjoy better ecosystem for nearly every possible thing implemented in t…

I think the point is that the decisions on direction shouldn't be made behind entirely closed doors by insiders. Outside input should be taken seriously, with invitation to dialogue, rather than chasing some narrowly-supported vision.

As a web developer myself, I too am baffled by the folks who don't like the Web stack, but fine.

And good points, I guess I wasn't too concrete on "unify on one approach" vs. "consider all options". So to solidify my thoughts, I do think diversity in approaches is a good thing. It would just be great if any parts could be shared so that others could iterate on the same idea.

For an example of a missed opportunity for diversity, if only React Native had originally architected itself as Reactless Native + React, we could've had equivalents for each different renderer by now (e.g. Vue Native, Angular Native) based on that Reactless Native base.

For an example of the merits of unifying on one approach, see Yoga Layout. Flexbox has proven to be an agreeable layout model, and because it's so solid (apart from where it varies from the spec, which I do grumble about) various different cross-platform projects have benefitted from unifying around it as a reliable building block.

I guess my grumbles with Yoga's spec deviations echo your distaste for the "it's a solved problem" sentiment, too. Even established solutions should be open to improvement and evolution, and I had that partially in mind when talking about being open-minded.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#17

Post by scarface74 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

The native side of this has long been addressed by cross-platform toolkits including but not limited to: Qt, GTK, FLTK, WxWidgets (note: all FLOSS, at least optionally). Alas, web development "decided" to completely reinvent the wheel for all this stuff, leading to a new generation of heading-to-native toolkits derived from browser-based technologies, such as Electron, React Native and Flutter. Unless you believe the…

The native side of things has been address very badly by cross platform tools. I don’t want lowest common denominator shitty cross platform apps.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#18

Post by scarface74 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #5

The long-term solution seems to be to ditch iOS and Android on mobile devices entirely and replace them with fully featured operating systems based on Linux, e.g. https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

I’m sure that will happen right after the “year of Linux on the desktop”

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#19

Post by ksec »

photochemsyn wrote: post #5

The long-term solution seems to be to ditch iOS and Android on mobile devices entirely and replace them with fully featured operating systems based on Linux, e.g. https://itsfoss.com/open-source-alternatives-android/

So we didn't actually fix cross platform ( as the article implies ), instead we should make all platform as one?

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#20

Post by scarface74 »

muyuu wrote: post #14
LinguaBrowse wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of Ubuntu Touch (having worked with Ubuntu a lot), but even more so Firefox OS. As a web developer, the idea that "native" could simply mean "the Web platform" is really attractive.

Attractive-for-the-developer ideas are fine but attractive-for-the-user dominates. That's the sad lesson since the 80s and 90s OS wars and the early dominance of the market over the committee-standards that happened repeatedly with databases, with web browsers, with text editors, with spreadsheets, etc etc.

Why is it a “sad” lesson that users have preferences that are not in line with developers?
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