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Servo to Advance in 2023

servo.org

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Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#11

Post by stuaxo »

mariusor wrote: post #6
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #5

It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward were great. It was really inspiring to see that such a cool R&D project was possible in a space as uncompetitive as web browsers.

I wish the first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser. To break the monopoly of WebKit/Blink browsers we need a competing rendering engine that is being developed outside the Google/Alphabet umbrella.

Exactly - there are cases there where it wouldn't matter too much that it isn't complete yet.

Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#14

Post by detaro »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #5

It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward were great. It was really inspiring to see that such a cool R&D project was possible in a space as uncompetitive as web browsers.

How was Servo "shackled to Gecko"?

Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#15

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

detaro wrote: post #14
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #5

It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward were great. It was really inspiring to see that such a cool R&D project was possible in a space as uncompetitive as web browsers.

How was Servo "shackled to Gecko"?

It was far obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. The decision to port WebRender came more or less at the same time when it was decided that Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage.

It wasn't too hard to read between the lines for what was happening especially considering how political Mozilla is from the inside. The decision to stop the project some time later wasn't much of a surprise from then on.

Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#16

Post by brighteyes »

Vinnl wrote: post #3

Looks like the external funding at least consists of Igalia dedicating four people: https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/

Igalia is doing the work, but does anyone know who is funding Igalia to work on it? (Or are they doing this without funding?)

Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#17

Post by orra »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #15
detaro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was Servo "shackled to Gecko"?

It was far obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. The decision to port WebRender came more or less at the same time when it was decided that Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage. It wasn't too hard to read between the lines for what was happening especially considering how political Mozilla is from the inside. The decision to stop…

> It was far [from] obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started.

I don't know why you're so surprised. Creating a browser rendering engine with full feature parity is an absolutely gigantic project. Of course successful modules were merged into Gecko.

> Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage.

Mozilla doesn't have the same financial clout as Google. Of course Mozilla wanted a way to monetise Servo. R&D is great but they can't spend on R&D indefinitely.

Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#18

Post by Vinnl »

brighteyes wrote: post #16
Vinnl wrote: post #3

Looks like the external funding at least consists of Igalia dedicating four people: https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/

Igalia is doing the work, but does anyone know who is funding Igalia to work on it? (Or are they doing this without funding?)

I don't know, but my guess from their stated mid-term goals [1] would be that they're funding this themselves, in the hope of being hired for consultancy/feature development jobs on Servo once it gets used in small embedded devices, similar to how they get paid for contributing to other browser engines.

Edit: I also imagine most of the answer to "Who is funding Igalia?" in the FAQ of a similarly Igalia-led project, Wolvic, is relevant here [2]:

> Generally speaking, Igalia is funded by a wide variety clients. Some of our contracts allow or encourage us to discuss the work; others do not.

> Igalia works on a lot of things, from graphic drivers to multimedia, as well as the web platform. Igalia’s model expands the ability for investment into the web platform and web engines. We think that is not only good for businesses, developers, and users, but fundamentally useful to the long term health of the Web.

> Igalia itself re-invests in things we feel are important, but that we think under-served or else very, very interesting. Very often we are able to find good alignments with client work. Igalia is also the maintainer of a few official WebKit ports, including WPEWebkit, which powers millions of devices. We are able to do this and build a team around a diverse combination of investments, which in turn makes WebKit better and helps the larger web ecosystem remain healthier. Our ideas around XR are not dissimilar.

[1] https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/...

[2] https://wolvic.com/en/faq/#who-is-funding-igalia%3F

Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#19

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

orra wrote: post #17
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was far obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. The decision to port WebRender came more or less at the same time when it was decided that Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage. It wasn't too hard to read between the lines for what was happening especially considering how political Mozilla is from the inside. The decision to stop…

> It was far [from] obvious it would be used to provide things piecemeal to Gecko when it was started. I don't know why you're so surprised. Creating a browser rendering engine with full feature parity is an absolutely gigantic project. Of course successful modules were merged into Gecko. > Servo, which had a great velocity at that point, would focus on VR and AR usage. Mozilla doesn't have the same financial clout a…

> Creating a browser rendering engine with full feature parity is an absolutely gigantic project.

So? Gecko was a mess and they had something actually exciting on their hand which was mostly untainted by their branding. They could have bet on it rather than chose to die a slow death while their money trickles to their highly pay executive team.

> Of course Mozilla wanted a way to monetise Servo. R&D is great but they can't spend on R&D indefinitely.

If that’s what they were looking for, that’s retrospectively an extremely poor decision. There was no money in VR. The issue with Mozilla management is that they have been so consistently terrible you never know if they are genuinely malicious or just completely inept.

I generally feel little sympathy for Mozilla. They killed all their interesting projects, squandered money in dubious half-assed investments and managed to make themselves hard to deal with as a community member through a combination of weird rigidity and repeated communication mismanagement.

I would be very happy to see Servo find a new lease on life however. That’s what great R&D looks like.

Re: Servo to Advance in 2023

#20

Post by fabrice_d »

mariusor wrote: post #6
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #5

It’s shame Mozilla gimped Servo by shackling it to Gecko for political reasons and giving it utterly stupid priorities like VR. Some of the ideas put forward were great. It was really inspiring to see that such a cool R&D project was possible in a space as uncompetitive as web browsers.

I wish the first priority for the project would be to make it easy to integrate into other applications, instead of building a full fledged browser. To break the monopoly of WebKit/Blink browsers we need a competing rendering engine that is being developed outside the Google/Alphabet umbrella.

Servo has always been easy to embed. Basically the host needs to provide a GL surface and input events, and gets some callbacks from Servo.

Maybe I should revive the Gonk port[0]...

[0] https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk/

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