Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT • Hacker News Board

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#31

Post by cletusw » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:28 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #16

bawolff wrote: post #5

I think one of the major problems with open source development is its hard to ever remove anything because the vocal minority who likes it will hound you. But removing things is just as, if not more important to good software as adding features. Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1172/

> I think one of the major problems with open source development is its hard to ever remove anything because the vocal minority who likes it will hound you. But removing things is just as, if not more important to good software as adding features. As opposed to non-OSS, where removing features that paying customers care about is of course trivial? > Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1172/ I don't mindless comic and its or…

The difference is for proprietary features, you can just charge that subset of users that care for its maintenance, using that money to hire additional developers, etc. For OSS you instead have a relatively fixed budget of time & resources and have to balance competing interests in a zero-sum manner. On the flip side, there's nothing preventing the vocal minority from forking if the feature is important enough to them!

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#32

Post by th0ma5 » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:28 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #19

_bzuf wrote: post #12

I think a key problem here has nothing to do with the merits of XSLT, but is that some parties involved have no credibility when it comes to their intentions. They might not even realize how bad their credibility is, because they operate in a self-serving echo chamber.

This. If the WHATWG does not want to be brigaded while they destroy the web, they need to provide a clear venue for people to indicate whether or not the community is accepting of a change. The web is ours , not theirs. And I think we should rightfully set fire to the WHATWG's implementation discussions until they recognize that fact. One of the things I learned about Google during the AMP4Email fiasco is that the st…

Some of what your saying could be confusion on the part of many people about what a standard is and isn't... And I think that while I don't necessarily agree that Google shouldn't be involved, I think this confusion is in the neighborhood of your concerns. It used to be much more the case, and indeed with other standards work it is the case, that a corporate entity was just another schmoe and people didn't necessarily have so much reflexive deference perhaps? Thank you for posting this honest opinion.

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#33

Post by chatmasta » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:28 PM UTC

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #22

simonw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which comments did you see as being arrogant?

The one where the guy speaks for the whole Chrome team and says they want work on new stuff rather than fix things they themselves allege are broken. It's extremely ivory tower and a disservice to the web as a whole.

Idk, this seems like pretty standard communications for a committee-driven process…

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#34

Post by sugarpimpdorsey » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:29 PM UTC

samdoesnothing wrote: post #27

That's good. It's good that everyone is on board with removing such a pointless feature that comes with a significant maintenance burden and security risks.

That's a great view to have if you're someone that switches jobs every six months and never supports anything for any meaningful length of time.

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#35

Post by hobs » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

WJW wrote: post #7

hobs wrote: post #4

I like how the resource issue is hand waived away because some random manager decided not to do it, and that's somehow a force of nature now.

Well yes? People get to decide what to do with their own money, and managers get to decide what to do with the companies' money. That's basically what being a manager means in the first place. They decided spending that money on maintaining a barely used feature was not a very good use of the budget, and that it might be better spent on something that people actually use.

And so would that be a thing we can maybe have an issue with? The entire "handwaving away" bit is the fact that moving a decision another layer up a hierarchy doesn't change who is responsible or how that responsibility manifests, a different problem then "they get to decide on how they spend their money" - we don't have the resources vs we are not going to use them on what you want (which itself is something that is up for say, an influence campaign.)

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#36

Post by th0ma5 » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

samdoesnothing wrote: post #29

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If the WHATWG does not want to be brigaded while they destroy the web, they need to provide a clear venue for people to indicate whether or not the community is accepting of a change. The web is ours , not theirs. And I think we should rightfully set fire to the WHATWG's implementation discussions until they recognize that fact. One of the things I learned about Google during the AMP4Email fiasco is that the st…

> while they destroy the web Don't you think you're being a little bit dramatic? The chances of anybody who isn't an ubernerd caring about XSLT's removal is exactly 0.

XSLT specifics? Yes, ubernerd ... Person who can't get a doctor's appointment because the interactive voice menu which is somehow now based on a browser engine and has a subtle bug caused by this change could be anyone.

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#37

Post by chatmasta » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #5

I think one of the major problems with open source development is its hard to ever remove anything because the vocal minority who likes it will hound you. But removing things is just as, if not more important to good software as adding features. Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1172/

In this case there is the vocal minority who uses it, and then an even more vocal group who was just reminded XSLT even exists and is protesting its removal on vague ideological grounds. The proposal has clear mitigations for websites or use cases that depend on it, e.g. a WebAssembly polyfill.

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#38

Post by hobs » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

warkdarrior wrote: post #8

hobs wrote: post #4

I like how the resource issue is hand waived away because some random manager decided not to do it, and that's somehow a force of nature now.

People who want that feature to stay in the browsers should put up some money to fund continued development and maintenance.

Sure, but that's a different argument entirely - we don't have money vs you should be spending the money.

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#39

Post by spankalee » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

People have had some huge understandings of what's actually going on:

- That Mason opening issues means that it's a Google-effort. It's not.

- That the "Should we remove..." issue for community feedback. It's not. Spec issues are a collaboration vehicle for spec maintainers. There's not enough of the community on GitHub for that to be a good feedback mechanism.

- That Mason or Google hide comments and locked the thread. I heard from good authority that it was Apple employees actually, in their role as spec repo admins.

- That Google brought up the idea. The best I can see from meeting minutes is that a Mozilla rep did this time, though it's been brought up occasionally for 10 years at least.

- That the spec PR will be merged. At this point the PR is to show what it would mean to move XSLT from the spec.

- That decision has been made. These things are the beginning of the process.

- That XSLT even can be removed. Even though the vendors are tentatively in support, they are fully aware that this might not be viable in practice. I would guess that they think they can remove it, but they don't know for sure. They know usage numbers aren't always accurate, and they have ways of hedging bets like flags with different default in different channels, enterprise policies, reverse origin trials, etc.

Re: Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT

#40

Post by arp242 » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 8:34 PM UTC

_bzuf wrote: post #12

I think a key problem here has nothing to do with the merits of XSLT, but is that some parties involved have no credibility when it comes to their intentions. They might not even realize how bad their credibility is, because they operate in a self-serving echo chamber.

> they operate in a self-serving echo chamber.

Like HN isn't on these type of topics. Just an hour ago you said that they're trying to kill XSLT because it "not a tool for surveillance capitalism"[1]. A claim made completely unencumbered by any evidence, of course. It's little more than a nonsensical conspiracy theory.

There's a reason all the major browsers are kind of on-board with this, just like there's a reason it never got updated much beyond XSLT 1. If XSLT would be proposed today, adding it to browsers would be a complete non-starter. Newer browsers like Servo or Ladybird have not even mentioned XSLT as near as I can find. It's very low low on their priority list, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least some people working on those browsers would prefer to not implement it at all.

The funny thing about people stuck in echo chambers is that they cannot comprehend how anyone could disagree with them, so then they reach to conspiracy theories to "explain" this, completely ignoring all the technical arguments.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988418