Free and Open Source Software

17858 readers

101 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

A new browser engine may be on the horizon... (github.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 13 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Always appreciate any work spent on any FOSS stuff out there but currently I'm a bit afraid that Gecko disappears into unimportance. So I'd prefer more contributions towards that one project rather than opening new ones.

The issue with browser engines is that it always requires work from two directions. The browser engine must be optimized to render websites as good as possible. And websites must be optimized to be rendered by all the different browser engines.

And (almost) no one is willing to do the latter for engines with a <1% market share. Already now, more and more commercial and non-commercial websites are only working properly with Chrome or its derivates.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Personally I hope firefox dies as fast as possible so we see some focus on good alternatives.

Gecko is not a good platform, there is a reason why people who use geckoview eventually all migrate away from it, the most recent example I can think of is wolvic, which hasn't replaced geckoview yet, but does have the version 1.0 of a chromium release now.

The sooner we get real alternatives to chromium and stop pretending that gecko is one the better. Currently servo is progressing really fast, has good APIs and usability for both a full desktop browser and embedded usecases (but still very immature).

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Careful what you wish for, if Firefox dies now (before alternatives are viable) then Google owns the web and no new browser engines will be able to even get a sniff of a foot in the door!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't think it would be that bad. Users have proven willing to eat whatever trash chrome shoves down their throat. Firefox has also proven that they don't really do a great job at preventing chrome from controlling the web market as shown with JXL. They completely dropped the ball here and only recently after safari has proven to successfully adopt it, choosen to follow suite.

Apple has turned out to "prevent the chrome monopoly" far more effectively then firefox has.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Apple has turned out to “prevent the chrome monopoly” far more effectively then firefox has.

Turns out that owning the platform (Android, iOS) counts for a lot. I like having an independent option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It probably helps that WebKit was forked from KDE's Konqueror/KHTML and that Blink was a fork of WebKit.

Compared to Gecko, I'm sure they behave the same as far as webdevs were concerned - hindering it's adoption - webdevs don't want to support esoteric engines for obvious reasons.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

webkit and blink are two massively different beasts, webkit and blink is just an engine in the end, the stuff on top matters too. If it was as simple as engines, it would be like comparing gnome web to chromium.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Chrome and firefox on android use their own image decoders.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What makes it different from Servo and Ladybird? How far along is it? Also regarding long term sustainability, is it backed by an organization that can maintain funding for development?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

This is a hobby project, but it's nice to see work going on. You would need some Linux Torvalds of Browsers to get something that can compete with Firefox or Chrome though...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just hope it's European.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

why? what does country of origin have to do with it in general?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 21 hours ago

Because we (the EU citizens) need some internet and software sovereignty. It's a valid desire. Most of the governments run on software owned by companies that can be under control of foreign nations.

A certain level of independence is good for any nation, group, society.

Besides from that EU law provides us with some guarantees regarding privacy. If a company doesn't respect our privacy, we have the means to defend ourselves.