The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser.
They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway.
It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market and building consumer products and less on infrastructure.
FF as needed back when all the browsers were proprietary.
Sure... Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it can always be forked. There's nothing advantageous in maintaining FF as a dedicate code base. It's just duplication.
One of the major points of OSS is to prevent people from competing on things that are non-differentiating. If's OSS so they can fork it and make their own changes if they want.
> Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it can always be forked.
It takes more to maintain a Chromium competitor than its source code. You also need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing web.
If Google decided to close the source code in 2030, nobody would be able to do anything about it. Mozilla would have laid off its last engineers by 2025 and they'd have found new jobs by now, having 5 year old outdated knowledge about how browsers work. Even if you have engineers with the required knowledge, you still need to organize them, etc. All of this takes time, and gigantic investments.
Microsoft is using Blink for Edge and is upstreaming changes, I recently read about a power usage optimisation coming from Microsoft.
I sort of agree with parent poster, if this was their plan then Mozilla could have given up on Gecko and focused on a privacy focused Blink/V8 based browser. There isn't much value in developing Gecko at this point, they canned Servo and a large chunk of the dev team so I don't see where the technical innovation is going to come from. V8 has won as well, Node uses it, it's ported all over the place.
Their only value right now (after firing so much of the R&D
and dev focused engineering talent) is the privacy/open reputation of being released by a non-profit, why not scrap the area you aren't competitive in and focus on your strengths. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced a blink/chromium based browser soon.
Because of its heritage (it’s a fork of WebKit, and thus started out as KHTML, which is LGPL licensed), I don’t think the Chromium code can be closed easily.
They probably can split it and gradually replace most real functionality into a separate closed source part, like they did with Android, but that will take time.
JavaScript itself (ES language changes), APIs callable from JavaScript (there are a lot), CSS, HTTP(s)/TLS and evolving security, ever-evolving compatibility requirements to keep popular pages working, performance expectations of the rendering model (what must be smooth nowadays didn't used to be and it's expected by sites), things like WASM, WebGL (new version on its) & WebGPU, the sandbox, evolving security patterns (HTML/HTTP/JS security model is complex) and dealing with new security issues (it never stops), compatibility with OS version releases (always new issues), compatibility with GPU drivers (always new issues), video codecs.
These things by themselves require a well-funded team to keep the browser relevant to modern sites. Well-funded because they take a lot of time and ideally to be done to a professional standard. The number of spare-time or independently-wealthy volunteers around to do the work seems thoroughly insufficent compared with what it would take to keep up.
That list doesn't even have new user-visible features (so nothing to "sell" to users except "we still work with current sites").
They are just moving-target "basics", minimal expectations by users and sites to remain "current" on the web. I'm sure I've left off a lot too, it's just off the top of my head.
If Mozilla can't maintain their own browser codebase that competes with Chrome now, what makes you think they'll be able to maintain a fork?
The moment they fork it and make their own changes, they are now back in the same position they were in -- a separate codebase under separate branding that needs to keep pace with Chrome.
There are two reasons forks work:
- They allow you to pull upstream changes. That's nice, but pulling upstream changes doesn't work once your codebase starts to heavily diverge from its source, so getting that benefit means you can't make changes that are too divergent from the upstream.
- They also allow you to get rid of upfront work and start from a solid base. That's also nice, but getting rid of the upfront work isn't valuable to Mozilla. Firefox is already basically on par with Chrome where most features are concerned. It's not the upfront work that's the problem, it's maintenance, advertising, and monetization.
A Mozilla fork of Chrome would be effectively the same thing as giving Google control over the entire web standards process.
For what it's worth, I agree with you. Chromium has won. It's the "Linux kernel" of web browsers. However, that DOESN'T necessarily mean that every Linux user has to run Ubuntu!
I recently switched from Firefox to Vivaldi. Just because:
1. I got tired of nagging compatibility issues with websites that I can't easily do with out (e.g. bank and stock broker).
2. I dabbled with Opera once upon a time, and liked it. I don't trust Opera's current Chinese ownership, but the original developers formed this new company and their (Chromium-based) browser is quite nice.
However, I still don't like the fact that Vivaldi is proprietary and closed-source. I would love to have a browser that is both built on a Chromium core, AND built for privacy by a trustworthy open-source company.
If Mozilla would fill this niche, then I'd be back tomorrow. They've already sort of dabbled in this area, with their Chromium-based "Firefox Focus" browser for mobile devices. But that's a very thin shell with no features.
I wish they would just acknowledge reality, throw in the towel on Gecko, and build an awesome Chromium-based browser. Microsoft managed to do it seemingly overnight, surely Mozilla could as well if they so wanted.
FIREFOX'S VALUE-ADD IS NOT GECKO! It's all of the functionality layered on top of that engine.
Unfortunately, Brave's sync service just flat-out doesn't work. To the point where they have it disabled by default, and you have to crack open advanced settings to see if it will actually work reliably for you (SPOILER ALERT: It won't). I think they were too focused on making it "blockchain-based" and "crypto-trendy", and just can't build something sensible that works.
THIS is the value-add that browser vendors can bring to the table going forward. Chromium the kernel has won. But at the user-feature level:
1. Google and Microsoft's Chromium-based browsers spy on you.
2. Opera's Chromium-based browser has Chinese ownership, and probably spies on you.
3. Brave is buggy and flaky with all of the user features that they've built on top of their Chromium-based browser.
4. Vivalid's Chromium-based browser is pretty awesome and solid, and probably doesn't spy on you. But it's closed-source.
5. Firefox is solid, and has good no-spying values. But their browser is not Chromium-based, and it's dying because the Internet is simply moving on away from it.
With this list, Vivaldi is currently the "least-bad" option from my POV. But I would love to go back to Firefox if they would get real with the times.
> @blub: "There's no way that a closed source browser owned by a Chinese company is least bad"
You're speed-reading my comment, and getting it wrong. Vivaldi is NOT Chinese-owned. It is a group of European former-Opera developers, who were unhappy about the Chinese acquisition of Opera.
> @outsomnia: "Ffox is super up to date with latest and next-gen web technologies... what do you even mean by "get with the times"?"
A similar argument pops up on Java developer forums, in discussions about the old "Java EE" specifications versus Spring Boot. The devs who have hitched their career wagons to Java EE just cannot process the reality that it died 5-10 years ago.
"But it's a specification! A standard!"
"But Spring implements a lot of those standards! And the other bits are all proprietary API's, that don't have any alternative non-Spring implementations!"
It doesn't matter. The spec is not the standard anymore. For the vast majority of Java shops, Spring has become the standard. Like it or not, that's the reality.
This analogy is even more extreme when it comes to browser engines. More and more of the web targets Chromium, and is glitchy or non-functional with Gecko. 99% of people could care less which specs Gecko has implemented, or how well they implemented the spec. CHROMIUM IS THE SPEC.
Safari doesn't spy on you and is a pretty good browser. There's no way that a closed source browser owned by a Chinese company is least bad. That's easily the least trustworthy option.
I think they should have done a better job explaining the purpose without saying the C-word (cryptocurrency) at it's been tainted to scam/fad/etc. The idea of BAT is really nice in theory, but it got pulled into the crypto scene and specualtion a bit too hard and should have been more of an implementation detail.
So I've been using Vivaldi more so I can speak more authoritatively on it. Some missing pieces are mobile sync or ability to send tabs around on iOS, right-click and close all other tabs doesn't exist, and I wasn't able to right-click and get all of the back/forward history from the menu button. Vivaldi says to hold down the button to get the menu, but it doesn't work for me.
Otherwise, it duplicates FF pretty well. Its obviously lacking in everything else "Firefox" like container support and DNS over HTTPS. Firefox is just a very fleshed out browser that is hard to replace. Vivaldi also shares standard Chromium browser flaws, such as being difficult to pass all of Cloudflare's security tests[0], when it's trivial in Firefox.
I agree with you that Gecko should be replaced with Blink, but another more popular perspective by a lot of hardcore nerds is that they like Gecko because new code carried over from Servo is written in Rust. Which has sifted out of the pile of new languages over the past 15 years as the real star.
Over the years I've pretty much written off everything except Firefox and native browers. FF for power users, native (Edge/Safari etc) for best system performance. Battery life is a killer feature in my book. There's too much missing in Vivaldi for me to move to it, if I ever throw in the towel on Firefox it'll be for Edge, but I'll be keeping tabs on Vivaldi.
Your comment encouraged me to check out Vivaldi. I'm a very longtime FF user, since it was in beta. I'm one that primarily used Netscape in the 90s and Firefox being a successor meant something to me.
I'm impressed with Vivaldi. It pretty much has everything you could want built-in. This is exactly what Firefox needs to be in 2020. Tree style tabs (never my thing but nice to have as a built-in), adblocking (I'll always use uBlock Origin anyway out of performance paranoia but still good to see), unsmooth jittery scrolling option (just feels better), a dedicated search bar. I thought I was the only one who cared about a dedicated search bar still. Great stuff.
Mozilla should simply buy Vivaldi, rename it Firefox, hook it into their add-ons store, keep their existing iOS Firefox app, and add Firefox's exclusive features like secure Cloudflare DNS over HTTPS, container support, their excellent send link functionality to mobile etc.
I did use Opera for a time when it was first released and liked it, hearing Vivaldi is from those developers makes sense on how well done this is. Opera was more innovative than Firefox for the most part, in my opinion.
All that said, if I move off of Firefox it'll probably be to Edge. I never liked the idea of using a browser that isn't from a major vendor for overall support purposes. Microsoft has their own extensions store with most things in it already, so they're safe from Google's actions on that front. I see in Vivaldi you're directed to the Chrome store which makes me very uneasy. More uneasy than just using Gecko/Firefox (or my second choice, Edge).
Still impressed, this is what Firefox and Edge should be stealing ideas from. A "Vivaldi" from a major vendor is the best shot anyone has at attacking Chrome's marketshare, it's the only way at this point yet no one is doing it which seems so shortsighted.
Just because two different codebases try to achieve similar things, doesn't mean it's duplication.
It certainly serves not only consumers, but also businesses well to have firefox (and mozilla) so web standards don't get dictated by a single private entity.
It should be noted that the base Chromium packages still include Google-specific and Google-friendly features, such as automatically deriving your browsing profile from whatever Google account you happen to be logged into.
They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway.
It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market and building consumer products and less on infrastructure.
FF as needed back when all the browsers were proprietary.
Sure... Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it can always be forked. There's nothing advantageous in maintaining FF as a dedicate code base. It's just duplication.
One of the major points of OSS is to prevent people from competing on things that are non-differentiating. If's OSS so they can fork it and make their own changes if they want.