| I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what standards are here. The web is what the engines implement and what sites use. Always has been. A standard that's not implemented isn't worth anything. Web standards exist to help browsers be interoperable. Before them one browser would implement something, and if another liked it they would too. That can still happen, but standards mediate the process to be less chaotic and more reliable. Web standards cannot force browsers to do anything. If a browser doesn't implement a standard - and there are lot of unimplemented "standards" out there - then it just doesn't. As a user then you have the choice to use browsers that offer better or different standards support. If you require XSLT support, and Firefox removes it, you can use Safari, or Chrome. If Chrome removes it, you can hopefully use an Blink engine that keeps the feature on (usually they're removed with a flag far before they're actually deleted with code). And this is the real problem with a lack of browser diversity: Users need to be able to vote with their feet. But... if all the vendors agree on something, as a user good luck with finding an alternative. I seriously doubt Opera, Brave, or Vivaldi is going to do the work and take the security risk to add back XSLT. Servo and Ladybird aren't going to come to the rescue here either. They most likely would love to have less to implement. |
I agree, but this is not about that.
XSLT is implemented. Websites use it. I would argue the barrier to remove it should be incredibly high, not "we don't want to financially support the dude who maintains the library". Web standards should be close to permanent, which is why we should not add stupid ones left and right.
The problem I have in particular with how Google uses it's incredible clout to mismanage the web is it actively chips away at the web's stability. The goofiness the CA/B is up to is similar: Over 80% of organizations have outages every year due to certificate issues, and some absolutely clueless folks think 47 day certificate lifetimes is a good decision. The web in 2025 is incredibly fragile, and all signs lead to Google continuing to try to make it more fragile. You could pull in dozens of examples of centralizing forces that ensure one engineer pushing a bad configuration at one company takes down 40% of the web.
The Web is not Android. Apps on it should not break because you didn't submit a new version which updates to the latest platform framework within the last six months. Something on the web should, ideally, continue to work in perpetuity, unless acted on by an outside force (most likely by the site owner failing to continue paying the bill).
XSLT exists, it's supported by every major browser right now, and it should be nearly illegal to remove it.