[BrendanEich]

We at Mozilla don't have $2M and a year to spare, but you're wrong: we've assessed doing Pepper with high fidelity (not porting chromium and duplicating all the DOM and other browser API implementations). It's more like $10M and multiple elapsed years to get to Chrome parity, assuming Chrome doesn't keep evolving and put us on a treadmill.

But then, I'm just the guy managing engineering and worrying about budget at Mozilla. Maybe you have greater skills. Where do you work?

Anyway, Pepper is big, with over a thousand methods among all the interfaces that are "specified" only by C++ implementation code we cannot port. We have a DOM implementation already, for example. So you cannot escape the fact that Pepper is "and also", not "instead of" -- there's no savings, it is purely added-cost, and significant cost.

I'm almost the only guy who will say this on HN, but as far as I can tell, Microsoft and Apple are on the same page. Maciej Stachowiak of Apple has agreed on HN, for what it's worth:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4648045

Enough whining about Mozilla not doing Pepper. Let's get back to asm.js.

It looks like V8 will implement the optimizations for "use asm": http://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=2599.

Also, Epic is just the first big game publisher we are working with. Epic folks have confirmed again just this week that they won't do NaCl, there's no benefit to something CWS-only. But they are super-excited about cross-browser web-wide reach with asm.js and browser-hosted C++-sourced games. That's the PNaCl output format and runtime for Google to collaborate on.

/be

[pifflesnort]

> It's more like $10M and multiple elapsed years to get to Chrome parity, assuming Chrome doesn't keep evolving and put us on a treadmill.

So you don't believe Google's offers to work with external implementors?

> But then, I'm just the guy managing engineering and worrying about budget at Mozilla. Maybe you have greater skills. Where do you work?

I run a systems programming consulting shop. We focus on low-level OS/driver and VM projects, with application development making up the remainder of our work.

In theory, reliable estimates are my livelihood, and I have a very vested interest in the future of the platforms that we will have to develop for. I'm very concerned about the market requiring us to develop apps for a Mozilla platform.

> Microsoft and Apple are on the same page

What reason do they have to roll out something that helps Google undercut their vertical platform/app markets?

If NaCL is 'too good', then it threatens their business. Take that for what it means in terms of asm.js optimization adoption.

> Epic folks have confirmed again just this week that they won't do NaCl, there's no benefit to something CWS-only.

CWS-only and Chrome-only are again, oddly, something you have a hand in. Google pushed out beta PNaCL tools, and CWS-only has primarily been (rightfully) pending PNaCL.

[BrendanEich]

> So you don't believe Google's offers to work with external implementors?

I wasn't born yesterday.

Microsoft is patching WebKit to support Pointer Events. Strange days, but even this "help" does not mean Pointer Events should win (or lose -- it's neutral in standards terms, at most helpful to show implementation feasibility and quality, if possible).

Why do you distrust Apple and Microsoft and ascribe bad motives to them based on their commercial interests, but fault Mozilla for not jumping on Google's Pepper treadmill like a good little-brother caricature? Google has commercial interests too, and they have spent >$1B a year on Chrome -- including advertising and bundling that directly targets Firefox users. (It's amazing we are still alive, and possibly even growing desktop share.)

You are surely right that some amount of competitive pressure will be required to get asm.js optimized in all engines. Ditto for WebGL in IE, and enabled in Safari. But cooperation between Chrome and Firefox is already happening on both asm.js and WebGL, so between these "coopetition" pincers, I bet we'll prevail.

A hopeful sign regarding WebGL in IE11, assuming it is legit: http://fremycompany.com/BG/2013/Internet-Explorer-11-rsquo-s...

Anyway, let's assume everyone has equally good motives, since Google is not any less commercial than Microsoft or Apple these days. Pepper is still too costly for others to swallow even with offers of "help", and therefore losing -- it is not even in the race.

asm.js and evolved Web APIs (which developers need anyway) are winning.

Evil-me on my Throne of Skulls didn't ordain this outcome. It is unfolding before our eyes across browsers, developers, and very pragmatic third parties including big game/game-engine publishers.

(But I am laughing a Dr. Evil laugh, on my Skull island. :-P)

/be

[pifflesnort]

> Why do you distrust Apple and Microsoft and ascribe bad motives to them based on their commercial interests, but fault Mozilla for not jumping on Google's Pepper treadmill like a good little-brother caricature?

I don't distrust them, or ascribe bad motives. I ascribe motives that align with their economic interests -- it doesn't matter if they're bad or good.

> Google has commercial interests too, and they have spent >$1B a year on Chrome -- including advertising and bundling that directly targets Firefox users. (It's amazing we are still alive, and possibly even growing desktop share.)

How much does Google spend on Firefox's search deal? What do you see as Google's commercial motive with Chrome?

My reading (in the context that I have some family that works on Chrome) is that their primary interest was ensuring that they could help push the web forward, and not be beholden to external interests in doing so. They have an interest in open platforms insofar as it gives them leverage over the much more strongly established platform players (eg, Microsoft, Apple).

> asm.js and evolved Web APIs (which developers need anyway) are winning.

The interesting thing is that if asm.js has sufficient adoption, the 'web' part of the equation may very well not matter at all.

If Google maintains their efforts on (P)NaCL and can provide better performance, end implementors may target both asm.js and NaCL, with shims for platform-specific functionality (not unlike most game development today). Once you're doing that, you can also target other native platforms with the same code and tooling.

So I don't think asm.js is all bad. Ironically, it could very well be the escape route from JS/HTML/CSS/DOM that we've all been praying for ever since the idea of the web app came into being. Not because it's the best technical solution, but since when has technical correctness outweighed market forces?

> Evil-me on my Throne of Skulls didn't ordain this outcome.

Of course not. But "evil you" certainly has a hand in it. There are only 4 real players in the browser market, and you're one of them.

In fact, you're the one that decided to ignore what Google has been doing and invest in asm.js to begin with, so divesting any claim in the role of asm.js's possible ascendency is a bit of a stretch.

[BrendanEich]

My use of "bad" and "good" about your relative judgments of Microsoft, Apple, and Google could be "purple" and "shiny" for all it matters.

The point is you seem to treat Google as more benign and non-commercial. That's not credible based on many pieces of evidence, including their public company performance scrutiny by Wall Street. I admire Google for some things they do, and believe they do not over-optimize their share price, but they cannot ignore it, either. Also, they are a house divided, with many conflicting agendas not directly related to business goals.

> How much does Google spend on Firefox's search deal?

That's not something I can comment on, per our contract stipulated by Google, but the rumors are online and if you believe them, they show a commercial partnership, nothing more.

Numerate folks have estimated the value and cost of various search deals, see e.g. Jeremy Wagstaff of Reuters. I won't comment, except to say that Mozilla was underpaid for a long time, something we chose early on in order to avoid being greedy and triggering a bad reaction from search partners.

> What do you see as Google's commercial motive with Chrome?

Lots of motives, some mixed. It's complex, and the "make the web better" motive is still there and all to the good. Some shift away from standardization toward "works in Chrome/CWS" -- and not due to anything I did -- is evident lately, and disturbing. At the limit, it's Microsoft-y.

Again, if Google as a whole were to standardize early and often, just to take one example as we've done with the missing device and sensor APIs for mobile via Firefox OS (with Samsung patching WebKit for Tizen to match), we'd have a better web, faster. Some of the delays there can be blamed on Android, but not all.

> The interesting thing is that if asm.js has sufficient adoption, the 'web' part of the equation may very well not matter at all.

No, for Emscripten/ASM.js, you still need a C or C++ runtime, not just libc/stdio/stdlib stuff but various graphics, audio, and other APIs.

> In fact, you're the one that decided to ignore what Google has been doing and invest in asm.js to begin with, so divesting any claim in the role of asm.js's possible ascendency is a bit of a stretch.

Here you show your bias. I didn't "ignore" what Google has been doing, I estimated it as too costly to risk.

Now you tell me why the shoe isn't on the other foot. Why did Google "ignore" what we've been doing to advance JS for the last two years, and move all its Aarhus talent onto Dart, at some cost to V8? And at the cost of Epic, a "sale" we won that Google could have, had it only invested a bit more in JS.

You really do have a pro-Google, anti-Mozilla animus -- good/bad or purple/shiny, I don't care.

/be

[pifflesnort]

> The point is you seem to treat Google as more benign and non-commercial. That's not credible based on many pieces of evidence, including their public company performance scrutiny by Wall Street. I admire Google for some things they do, and believe they do not over-optimize their share price, but they cannot ignore it, either. Also, they are a house divided, with many conflicting agendas not directly related to business goals.

Absolutely not; I consider Google to be an organization whose commercial interests are ultimately far more aligned with my own than Apple's or Microsoft's. It has nothing to do with being benign or non-commercial -- my interests are in no small part commercial.

> No, for Emscripten/ASM.js, you still need a C or C++ runtime, not just libc/stdio/stdlib stuff but various graphics, audio, and other APIs.

Sure, but we (the systems/games development community) are well equipped to create common runtime libraries, especially on a platform that provides an anemic set of platform standards and components, in which case custom libraries won't suffer from QT or Swing's uncanny valley problem.

> Now you tell me why the shoe isn't on the other foot. Why did Google "ignore" what we've been doing to advance JS for the last two years, and move all its Aarhus talent onto Dart, at some cost to V8?

It seems to me that Google made a rational decision that JavaScript is not a technologically sound foundation upon which to build, and made the first moves to find alternatives.

> You really do have a pro-Google, anti-Mozilla animus -- good/bad or purple/shiny, I don't care.

It's actually an anti-JavaScript animus. The idea that JavaScript ought to be the foundation of the next generation of modern computing platforms runs counter to everything I know about language and runtime design.

It seems to be an entirely market-driven solution, not a technologically-driven one -- but those market circumstances are something you have far more influence over than I do.

[BrendanEich]

> It's actually an anti-JavaScript animus.

You just wrote that I "ignored" Google's NaCl and Pepper work. That is not true, and yet you didn't hold Google to account anywhere on this thread (or others) for "ignoring" opportunities such as asm.js which were latent in Emscripten (in spite of their commercial support for Mandreel-compiled CWS games).

There's more to what you wrote than just anti-JS animus. But let's not get stuck on this dispute; let's be unstuck like JS :-P.

> It seems to be an entirely market-driven solution, not a technologically-driven one -- but those market circumstances are something you have far more influence over than I do.

Look deeper. The market is responding to cost structures ultimately based on how hard it is to do PNaCl + Pepper vs. Emscripten + asm.js + (Web APIs that devs need anyway).

This is not about "best tech" or "marketing" or "market power". (Firefox doesn't have Google's marketing budget, and we definitely do not have decisive market power, as Netscape and then IE did -- but neither does Chrome.)

This is about "shortest path" or "worse is better" -- who gets adoption first with something "good enough" wins, and can keep winning if the good-enough thing keeps evolving and doesn't get stuck.

JS is "good enough" and manifestly capable of evolving cross-browser via the Ecma TC39 standards process and some coopetition to be even better.

Anyway, at the asm.js level, apart from syntax aesthetics, why do you care how an int32 cast or type annotation is encoded? The semantics are sufficient, as proven by UE3 in Firefox. They only get richer as we do SIMD, task ||ism, etc.

/be