this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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There really needs to be a "Linux" of browser engines.
Keep an eye on https://servo.org/
Can someone who is more knowledgeable about these things explain why I should be hyped for Servo?
Isn't that gecko, Firefox's engine?
From what I understand, Gecko was a terrible engine from the get-go. It is also difficult to work with, and had a lot of idiosyncrasies that made hard to build anything that isn't just a clone of Firefox. There's a reason why Apple used KHTML as the basis of Safari and not Gecko. Even Brave is based off of Chromium, and the founder of Brave is one of Mozilla's founders!
So apparently no, Gecko is not it. We need something closer to a pure browser engine that is open source.
No, chromium is the Linux of browsers.
Closer to the Windows kernel of browsers.
I'd argue that's what Gecko is tbh
When that source, open or otherwise, is unilaterally controlled by Google, that doesn’t really mean much
No, it's not. It's open source and can be modified from Google's baseline to be free of their restrictions by anyone who cares to put in the work, like Brave and Vivaldi.
Are people able to make meaningful contributions to the project upstream to steer the direction of the web as an open platform?
In every way Linux has the potential to in a world where 99% of people would rather just use Windows, sure.
Most people are just going to use Chrome and don't give a shit. If you're developing/using a different browser then yeah you probably have the ability to significantly impact the way web browsing happens going forward. As any fork of chromium is it's own thing and has the ability to become the new standard.
Is that not what Chromium is? An open source browser that anyone can adapt to suit their needs.
People are worried that Google controls the project. Anyone using Chromium is basically making their own version of Chrome but with extra features.