Technology

@Static_Rocket@lemmy.world and @neblem@lemmy.world thanks for mentioning Servo👍

I didn't know about that rust-based alternative until now and I agree; even Servo would've been a better choice than Chromium.

I'm very happy Servo exists but if they want, like, a working browser, it's no wonder they chose Chromium.

For comparison, from a recent Servo blogpost: "Servo can now run Discord well enough to log in and read messages, though you can’t send messages yet. [...] We now support enough of XPath to get htmx working.".

Servo has been in development for 7+ years and it's still not able to render modern web. Maybe it never will, since it's impossible to build a new web browser.

We’ve reached the point where Chromium is essentially the de-facto web standard because Chromium engineers do the lions’ share of feature testing and development,

Most of the web standards driven by Chromium are not particularly beneficial to the web, but are beneficial to Google. This is not an accident. It is how Google has made itself gatekeeper of the web while maintaining the facade of an open and standards-compliant browser.

This is not a good thing. Community-focused projects investing time and money into supporting it is a bit like digging one's own grave.

Would you think that maybe the feature set implemented by modern web browsers has grown too large? Perhaps we need to start dropping some features to keep the web browser design lean.

Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit it as someone who has left Chromium behind personally, Chromium is kind of the only choice.

With Mozilla's rudderless stewardship of Firefox, I reluctantly agree with this. Firefox, and Mozilla, used to stand for something more than just a browser, but that is sadly vanishing now. Chrome is really the future and while I'm clinging on to Firefox, I will succumb in the end.

It's very sad. I've been a Firefox user for so long I've lost count. But Mozilla has lost it's way and I don't see it making any noise about getting back on course.

I think having one browser engine is a very bad idea. But here we are.

With webassembly and webgl, why do browsers need to evolve? If you want some feature the browser doesn't provide, just make it yourself and draw it onto the canvas. x86 assembly gets occasional performance improving instructions but fundamally it's existed for 50 years and can continue to support all modern programs. X11 survived for 40 years before any talk of a replacement really appeared. Why can't Chrome be maintenance only for 40 years and let apps and websites innovate on top of its primitives?

I'm not sure. The courts intends for Google to sell Chrome, not Chromium. Even if they gave guarentees that Chromium will become independant, the coourt's likely to tell them to sell Chrome anyway (as they could still apply monopolistic practices like service bundling without control over Chromium, not to mention they could 'fork' LF's Chromium later to make their own).

The way I see it, this is more Google being scared shitless about Chrome's new owner being shitty, promote their own services instead of Google's, and disrespect web standards (or depecreates the 'standards' Google implemented in Chromium without the approval of other browers, or standard bodies). That could cause MASSIVE issues for them, and the loss of business that could cause would be tremendous, in a way that's far worse than giving up control on Chromium.

To me, his seems more like the nuclear option of Google saying that if they can't own Chromiulm, then nobody can as a way to cut their losses.

and if more people donated they wouldn't need alternative sources of funding......