[kwlug-disc] Firefox blasphemy: time to switch to Blink rendering engine?

[CrankyOldBugger]

It seems that Ars Technica has been following our mail.. they just
published a writeup on the Brave browser:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/brave-has-a-plan-to-stymie-websites-that-override-your-privacy-settings/



On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 9:38 PM Ronald Barnes <ron at ronaldbarnes.ca> wrote:

> Doug Moen wrote on 2022-03-08 06:18:
>
> > The 3 major organizations that determine the web standards are
> > Mozilla, Apple and Google. I have been observing this process
> > closely, since I am following the evolution of the WebGPU standard
> > for a few years now. I am on the mailing list and read all the
> > meeting minutes. It is Mozilla, Apple and Google employees who do all
> > the heavy lifting in defining this standard. And they are equal
> > partners in defining the standard. There is no sense in which one of
> > these orgs is dominating the design, or in which one is only a junior
> > partner. The WebGPU project's goal is to ship WebGPU 1.0
> > simultaneously in all 3 browsers when the standard drops, which means
> > Mozilla, Apple and Google all have a veto on design decisions they
> > are opposed to.
>
> I would want Mozilla to remain on that steering committee, no matter what.
>
> And this WebGPU sounds interesting.
>
>
> >> The early advantage of the Linux kernel was that we had one smart
> >> guy at the helm that most people trusted.
> >>
> >> Google is not that guy.  Neither is Mozilla.  We don't have that
> >> guy in the browser space.
> > For me, Mozilla is that guy in the browser space. Mozilla's mission
> > is to create a free and convivial internet, one that puts users, not
> > multinational corporations and advertising companies, first. Here is
> > their mission statement:
> > https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
>
> Again, is this a function of rendering engine, or how it's implemented?
>
>
>
> > For me, it would be catastrophic for Mozilla to drop their role of
> > defining web standards, leaving it to Apple and Google to define what
> > the web is.
>
> Agree, I think.  I want them on the committee, but if Mozilla has access
> to the open-sourced rendering engine, I'm not sure about what
> detrimental direction Google & Apple could take us in.  Perhaps a
> failure of imagination on my part.
>
>
>
> >>> Who would be hurt by a modern day web rendering engine
> >>> mono-culture?
> >> Anybody who does not think certain browser extensions are a good
> >> idea. If Mozilla loses the browser engine then it loses its seat at
> >> the table when it comes to web standards.
> > Right now, there's a big fight between Google and Mozilla about
> > replacing cookies with an even more effective surveillance mechanism
> > for delivering eyeballs to advertisers. I am on Mozilla's side in
> > this fight, and I don't want Mozilla to drop out of the web standards
> > process and let Google win.
> > https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/privacy-analysis-of-floc/
> Implementing FLOC, or not, would be left to the Mozillas & Vivaldis &
> Edges and would still be the competition we need in browser space.
>
> Floc isn't parted of Blink, as I understand it.
>
>
> So Google can implement Floc in Chrome, but Microsoft can leave it out
> of Edge, Mozilla can not implement it,...  And still, a majority of web
> users will have floc in their browsers because Chrome has the market share.
>
> As for extensions, I can see Mozilla having to change extension
> sub-system API / whatever *again* could deal it a fatal blow.
>
> But extension writers could write once and be supported on all browsers,
> saving them effort in the long term.
>
>
> I guess I'm assuming that Mozilla's Blink implementation would allow
> extensions to operate similar to status quo and Google's attempts to
> block things would be easier to work around than maintaining an entire
> rendering engine themselves.
>
>
> I don't know, I've just been frustrated by some web dev recently and
> we're in a much different place now than we were in the '90s, so I'm not
> as concerned about the issue as I was back then.
>
> Plus, the way things are going, we may have to anticipate a world
> without Firefox someday anyway.  And I say this with sadness as a
> dedicated Firefox user.
>
>
>
> rb
>
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