[HN Gopher] Become a sponsor to Servo
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Become a sponsor to Servo
Author : lostmsu
Score : 131 points
Date : 2025-03-01 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| vardump wrote:
| We'll need Servo to counterbalance Chrome's dominance. I'll chip
| in $5.
| krick wrote:
| People always say that, but I don't see why would I want that.
| I like the idea of a browser engine in Rust, but I actually
| hope it might theoretically replace Chrome in 10 years, because
| it's better. Browser Engine is not an opinionated thing, or
| shouldn't be, anyway, why would I want any "alternatives" for
| that? I would rather have 1 engine and several good browsers,
| which are ultimately opinionated. Meanwhile, we do have more
| than 1 solid engine, and, uh, let;s say 0.8 good browsers.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| In my opinion, web browsers have become too popular and
| widespread. They're an important application on nearly every
| phone, laptop and desktop computer sold. The pressure to
| implement pervasive tracking is immense. I don't see a future
| where companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple all decide
| to drop this level of tracking and switch to an open-source
| product.
|
| If another browser engine is good enough they might _fork_ it
| in order to add these kind of predatory features. Kind of
| like they already did with WebKit, now that I think about it.
| :-P
| robocat wrote:
| Before browsers was Windows. Microsoft had dominance, and
| they lost it.
|
| I think browser based Apps took over in business because
| (1) Windows had shit security and shit App deployment, (2)
| Microsoft somehow forgot about developers developers
| developers.
| rectang wrote:
| Microsoft never forgot about locking developers in. As
| someone with trying to fulfill an organizational
| imperative to deliver cross-platform compatibility, they
| made my life as miserable as they possibly could.
| robocat wrote:
| > [Microsoft] made my life as miserable as they possibly
| could.
|
| Exactly what I was saying. They had the goodwill of
| developers and then they burned it. Any developer through
| the 00's got burned multiple times - like the terrible
| Kiddie Server 2008. They are still burning us with
| Telemetry and unprofessional choices like advertising
| within the OS.
|
| Before that they delivered mediocre but functional
| software. It worked. Now it doesn't work so well and is a
| masterclass in ugly graphic design and usability flaws.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| It's also worth remembering that developing cross-
| platform between windows and literally anything else
| (excepting maybe the xbox? never owned one) is a
| nightmare. At best managed code will handle some of it,
| but Windows has many primitives that operate
| fundamentally differently than other desktop platforms.
| That alone will ensure I'll never touch that market
| except potentially as a secondary effort if a product
| takes off. (I also haven't had to use windows for
| anything since like 2009, which helps.)
| wtallis wrote:
| My favorite example of this is to look at all the hoops
| Wine has to jump through to get decent performance for
| locks. Apparently many developers writing for Windows
| default to using a locking primitive that can wait for a
| list of locks (specified by handles), and those locks can
| be shared _between processes_. That primitive frequently
| gets used even for waiting on a single lock confined
| within a single process, but Wine usually still has to go
| through the incredibly expensive emulation to handle the
| general case.
| nicce wrote:
| > Browser Engine is not an opinionated thing, or shouldn't
| be, anyway, why would I want any "alternatives" for that? I
| would rather have 1 engine and several good browsers, which
| are ultimately opinionated.
|
| Maybe you don't see the irony in your comment, but that is
| exactly how you get opinionated engine. If there is only one
| party that controls the only engine, that is the definiton of
| "opinionated".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Most obviously because that one engine is guided by Google's
| goals, so ex. it has deliberately-inferior support for
| adblocking.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| > Browser Engine is not an opinionated thing
|
| Management of browser engines are absolutely opinionated.
| It's chock full of opinions. Decisions to not deprecate,
| decisions on which features to add, decisions on which
| features to refuse to add, all align around the incentives of
| the people who control the browser engine. For the last
| fifteen+ years the internet has primarily been driven forward
| by the needs of Apple and Google. There's no reason we have
| to continue like this, though.
|
| Third party cookies are a great example of how chrome is
| actively hamstringing the entire internet with its dominance
| and control by a for-profit multinational.
| otikik wrote:
| > Browser Engine is not an opinionated thing
|
| Here are some "opinions"
|
| "The engine shouldn't allow the user to block select parts of
| the content"
|
| "Telemetry should always be on"
|
| "The engine should restrict access to a list of websites and
| domains provided by the government"
|
| "All encryption should have a backdoor"
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| You don't need alternatives or competition, you just need
| improvements. But competition spurs improvements and
| alternatives spur competition.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The invention of JavaScript, the rise and fall of ActiveX,
| and the death blow to Flash have all been opinions held by
| browser engine makers with dominant market positions. Even
| just Mozilla's pre-Chrome opinion of "our JavaScript engine
| is fast enough"
|
| Google is no less opinionated with Chrome than Netscape,
| Microsoft and Apple have been. Google's opinions for the most
| parts align with our own, but that doesn't make it any less
| opinionated. And a Servo-monopoly would be better but still
| not great. Firefox started to stagnate after it took over
| from IE and vastly improved once Chrome appeared. Competition
| keeps things healthy
| pjmlp wrote:
| It starts by not pushing Chrome all over the place, including
| Electron, that is how we got here.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > Donating via GitHub Sponsors is better for Servo than donating
| via Open Collective
|
| https://servo.org/sponsorship/#donation-fees
| nicce wrote:
| Hmm. GitHub being big enough gives some leverage for payment
| method fees? Seems a bit absurd that PayPal can take more than
| 10%.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The collectives' operational costs come out of the fee,
| GitHub is big enough to zero-rate their cut. But I'd kinda
| rather also support OpenCollective use over a tech monopoly.
| nicce wrote:
| Aren't those operational costs in this case those payment
| processor fees? Because otherwise there should not be much
| difference.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| No. OpenCollective collectives effectively replace having
| to operate your own nonprofit organization. So it
| includes all of the legal, administrative, and accounting
| costs of operating a nonprofit on behalf of the
| participating collectives.
|
| I operate a collective which effectively operates as a
| 501c6 but I file no paperwork, OSC does for us.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _OpenCollective collectives effectively replace having
| to operate your own nonprofit organization._
|
| > _I operate a collective which effectively operates as a
| 501c6 but I file no paperwork, OSC does for us._
|
| I think you might have meant Open Collective _fiscal
| hosts_ replace having to operate a nonprofit
| organisation? Unless I 'm parsing your statements wrong.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Yeah, I try not to get too in the weeds on terms when
| describing OpenCollective to people unaware. (Also the
| company, nonprofit, and biggest fiscal hosts have
| historically largely been run by the same folks.)
|
| The core point is just that OpenCollective is not just a
| payment processor.
| nicce wrote:
| I think you missed my point. Or are you saying that if I
| pay with PayPal instead of Stripe, OpenCollective gets
| _themselves_ more money?
| dang wrote:
| (Someone asked us to change the top link but I'm not sure we
| should do that without permission from lostmsu.
|
| What I did do is detach this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43221548, so it's now the
| top comment.)
|
| Edit: permission received. Link changed now
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43222904).
| andrepd wrote:
| Man PayPal skimming 20% is insane. Do they get away with it
| just because of name recognition?
| adfm wrote:
| Supposedly, Apple now allows third party web engines on iOS. Is
| there a Servo iOS roadmap?
| klysm wrote:
| Haven't they always done that?
| fifilura wrote:
| No. 3rd party browsers were allowed but they had to use
| WkWebView as engine.
| Yoric wrote:
| No, Mozilla developed a full Firefox for iOS in ~2010, and
| Apple flatly refused to put it on the AppStore.
| gpm wrote:
| Even now it's only allowed in the EU, and only subject to a
| restrictive set of rules.
| worik wrote:
| > Apple now allows third party web engines on iOS
|
| Really?
|
| I want to know more about that
|
| Silly me: Should have checked for myself...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24050478/apple-ios-17-4-b...
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| I felt like this link is missing some important context.
|
| History: Initially started by Mozilla in 2012. They laid off the
| team off in 2020 and transferred the project to the Linux
| Foundation. Source:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servo_(software)
|
| 2025 Roadmap: https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Roadmap
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I was wondering why are random donation page was on the front
| page.
| nicce wrote:
| 50k commits 22k closed PRs. Rust language has 280k commits and
| 80k PRs respectively. Not a small project by any means.
| neilv wrote:
| What's a sober assessment of the state of a full Web browser
| using Servo, and scale of effort to get there?
|
| It needs features like bookmarks and basic tabs, and support for
| uBlock Origin rulesets (either as an extension or built-in).
|
| It doesn't need features like DRM, tethering to mothership
| services, telemetry, and paid-placement portal screens.
| zlagen wrote:
| They still have 62% pass rate in WPT so my guess is that
| there's still a lot to do to make it usable as a browser.
| neilv wrote:
| Thanks. How much of the remaining missing support is
| necessary for pragmatic daily-driver use by computer nerds?
|
| For what I have in mind, _initially_ , a _non_ -requirement
| is perfectly mimicking whatever someone managed to jam into a
| standard, unless it's really necessary to use "necessary"
| sites.
|
| (Anyone who does a lot of blocking of ads/trackers will
| already be familiar with sites not being pixel-perfect.)
|
| I'm thinking that bending over to mimick someone's big-moat
| browser behavior standards in every detail can be a secondary
| priority, for later, after nerds are already using it
| successfully as a daily driver.
|
| Nothing says nerds can't keep a Chromium installed as an
| emergency backup, for trying that one demo that uses the
| latest thing Google-Microsoft is going to railroad into the
| standard, or for watching Netflix while traveling. (And for
| Web development testing, of course.) But otherwise, we should
| be dogfooding, like we had to do with Linux.
| seaal wrote:
| Seems like most nerds that are looking for an alternative
| browser engine are instead moving towards Ladybird.
|
| Last year they passed Servo in WPT and recently passed
| Servo in stars.
|
| As of January, Ladybird has been able to successfully
| render Gmail[0], so I imagine this year it will be able to
| solve most users daily-driver requirements.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l8epGysffQ
| neilv wrote:
| Interesting. Has Ladybird solved memory bugs somehow, or
| is the situation going to be the usual constant security
| vulnerabilities and frequent security updates?
|
| I have mixed feelings about Rust, but it's one way to
| improve the current culture of tolerating numerous memory
| defects in C and C++ desktop application programs and
| userland libraries. So that would be a point in Servo's
| favor, unless they've Rusted themselves into a
| borrowing/lifetimes/async development complexity corner
| that makes moving forward too slow.
| zamalek wrote:
| I haven't seen anything on memory vulnerability issues.
| The project originated within a larger project to
| implement an operating system from scratch - including
| all dependencies (e.g. font parsing/shaping, image
| parsing, libc, you name it). That means that the project
| itself, and every single one of its dependencies, need to
| go through that whole cycle.
| nicce wrote:
| > I haven't seen anything on memory vulnerability issues.
|
| The issue is that barely nobody uses the Ladybird yet, so
| there are zero interests for anyone serious party to test
| that security. So nothing gets published about the
| issues. I don't even know if Ladybird runs in Google's
| Clusterfuzz.
|
| Memory safety is their long term plan (according to
| them), and they are going to use Swift for that. Let's
| see what happens.
| neilv wrote:
| Has/will Swift be sufficiently disentangled from Apple
| influence?
|
| And is this redirecting open source in an essentially
| proprietary direction (which has happened many times), on
| the key piece of software that is the Web browser?
|
| Why I'm asking: For a startup, I've used Swift (and
| SwiftUI, various Apple APIs, "entitlements", developer-
| hostile App Store experience, often nonexistent
| documentation). The core language is OK overall (not
| great). But most of the rest of the developer experience
| was awful, due to Apple. And you need a lot of pieces
| beyond the core language.
|
| Ultimately, the people who fund/do the work get to decide
| how they do it.
|
| I personally wouldn't invest in increasing open source
| adoption of an Apple property like that, unless someone
| has a compelling new argument for that.
| worik wrote:
| > Nothing says nerds can't keep a Chromium installed as an
| emergency backup,
|
| I do, now
|
| My boss insists on Google Meet, and it will not access
| audio on Firefox
|
| Every single other website does not have this problem, dark
| patterns indeed
| neilv wrote:
| Condolences.
|
| IME, Google Meet isn't the worst videoconf (that might be
| Microsoft Teams). Each one has problems.
|
| But what's even worse than when company/boss mandates a
| bad or so-so videoconf product, is when you're doing
| partner/customer calls, and for whatever reason, you wind
| up using their preferred service. So you have to keep a
| few/several different ones working on your devices,
| poorly configured, and have many first time joining
| difficulties at the start of possibly important meetings.
|
| Another time you need several videoconf is when job-
| hunting, and so many companies want you to use something
| different. And it's often shitty. And the first
| impressions can be high-stakes, while you're trying to
| get their shitty proprietary thing to work, even with
| Chrome or as an app you put on your sacrificial videoconf
| device.
|
| This is a little tricky to solve entirely with open
| standards, but there's a reason we starting doing open
| standards.
| nicce wrote:
| Signal Desktop seems to be the best conference app these
| days. Give a tip.
| nicce wrote:
| Bookmarks and tabs are something that dedicated group can do in
| one week. Even I managed to do that decade ago.
|
| The difficult part (rendering, its correctness and performance,
| protocol support and security) matters more. After that, maybe
| someone will build UI on top of that.
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://opencollective.com/servo to the
| Github Sponsors page - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43221739 for why.
| cardanome wrote:
| I think it could garner more support with a license that would
| guaranteed that it stays free instead of the MPL.
|
| With such a liberal license what would stop Google or Microsoft
| to build their own proprietary browser on to of Servo? At this
| point releasing software under liberal licenses instead of (A)GPL
| is basically providing free labor for the tech monopolists.
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