Great to see the Servo project getting more support. Having more choice in this space is a very good thing. Igalia keeps doing fantastic work.
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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It is great to see Servo being actively worked on again. Rust is a great fit for a browser. It may even be a blessing that Servo is free of Mozilla’s corporate interests.
It does not seem that Igalia intends to make a browser out of it though. Hopefully somebody else steps up to make that happen.
What indicates that Igalia doesn't want to make a browser with it? What else is their motivation?
Well, they do not answer the question “what is Servo” by saying it is a web browser. They answer that it is a “rendering engine”.
But ok, you might think the obvious thing to do with a “rendering engine” is to make a browser.
I guess that is why they answer the question “what can Servo do for you?” as follows:
“Servo can be used to build embedded applications with web technologies, such as kiosk interfaces and digital signage. At present, Servo is especially suited to applications that use WebGL or WebGPU, as well as CSS-based applications where the developer has control over how components are implemented. Servo’s layout engine can similarly be used as the basis for Rust-based native UI frameworks.”
Maybe it is just me but “we are making a web browser from Servo” or even “YOU could make a web browser with Servo” seem to be markedly under-represented in those answers.
These are from the pages linked.
I guess my question back would be, “what evidence is there that Igalia plans to make a browser?”.
That description also makes it feel like it could be used like a leaner electron
Writing a browser not based on Blink or Gecko seems to be an insane goal these days. Maybe they don’t want to be insane.
My question was a request for clarification, not a challenge to your assertion. I don't have any reasons to believe that they are or aren't going to make a browser with it.
Regarding browsers, the blink engine has one important advantage over its competitors - embeddebility. That's why so many browsers have blink in its core. Servo had a similar goal with Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) compatibility. They dropped it due to some technical difficulty. It would have made servo a drop-in replacement for blink too. I wonder how the embedding story with Servo is, these days.
Setting manageable expectations for the team, is a good thing. And yes a rendering engine can be the core part of a browser. And that is a massive huge monumental chunk of work. If they have the rendering engine production ready some team may be tor is going to wrap a browser interface around it. Getting the engine working is probably 90% of the work
Maybe now there will be a way to donate directly to servo development.
That was my biggest gripe with it being in mozilla's clutches.They are great at mismanaging money. It feels like they're hold back Firefox on purpose.
Agreed. There is a conflict of interest at the leadership level.
(I said conflict of interest people, when 83% of your funding comes from your main competition it's hard not to have a conflict of interest. Don't tell me how good the people are at heart. It's not about intent it's about capabilities)
Where was Servo all these years? Is there an actual browser built upon it? Firefox still seems to be pure Gecko.
I believe some parts of Gecko is upstream of Servo. Igalia have nice podcast with some of the developerd: https://www.igalia.com/chats/servo
The quantum project that finally made Firefox competent against Chrome was about integrating parts of Servo with Gecko.
Servo was on hold while Mozilla didn’t have the money to fund development. That lasted for several years.
Of all the things Mozilla does, this seems like the most fundamental to their core outreach product, their browser. And the fact they gave it up but maintained a lot of their superfluous activities just really frustrated me
Yes, agreed. Servo is the only important project preparing them for the future they have. Shutting it down meant that they went into maintenance mode, only doing the bare minimum to keep the immediate income up.