Why is it that Servo has been around for ages, chugging along, making progress, and then Ladybird comes along and gets, pretty much instantly, anointed as the last great hope against Chrome? What does everyone else know about Servo that I don't?

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okanat 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Servo was a side-project. Mozilla laid off the Servo team. Its development then stopped. It eventually found a home in Linux Foundation but it lost the initial acceleration. It lost the ambition. Many key developers moved on. Whatever nature your project is, closed or open source, when you lose key people and stop training new ones, the project slowly dies. People matter much much more than the license or the parent organization.

Ladybird didn't lose its initial speed. There is a leader with strong vision. There is no shenanigans from half-assed management. There is clear and responsible funding. It attracts similarly ambitious people. All of that ends up with visible and real progress.

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pkulak 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I've actually been watching all the Ladybird update videos (because I'm absolutely giddy at the prospect of a new, open-source browser engine), and they compare their test passing numbers to other browsers, including Servo. And from their own slides, Servo is behind them, but not by much, and making progress at about the same rate.

Maybe that says it all, considering how much of a head start Servo had, but Servo also took a very long... break, as you said.

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SalmoShalazar 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There is a leader with a strong vision sure, but how long will he stick with it? We’ve seen him completely abandon a few projects now.

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		The previous projects were simply hobbies. This one has a full non-profit behind it. In the end though, there is always a risk. Then you need to hope that there is also enough development of secondary leaders who can carry the torch. It is more likely when people are employed under an organization with a clear goal. Mozilla and Servo lacked this goal and vision.
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sauercrowd 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can think of two reasons - it's a browser engine, not a browser - it was created and maintained for the longest time by mozilla, before the linux foundation took over a couple years ago. That creates history and governance that I could image puts of contributors or the broader excitement

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veeti 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I think if you look at old threads there was a lot of hype and similar high hopes for Servo back in the days, but Mozilla never positioned it as a new browser, only a testbed for parts to integrate into Firefox.