They can only support MV2 extensions as long as Google continues to maintain them.

Their tech stack is heavily JavaScript-focused, as their entire UI is written in JavaScript.

How is it half of HN is convinced Firefox can compete with Chrome in its entirety and the other half is convinced nobody can possibly maintain a single additional API version on Chromium?

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maxloh 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It's about the tech stack, IMO. Chromium is a moving target to maintain compatibility with, which is difficult for a team that doesn't have much C++ experience.

As a counter example, Brave is heavily invested in C++ and Rust, and I believe they could handle that work much better.

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zamadatix 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Sure but even Vivaldi has a few C++ folks on the dev team, how many more is it to maintain an existing API to changes in the codebase, especially when any of the hard parts of that work only need be done once among all of the forks.

Even if they don't want to handle it directly, this is the kind of thing a single sponsor can pay Igalia for, who have shown the ability to make entire new Chromium subsystems like MathML. There is no shortage of C++ browser developers in the world to do maintenance work.

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grishka 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Can't Chromium-based browser developers work together to fork the entire thing? Ideally becoming independent of Google altogether.

	▲	pseudalopex 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It would be much spent and not much gained in their eyes.