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flossly 7 hours ago

I really wish a patron would step up and sponsor this project. Not just by money, but also by plugging it in their browser-carrying products. Maybe Hauwei of Samgsung; they now sling a browser derived of another for-profit --usually competitor-- company's browser.

nicoburns 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Huawei are funding Servo. They have a small full time team on it and are the main reason the project got revived in 2022.

le-mark 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s interesting, anyone have more info on how why this came about? The why is pretty clear at least.

nicoburns 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It came about because US sanctions on Huawei mean that they are unable to make contributions to any of the major browser engines which are all controlled by US entities.

iamnothere 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I was not aware of this, and now I suddenly understand the weird hate that the project gets from drive-by commenters. (I don’t agree with it, but I can see a plausible motivation.)

fifilura 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't really see why they would do that?

bryanlarsen 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Being dependent on a direct competitor is not a comfortable position to be in. It's ameliorated significantly by Chromium being open source, but not completely.

tonyhart7 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Samsung web browser uses chromium, I doubt they care

samus 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sanctions

embedding-shape 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So right now Servo is funded by the community, and this is no good because why? Instead you propose that this project should be funded by a for-profit company with it's own objectives in this world (that often starts with "more money"), again leading me to ask why?

The setup right now seems to give enough people enough time to work on it to move forward, why on earth would you want to involve companies infamous for their shit software quality, like Samsung?

flossly 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> So right now Servo is funded by the community, and this is no good because why?

Because look at Mozilla... You need to get the browser in front of people. A browser that works on the real web, is such a huge project, you cannot do it as a hobby community-funded project for ever. You need user-share-%.

Samsung can put it in front of Samsung appliance users.

112233 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Samsung has put Enlightenment 17 in front of every Tizen user. I am not seeing the flood of apps implemented on EFL coming out

badsectoracula 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it is actually Mozilla people look at when they ask "why" :-P

lukan 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Probably because broad adoption would help making it a real option to use in the near future?

So sure, Samsung would bundle it with their usual crap, but if it helps making the engine more mature, great, but I also don't see why they would in the first place.

doublerabbit 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It had broad adoption, Mozilla threw it away.

The same would occur again.

JoshTriplett 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In fairness, while there was definitely Mozilla mismanagement, there was also a massive monopolistic marketing/bundling campaign by Chrome. Google search and other properties pushed Chrome, Google paid application publishers to bundle Chrome the way they bundled adware, and so on.

lukan 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Servo never had. But yes, mozilla management let FF go down the drain.

bryanlarsen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Down the drain? Firefox is still a great browser.

lukan 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Their performance is not great comoared to the competition and their market share is at 3.7% and falling. The only thing that keeps me there, is ublock origin. The moment ladybird or a a servo base browser becomes an option I switch.

And if FF also starts to restrict UO, I just go to chrome then. I assume many think like me.

t-3 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Firefox is acceptable, but it's definitely not what it used to be. I've long stopped expecting any positive user- visible change in Firefox updates.

paulryanrogers 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Servo was not intended to replace Gecko. By all reports it was an experimental component, many of whose findings were used in Gecko.

That folks want to take it further is admirable. But doubtful Mozilla could have afforded to with their existing commitments.

bjord 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

sorry, what? servo existing as a mozilla side project did not give it broad adoption

rvz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Instead you propose that this project should be funded by a for-profit company with it's own objectives in this world (that often starts with "more money"), again leading me to ask why?

You understand that Mozilla Firefox is not funded by the "community" and is completely funded by Google's money. Even donating does not fund the browser.

Mozilla knows that the open source "community" has no money, and cannot replace the amount of money Google is paying them and the employees who work on the browser.

The question is are you ready to fill the $600M a year black hole for Google to NOT pay Mozilla to fund Firefox?

It only makes sense for Servo to get funding from for-profit companies at this point, which is one of the only ways open source can work.