Kenneth Auchenberg

I couldn’t disagree with you more. It precisely *because* Chromium has such a large marketshare that is vital for Mozilla (or anyone else) to battle for diversity. I’m shocked that you think they’re not contributing. “Building a parallel universe"? That *is* the contribution.

(and I know that plenty of people on the Chrome team feel the same way; they understand that diversity is vital for the health of the web and fully support Mozilla.)

I don't neglect the important work Mozilla has contributed, but here's a few observations shapes my perspective: 1) The modern web platform is incredible complex. Today it's an application runtime comparable to the Java or .net framework.

2) This complexity it's incredibly expensive to implement a web runtime. Even for Google/Microsoft it's hard to justify such investment that would take thousands of engineers in multiple years. The web has become too capable for multi engines, just like many frameworks.

3) Contribution can happen on many levels, and why is it given that each browser vendor has to land their contributions in *their own* engine? What isn't the question what drives most impact for the web as a holistic platform?

4) My problem with Mozilla's current approach is that they are *preaching* their own technology instead of asking themselves how they can contribute most and deliver most impact for the web? Deliver value to 65% of the market or less than 5%?

5) This leads to my bigger point: In a world where the web platform has evolved into a complex .application runtime, maybe it's time to revise the operation and contribution model. Does the web need a common project and an open governance model like fx Node Foundation?

6) What if browser vendors contributed to a "common webplat core" built together and each vendor did their platform specific optimizations instead of building their own reference implementations off a specification from a WG? That's what I mean by "parallel universes".

(Chrome engineer here.) This isn't very helpful. :( Moz is doing some great, groundbreaking work, in ways that they realistically couldn't do in the Chromium project. I don't want to see them go.

I don't want them to go either, but they should re-org into a research institution instead trying to justify themselves with the "protectors of the web" narrative. It's tiring.

It’s not wrong, though. Remember IE6? Having a single, majority gatekeeper for the implementation of a body of standards just isn’t workable. We’ve done it too many times in the past to know that.

Having standards requires multiple, independent implementations of said standards otherwise the standards are no longer valid, realistically speaking. This is what happened during IE6. New standards were completely ignored and Microsoft did its own thing.

I think it’s a valid opinion to argue that Mozilla and WebKit (if you consider it different enough from blink), keeping their separate implementations, shows that they care deeply about the web whereas Opera and, unfortunately now Microsoft, less so But that’s just my opinion

I don't think you can make a fair comparison between proprietary IE and Chromium. https://mobile.twitter.com/auchenberg/status/1089216498340528128 …

Isn't Android technically open-source too? But good luck doing it w/o Google's marketplace. That's the idea that Mozilla stands against. Control and reliance are two different things, but in the case of the web, you shouldn't give either to a single entity. Hope you can see that

The worst take. We must not concede the web to Google or any one. They're already using their dominance to dictate standards. They edited an old blog post to claim that they warned us about autoplay blocking. They now auto login users. They slow down yt on other browsers.

The benefits of open standards don't work without multi implementations from multiple parties. Otherwise it just turns into a dictated experience. Something that is unacceptable for a platform if open discourse and open publishing. Not to mention the benefits of competion.

What are you basing this on? Comparing closed-source IE to open-source Gecko? Open source Chromium where multiple vendors already contribute together?

In standards, implementation is king. MS couldn't have influenced WebRTC the way they did without their ORTC implementation. WASM wouldn't be taking off without one. It's easier for bad ideas to die and good ones to thrive (Dart vs. WASM).

I'd love to see competing implementations of platform features that doesn't involved a full implementation of the whole stack.https://mobile.twitter.com/auchenberg/status/1089259976923668480 …