I see. The statement was a request for a better argument than a blanket appeal to engine diversity as the highest good. We can both trivially imagine scenarios in which we achieve a multitude of engines but fail on most other dimensions, right?
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Replying to @slightlylate @mikesherov and
Of course. We can also imagine scenarios where we fall into another browser monoculture and fail to take the web in the best possible direction, right? As I said, there’s tension, that’s a *good* thing, even when it’s painful. It keeps us all honest and doing our best.
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Replying to @plinss @mikesherov and
Now we're getting somewhere! Browser monocultures of yore happened pre-OSS. How does that change the calculus? Browser monoculture implies engine monoculture, but the inverse isn't strictly true, right?
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Replying to @slightlylate @mikesherov and
You’re not seriously saying engine monoculture would be a good thing, are you? And FWIW, Gecko went open source in the 90s, prior to the monoculture desert. Having an open source engine isn’t enough to prevent that.
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Replying to @plinss @mikesherov and
I'm not making claims that monoculture is good *or* bad. It presents risk, tho. In MSFTs example, big realised risk was disinvestment. On Gecko; wasn't NN/Mozilla's shipping engine until the 00s, right? I ran the nightlies, but it wasn't 1.0 until 2002, IIRC.
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Replying to @slightlylate @plinss and
So what is an ideal scenario? Imagine multiple engines all compatible about 99% of features all the time, exploring the frontier of new features separately, but safely, then quickly converging. Assuming such a scenario represents a competitive platform, that's pretty
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Replying to @slightlylate @plinss and
To enable that ideal scenario, Blink invests massively in compat, tests, OT infra, process, etc. One concern now is that we've done a huge amount to get compat for existing features but are pulling away on investment levels for new work, endangering competitiveness.
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Replying to @slightlylate @plinss and
Investment levels predict outcomes. Multiple impls require multiples on base impl investment + fixed compat (tests, standards) overhead. Our proprietary competition doesn't bear these costs. OSS is one cost-sharing approach; we can imagine others.
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Replying to @slightlylate @plinss and
In a scenario where the web is succeeding, all of these costs are investments in resilience. In scenarios where it's losing, they look more like competitive drag. So we should try to situate ourselves in the competitive analysis and weigh up risks from that perspective.
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Replying to @slightlylate @plinss and
I've externalised some of the landscape we see from the Desktop + Android vantage in this talk. TL;DR: we're getting our adoptedStyleSheets kicked:https://vimeo.com/364402896
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So do I want engine diversity? I want a web that's competitive and valuable enough that the required investment multiples are a no-brainer.
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