Comment by I_AM_A_SMURF

Comment by I_AM_A_SMURF 9 days ago

Microsoft gave up on building a Web Browser engine and you think a government can? Browser engines are really hard to build. They requires a lot of (very expensive) niche technical talent. Not to mention the need to keep up with the rate of Google's improvements to Chrome/Blink. We're at a point where Chrome has a 10 year head start to any other engine other than Firefox, building a general purpose new engine from scratch is basically off the table, and hard forking Chrome/Blink is also off the table (because why would you toss the ~1bn$ Google puts into chrome every year?). We're in a world of a single browser engine, no way to go back for the foreseeable future.

shiroiushi 8 days ago

>you think a government can?

Do I think a government can fund a group of developers to fork some existing code and run with it? Yes, I do. Radical concept, I know...

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alternatex 8 days ago

I think you severely underestimate the size and complexity of something like Chromium. Not every project is fork and work material.

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- shiroiushi 8 days ago
  
  Well, a bunch of volunteers seem to have little trouble forking Firefox and creating Pale Moon, Waterfox, LibreWolf, and IceCat. You think a government can't do that? All they have to do really is throw some money to these existing groups.
  Why do you keep bringing up Chromium anyway? We're talking about Firefox here.
  
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  krige 8 days ago
  
  Yes, yes, and now Pale Moon is four years of web development out of date, Waterfox is not really recommended, LibreWolf has some sketchy history and so on. Forking is easy - keeping it updated and secure is hard.
  
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I_AM_A_SMURF 8 days ago

A government funding a 1 billion dollars a year software project? That would never fly in any country.

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- shiroiushi 8 days ago
  
  There's no way you need $1B/year to properly fund the ongoing development and maintenance of an existing web browser. The Ladybird team is making an all-new browser from scratch for almost nothing. Just because Mozilla is wasting so much money doesn't mean you actually need that much to do the same job.
  
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marto1 8 days ago

> you think a government can? Browser engines are really hard to build.

As opposed to CERN being easy to build!? I'd say is totally doable, but it doesn't promise filling anyone's pockets at the moment so traction is hard. Who knows, maybe in the future..

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I_AM_A_SMURF 8 days ago

Easily doable, let me guess you never worked on a browser engine?

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- shiroiushi 8 days ago
  
  I haven't, but the Ladybird browser devs are doing so at this moment, and they don't seem to need billions of dollars.
  
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