Igalia's open prioritization experiment for contributing to browsers | Hacker News Reader

Igalia's open prioritization experiment for contributing to browsers

frederic-wang.fr

49 pointsstaktrace16 comments

Igalia is a rather interesting company. They do highly technical software consulting (compilers, gpu drivers, browsers) and are employee owned.

Other interesting aspect is that they get paid to build features for the browser by companies that want to drive the direction of the web platform.

https://blogs.igalia.com/mrego/2017/03/16/css-grid-layout-is... - Bloomberg paid Igalia to implement CSS Grid in Chromium and Webkit

Yes! We've contributed loads to each of them. Here's a summary I wrote at the end of last year https://bkardell.com/blog/2019-Wrap.html - #2 contributor to Chromium, #2 contributor to WebKit, top 10 to Firefox last year.

Hi, does igalia take smallish dev contracts (about 10k) ? This would be from a french free software not-for-profit.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking/interested in, but my contact information is on the linked site/my twitter DMs are open and I'm happy to talk more.

Ok thanks for your quick answer, I'll ping you there.

> Bloomberg paid Igalia to implement CSS Grid in Chromium and Webkit

Oh wow I knew Igalia was an employee-owned open source company, but I assumed they were a very minor consultancy like you see lots of open source programmers running to do a couple of contracts here and there. I didn't know they were operating at the level where companies like Bloomberg were going to them. That's an incredible sign of their maturity.

I think I also read something about how they pay everyone in the company the same?

Yes, all Igalians receive equal pay and are involved in all decisions!

Does that mean that a recent graduate makes as much as a Director with 20 years of experience? Or is there some other form of compensation for senior partners that is not base salary?

If everybody truly takes home the same amount, what do you do to retain talent? Wouldn't senior employees look elsewhere for better pay?

> what do you do to retain talent? Wouldn't senior employees look elsewhere for better pay?

Giving everyone a true sense of co-ownership is great for retention. Plus interesting, meaningful work, good pay, etc. Why would you need to know that you make more than your coworkers?

Maybe they pay everyone like seniors?

Igalia has contributed immensely to web standard implementations. Not just CSS Grid, but CSS Containment, CSS Text, various improvements to using Chromium on Linux (Wayland), Object.entries, BigInt in WebAssembly, Private Methods.

To Chromium alone, they're the second biggest contributor, aside from Google[0].

[0]https://speakerdeck.com/mariospr/summary-of-igalias-contribu...

I wish I had the chops to work there, honestly. I've always dreamed of working on a browser, but alas, I don't know C++.

I’m sure you could learn C++ and how to work on browsers - it’s no harder than any other software.

Alas, opportunity cost. I can’t afford to not keep on my own path right now sticking to the things I have lots of experience with and some degree of mastery.

Ive only ever been able to change stacks when my employer allows me the ramp time so far (otherwise I seem to get hated by lack Of experience)

Now if they had a use for a highly skilled JS developer who is willing to learn C++ we could talk

I admit the C++ ramp up could be discouraging, but in the case of Chromium, it's a quite well documented project and its code review process is very helpful and friendly.

Other open source engines, like Gecko/Servo or WebKit offer similar incentives to start contributing to those projects, but perhaps Chromium has a bigger community and capacity to provide documentation or assist in the code reviews. In any case, all of them are built on top of an open and receptive communities.

Also the second largest contributor to WebKit after Apple in the same years. I shared a link here in one of the other comments with charts and lots more info from the end of 2019.

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