Servo Web Engine Continues Advancing but Seeing Just $1.6k in Monthly Donations | Hacker News Reader

Servo Web Engine Continues Advancing but Seeing Just $1.6k in Monthly Donations

phoronix.com

70 pointsluu18 comments

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This is really sad.

Meanwhile Mozilla busy spending half a billion USD/year on "better projects".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances

I believe the Servo project is not apart of Mozilla anymore. It's apart of the Linux Foundation.

That's my point and also the first paragraph of the article:

> The Rust-written Servo web engine as a reminder was started as a Mozilla project but then abandoned and now developed by multiple organizations as part of Linux Foundation Europe.

Couldn't Mozilla spend 0.1% of their budget in Servo Research & Development? That would be close to 500k/year.

Browser engine is such a crucial part of our world.

They stopped working on it and another foundation took over. Why would they start funding it again and if they decided to why wouldn't they fork it back?

> They stopped working on it...

This was the mistake in my opinion. Abandoning a project that could make the web safer.

The point is that they're not better projects and they receive a ton more funding. A lot of really bad stuff gets a lot of money for reasons that won't improve humanity or most peoples' lives, which a browser that runs well on more limited hardware would absolutely do.

It is so crazy that nearly 90% (most recently 80%) of Mozilla's revenue comes from a direct competitor.

That is positively insane, and should be total fodder for an anti-trust case against Google, shouldn't it?

"One of your biggest competitors in the browser space gets almost all their revenue from you, how exactly can they effectively compete in that scenario?"

It calls into question what the actual reasons are why they aren't funding a rendering project like Servo that is a direct competitor to Chrome.

How many internet users would pay anything at all for a web browser (or its engine)? Can browsers only be produced as a loss leader? What alternate revenue source besides browsers (and advertising) should Mozilla be funding Servo (and Firefox) with?

No one seems to have that answer, and without that, it’s unclear how Mozilla’s slow collapse is newly interesting and relevant to this Servo thread.

You’re 100% correct that browsers aren’t a viable business model.

But neither is getting 80% of your revenue from a company that probably only keeps you alive so they can show you off as healthy competition.

Both things can be true.

Is there any other reason why Google would do this?

So, you want it to be illegal for Google to pay Mozilla? That would end Firefox development outright.

No, I am merely pointing out that they are already in a very precarious position that Google (who is notorious for "ending" projects) could decide to cancel that funding source overnight.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe they are moving towards alternate sources of revenue, since google makes up "only" 80% now, whereas it used to be over 90%.

"that they are already in a very precarious position "

Not that bad. They have saved quite a lot of assets and they can sell out to Bing Microsoft as well.

> Maybe they are moving towards alternate sources of revenue, since google makes up "only" 80% now, whereas it used to be over 90%.

Yes. Pocket, ads, Mozilla VPN, Firefox Relay.

I don't understand how this reply is on-topic for Servo, apologies.

Firefox is a direct competitor to Chrome. They fund Firefox.

This is the time to give them $10/m, not ten years from now when we're all complaining about a chromium monoculture.

Didn't done foundation donated them their software engineers?

I'm still waiting for Vulkan rendering path in Firefox.

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