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Comment by 0xABADC0DA | Hacker News Reader

The real problem with ActiveX wasn't the technology, it was the API. Code relied on a large, complicated, ever-changing API which was practically impossible for others to duplicate. Win32 was for the most part documented, but even a decade later Windows XP programs are often not useable in WINE.

This is the same problem with NaCL. The API is complicated and has a bunch of browser-specific features. Firefox can't just include "pepper.c" and have NaCL support, there's tons of work involved. One result is that Firefox won't support Flash for Linux anymore. Implementing Pepper, even though it's "open source" is more of a hindrance than not having Flash.

NaCL is better technology than ActiveX, but uses the same idea of leveraging a OS/browser-specific API as a handicap for competitors.

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The earliest versions of NaCl attempted to align to the mess that is NPAPI, but that was literally years ago. For the last few years NaCl has used PPAPI, which is well-defined, more loosely coupled to the web, and has a clean versioning mechanism: https://developers.google.com/native-client/pepperc/

I see hundreds of APIs and beta APIs. There's no source code repository. The python scripts to download a SDK refer to Google "private_svn".

So Google spends 6 months working on the next version and Firefox and Opera don't even get access to it until the next SDK and are 6 months behind, and they have zero input in how it evolves. That's not how open source should work.

Ummm, what?

http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/building-and-test...

Source: http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/native_client/trunk/src/nativ...

That wasn't hard to find.

Your "source" link doesn't have source, see:

http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/native_client/trunk/src/nativ...

The other is a link to a build of pnacl sdk that also doesn't include source (src/ folder is empty).

Am I being dense here? Where's the hg, github, code.google link that actually has the source code? I couldn't find where the source is. You would think that would be pretty obvious for an open-source project, like maybe some giant button on the project page.

Anyway it doesn't change the point. This isn't being developed as a public open-source project. It isn't designed to be easily added to browsers other than Chrome. Like ActiveX, it's being used as leverage to make one browser better at the expense of others.

Looking at the code, you have to check out the source and then run another script to check out the source from Google's private source control system/depot.

Why it isn't just in a public repo, I don't know. It looks like it is set up so they can pull it at a moment's notice.

I agree with your comments.

This is just silly. You can't say that you can pull the code from a public repository, and then claim it's private. If it's set up so you can pull the code, and you do so successfully, then it's by definition public. It's totally understandable that you're unfamiliar with how the the projects and dependencies are distributed. The Chromium projects are one of the largest and most complex codebases you're likely to encounter. However, it's all clearly documented and public, with numerous open source contributors. So, it's very disturbing that your first thought is not try and learn why, but rather to insinuate some irrational conspiracy theory.

Sorry I will clarify with a genuine question: where is the public source code with changelog?

It seems like a snapshotting tool, so you check out the stub and then dump the snapshot into it from the depot.

(this is similar to how Windows is built inside Microsoft).

Just follow the instructions for checking out and building NaCl: http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/sdk/howto_buildtestsdk

Everything is in public svn and/or git repositories. The thing that's confusing you is probably how modules are split out as dependencies. They're not checked directly into the tree, and instead are listed by repository URL and pinned revision in DEPS files. On checkout and sync gclient pulls the correct revision from the appropriate repository: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/depottools#TOC-DE...

I can appreciate that you're unfamiliar with the build and dependency management tools used by Chromium and related projects. However, it's disingenuous to imply that somehow the project is any less public or open because of that.

Some dependencies are pulled in and set-up by the checkout scripts, which is not an unusual degree of complexity for a large group of projects with such broad dependencies. It's all clearly documented and everything you need to know to checkout, build, and contribute code is linked from right here: http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient

I think you pretty much proved my point. NaCL is a sandbox, the very thing that should have the cleanest, clearest delineated lines. But there's no standalone version, no stub version. And you seemingly need a PhD in Chromium to even find the source much less get it working in anything else.

I guess Mozilla is unusually capable then because their download link is right here:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mozilla_Source_Code_%28Merc...

Pretty simple.

So you're working on Chromium and think navigating a buildbot to get python scripts that download from a private svn is not unusual... ok fine, but don't be surprised if people don't want to touch it (or even can figure out how to). I certainly understand better now why Mozilla would rather just drop Flash support.

So, the new claim is that making a directory and running a script is too hard for you: http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/sdk/howto_buildtestsdk

Seriously, this is just absurd. I don't know what you think you're arguing at this point, but I don't have the energy to correct you anymore.

I don't understand your argument here. NaCl is an open source and openly developed project that anyone is welcome to participate in. The repository, tracker, and mailing lists are all public. In fact, the NaCl team has made numerous efforts to involve the other browser makers (even if they haven't shown interest so far).

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