A Word about Complexity

dillo-browser.github.io

4 pointsrodarima2 comments

Good article, but I think it misdiagnoses the problem. Chromium is complex because what it implements is complex. Dillo is smaller because it doesn't support as many features. It's a solution to a simpler problem. Still, great article.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure if I understand the misdiagnosis part. I think that complex free software reduces the ability from independent groups to modify it, so forcing it to be small ensures it remains easy to modify.

Chromium is complex because they indeed solve a complex problem, and I don't think there is much room for a simpler software solution to implement the current web. So the problem is not the implementation, but the choice of what is being implemented. But I'm not sure how this conflicts with the above argument to preserve the ability to modify the software.

My main objective is to make sure that this problem doesn't happen in Dillo, which necessarily means we need to sacrifice many features. A benefit from using source size is that is easy to measure (we do it in the CI) so we avoid a subjective metric.

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