This month in Servo: variable fonts, network tools, SVG | Hacker News Reader

This month in Servo: variable fonts, network tools, SVG

servo.org

180 pointstodsacerdoti32 comments

I'm all for Servo. It increases user browsing choice and resists Chrome's hegemony over web standards.

I envision the day when I'll use a secure, high-performance browser written in Rust and fully open source. That day will come...

As full of potential as this amazing 13-year-old project is, it does not, and may never, do either of those things. Even project developers aren't under the illusion that it will ever be used in browsers, and position it as an "alternative for embedding web technologies in applications" (servo.org).

I thought it was in Firefox?

Only a few components of Servo that got split out are used in Firefox. A number of them are shared between the 2 (and servo having the smaller team usually follows the Mozilla upstream)

Speaking only for myself, I think a big part of this is that to be comfortable recommending any browser to be used as a typical browser would require a pretty substantial base set of security features/layers. Servo has a few pieces in place but some of those features are only available on some platforms. It is much easier to recommend it to be used as an embedding solution where the embedder is usually choosing to only render specific pages as an app.

> Even project developers aren't under the illusion that it will ever be used in browsers

It may well be one day. It won't ever be used in any of the existing browsers, but someone could well make a new browser around it.

Browsers are applications that embed web technologies though?

There is already a browser based on it:

https://github.com/versotile-org/verso

Too bad Mozilla basically dropped Servo. It would be nice if some other sponsor would be found to pick it up and regain momentum. Personally, I would like to see Brave being more involved, that could steer the whole project in the right direction.

It would have been nice for Mozilla to stick with it, but on the other hand, my understanding is that Servo originally was more of a proving ground for feature that would incrementally get ported over to Firefox itself (some of which did land, like webrender and I think the CSS processing). It's disappointing that Mozilla wasn't more interested in investing in their long-term browser improvements, but given the level of concern that seems to be growing in recent years around their direction, maybe in the long run having a new browser come along and utilize it would end up being better for everyone. If we're lucky, maybe in a few decades we'll be having debates about whether to call something "Servo/NewFancyBrowser" or just "NewFancyBrowser" as a fresher alternative to the whole "GNU/Linux" versus "Linux" thing.

Servo is heavily sponsored by Igalia these days, who pay several full-time developers to work on the project.

https://servo.org/blog/2025/01/31/servo-in-2024/ shows that 26% of the PRs in 2024 were made by Igalia.

Here's a good post explaining the relationship in more detail: https://blogs.igalia.com/mrego/servo-revival-2023-2024/

It says "Things changed in 2023, when Igalia got external funding to work on Servo and get the project moving again" but doesn't name the source of the funding. It might be the NLnet Foundation - https://nlnet.nl/project/Servo/ - but I couldn't find information on the amount of that grant.

https://nlnet.nl/project/Servo/

> doesn't name the source of the funding

It was Futurewei for a couple of years, and is now Huawei.

There is also some NLnet funding (not sure if Igalia has any, but some other people certainly do).

Servo also recently approved funding for one additional (non-igalia) person funded by community donations, which is pretty cool

External Funding from V.

Based on your post history, "V" is for "Valve", correct?

To what extent is Servo a greenfield project? It seems like a really exciting time to be involved.

It is pretty exciting, there's lots of big projects constantly being undertaken in the codebase. In terms of being "greenfield" I will say that the layout engine got rewritten starting in 2020, became the default in 2023, and the legacy one got fully removed in early 2025. There's a lot of reorganization and re-architecting going on in the net and storage components as we speak. There's opportunities to redesign systems to align with newer versions of the various RFCs/WHATWG specs. Basically lots of work to do to stay modern.

One pet peeve about current Servo is missing scrollbar. Sure, one can scroll with mouse wheel, or keyboard, but I find scrollbars essential for any application.

Would be funny if Mozilla/Firefox would adopt Servo down the line :D

Mozilla dropped Servo after realizing that it would take at least 10+ years to make it a viable replacement for Gecko. I'm sure that as soon as Servo can do everything the Gecko can, the Firefox will adopt it first.

The Rust is a nice language, but rebuilding huge projects from scratch is usually a commercially suicidal mission.

> rebuilding huge projects from scratch is usually a commercially suicidal mission

Yeah, CEO's absurd salaries should come first.

(Though in all fairness I find even more upsetting that The Linux Foundation, the org that now "owns" Servo, is sill not spending a single dime on its development)

> Mozilla dropped Servo after realizing that it would take at least 10+ years to make it a viable replacement for Gecko

Source?

It’s the first time I heard that put forward and I followed Servo pretty closely. Mozilla actually dropped Servo at a time when they drastically reduced their efforts in a lot of projects which were considered non critical to their mission.

> Mozilla actually dropped Servo at a time when they drastically reduced their efforts in a lot of projects which were considered non critical to their mission.

Like the new browser engine is not critical to the mission of providing an independent open-source web browser? You're basically answering your own question. Servo was dropped because it was more than Mozilla could handle financially and in terms of time, and they would not be able to complete it within a reasonable timeframe. Do you have a source for any other reasoning?

Sure, if they pursued Servo they would not have enough resources to pursue Pocket, DEI and other essential projects.

That’s not how Mozilla defines its mission.

Mozilla views its call as ensuring openness, innovation and participation on the internet. It’s pretty clear that delivering a browser has been a side goal for a long time as far as the board is concerned.

I am not understanding your call for source. You are providing your speculations. I don’t need to provide an alternative narrative. I can simply give you what Mozilla said at the time as I have already done.

Servo was never intended to replace Gecko. People outside of Mozilla assumed that, but the intention was always that bits of Servo would be progressively upstreamed, which is what happened.

This is nitpicking. The project was called Quantum, and the goal was to gradually replace Gecko components with Servo parts [0].

[0]: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mozilla-Quantum-Servo

Right, gradual replacement != "throw away Gecko and replace with Servo".

They never "realized [they couldn't easily] make it a viable replacement" because that wasn't the goal.

Regardless of semantics, gradual replacement gave many of us much more hope than what actually happened, when Mozilla dismantled their Servo team.

For sure, it’s sad that they did what they did.

Does anyone know why Italia seems to be focussing more on Servo than WPEWebkit these days? They both seem to serve the same purpose, providing an embeddable/customisable web engine

Neither project has a priority, though more work on WPE. Customers have different needs.

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