I'm going to brainstorm some considerations that have been floating around in my head since this subthread (cc @mcc@mastodon.social @emaytch@mastodon.social )
https://mastodon.social/@emaytch/115589034225660586
about «what are we left with after Firefox is gone» (or has become unusable). The only viable alternative currently is @palemoon@outerheaven.club, a hard fork so old that it has had time to mature into its own independent browser and engine, in contrast to e.g. @librewolf@chaos.social or @Waterfox@mastodon.social that still closely follow upstream.
1/
This is not to say that #LibreWolf and/or #WaterFox wouldn't be able to “walk on their own two legs” if #Firefox ever becomes unusable —it's just that they haven't had the opportunity to demonstrate it yet, so their viability remains a huge unknown. For example, will they be able to maintain the XSLT code once it gets removed? (from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1990759 it's clear that the FF devs have no intention to listen to the community on that, just like they won't listen to feedback on AI)
2/
So my first thought was not unlike @emaytch@mastodon.social's: if the forks “live or die” by FF, then if FF goes down so do the forks. PaleMoon being independent gives us some respite, as does @servo@floss.social being under active development —in the hopes that it becomes truly viable BEFORE #Firefox goes down: and of course we do not know yet if they'll stick with #Google's decisions about what is and what is not allowed on the Web, or if it will have the spine (and resources) to support tech that Google rejects.
3/
But then I thought: is it really that important? How much work is it actually to maintain a browser (as opposed to develop one, possibly from scratch)?
This is where it starts to get interesting, especially if we stop to consider what a browser is, and what the World Wide Web is. And the interesting part is that we're currently in a process of “speciation”, if I may borrow a term from evolutionary biology.
4/
The #WorldWideWeb was born with the intent to achieve an interconnected web of documents: and this is not only what it was in the beginning, but also what most of the open, independent web still is, even when it's more dynamically generated (wikis, blogs).
What we've seen under the moniker of “Web 2.0” in the last 20+ years, but especially in the last decade, has been the development of a different interpretation of the Web.
5/
#openWeb #indieWeb #WWW
Major corporations saw in the “Web 2.0” the opportunity to leverage this communication channel as a means to deliver services to the users, or, a rose by any other name, a way to write cross-platform application front-ends.
This isn't exactly news to anyone who has been using the web more than a decade, but I think it's quite important to stress this again: the modern web features both kinds of websites: document repositories, and application frontends (“web apps”).
6/
Web browsers are used to access both kinds of websites, but —and this is extremely important— the two kinds of websites have very different requirements.
For example, The V8 #JavaScript engine that powers Chrome was specifically designed to improve the quality of service of web apps, and while the “web of documents” can at times benefit from said improvements, it doesn't have particular needs in this regard, except maybe to compensate for the deficiency of other components (esp. #CSS)
7/
A lot of the development efforts (both creative and destructive) in web browsers in the last decade+ has been going into fostering the “web app” vision of the web, to the detriment of the “web of documents” vision. From the removal of native support for #RSS and #Atom to the introduction of JavaScript APIs like #WebUSB or the “Web Environment Integrity” attempt, nearly all work done on browsers has been in this direction.
8/
@oblomov@sociale.network
I think it is important to mention where the money is and where it goes, because ultimately the money drives the technical choices that are made. Web apps bring much more money than hyperlinked documents: imagine what online commerce would be without Web apps. So, none of the big players care about documents.
If we want to build an alternative, we have to think how to make it economically viable first, otherwise there is no chance of succeeding.
So, how can we make Librewolf, Servo, or any of the alternatives sustainable from an economic point of view? I have no answer.
This difference isn't just a matter of feature sets; in fact, it's primarily a matter of design principles.
A browser for the “web of documents” is a User Agent: it's a tool in the hands of users designed to maximize the usability of said documents.
A browser for the “web of apps” is a Corporate Agent: it's a too in the hands of corporation designed to maximize the control they have on the user machine.
9/
Oblomov