I tried Servo

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Mozilla, Google, and Firefox’s Direction

  • Many comments argue Mozilla’s behavior “makes sense” once you see that most revenue comes from Google for being the default search, not from users.
  • Several claim Google mainly needs Mozilla as an antitrust fig leaf, not as a serious competitor, so Mozilla is incentivized to “exist” rather than win.
  • Others counter that Mozilla is actively trying to reduce dependence on Google (growing non‑Google revenue, building up investments and assets).
  • There is frustration that donations go to the Mozilla Foundation’s advocacy and not directly to Firefox development, and that there’s no clear way to “pay for Firefox.”
  • Executive compensation and perceived mismanagement (e.g., Pocket acquisition and deprecation) are frequent sore points; debate over whether leadership is incompetent or actively harmful.

Servo’s Promise and Strategy

  • Some see Servo as a potential long‑term counterweight to Chromium, baffled that Mozilla abandoned it.
  • A Servo contributor describes current work on CSS Grid and Shadow DOM, emphasizing a modular design: core layout (via the Taffy library) is reusable across Rust UI ecosystems and other engines.
  • This modularity is seen as a way to make engine development more approachable and to enable new engines (like Blitz) to avoid “reinventing everything.”

Ladybird and Other Alternative Engines

  • Ladybird is viewed by some as the most exciting Blink alternative: independent funding, no Google ties, rapid correctness improvements, and already better web‑test results than Servo on some fronts.
  • Skeptics doubt any small team can keep up with Blink/WebKit/Gecko in features, security, and performance, pointing to Chromium’s huge change volume.
  • Language choices spark debate: Ladybird is mostly C++ with discussion of moving parts to Swift; Rust was tried but found ill‑suited to heavily OO web‑spec modeling.

Monoculture, Standards, and Web Complexity

  • Strong concern that Blink dominance plus standards capture (e.g., Manifest V3) threatens the “open web”; multiple independent engines are seen as necessary checks.
  • A minority argues for “one engine, many distros” (like Linux), but others warn that a single implementation inevitably becomes the de facto spec, locking in bugs and vendor priorities.
  • Some argue browsers should be simpler and web pages should be fixed to standards‑compliant, text‑friendly behavior rather than engines endlessly chasing complex, ad‑driven sites.

Performance Experiences

  • Users report mixed Firefox vs Chromium performance on a Dogemania stress test: some see Chromium vastly ahead, others see Firefox performing better with different hardware/GPUs.
  • Rust’s memory safety is praised but commenters note Rust programs can still “crash” via panics, OOM, or unhandled cases; safety isn’t a magic shield against all failures.