On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 7:27 PM, Daniel Glazman <[email protected]> wrote: > 1. Thunderbird is a standalone application embedding Gecko
I think it's obscures the issues to characterize Thunderbird as embedding. Embedding usually means putting a Web engine inside a native app. Using Gecko as the platform for the desktop app itself is something different. On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 4:45 PM, Paul <[email protected]> wrote: > Thunderbird's primary existence should be to showcase the versatility of the > Mozilla Platform. On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 10:26 PM, Ben Bucksch <[email protected]> wrote: > Thunderbird is not the only one. You probably have no idea how many there > are. You get an idea when you look at AMO. There's more happening outside > AMO, because it's internal or proprietary. Let's look at some non-Firefox scenarios (some still possible, some no longer): 1) Embedding a) Creating another Web browser with native chrome (Camino, K-meleon) b) Previewing pages in a Web authoring tool that uses a non-Web toolkit for its UI c) Showing content from a particular Web site in a seemingly native app affiliated with that site (common with WebKit on mobile) d) Showing local Web tech content like help files in a native-toolkit app. e) Showing content that's neither app-local like help files nor a Web site: e.g. HTML email. 2) Gecko as installed app platform a) Creating another Web browser with XUL chrome (SeaMonkey) b) Creating an authoring tool that not only previews content using Gecko but is itself running on Gecko (BlueGriffon) c) Letting an app written in HTML+JS+CSS+SVG be locally installed and do native-like things that the security model of the Web usually blocks (some Firefox OS apps) d) The XUL platform serving as an alternative to Qt for writing cross-platform non-Web-focused Internet-connected desktop apps that need to render some non-Web HTML (Thunderbird). e) The XUL platform serving as an alternative to Qt for writing cross-platform desktop apps that don't have much of a need to show HTML content (Flickr Uploadr maybe?). Which ones of these support any of the following? * Make the Web (not the Internet, the *Web*) better in general. * Drive usage of Gecko for *Web* usage thereby helping keep Gecko relevant to the Web thereby allowing Gecko to serve as a vehicle for Mozilla to make the Web better. * Drive the creation of Web apps/sites that work great in Gecko thereby helping keep Gecko relevant to the Web thereby allowing Gecko to serve as a vehicle for Mozilla to make the Web better. * Drive contribution to the Gecko features that make Gecko better for the Web. In theory, mere usage of the Gecko platform for whatever purpose regardless of XUL or HTML could drive contribution, but it seems that in practice Gecko gets little Web-relevant contribution benefit from any of the above-listed uses. Clearly, having a better embedding story for WebKit and CEF has mindshare benefits for WebKit and Blink that Gecko loses out on. But even if you look at WebKit, you'll find that (apart from the time when Chrome used WebKit) WebKit has gotten very little core Web feature contribution from all the non-Apple ports of WebKit--most of the activity goes into taking WebKit to different environments, which grows mindshare, but not to making the core of WebKit better for the Web. (The effort to push WebRTC into WebKit despite Apple may be an exception. And, like Gecko, WebKit has the MathML exception.) In theory, 1a and 2a could drive Gecko usage for Web usage, but in practice the Gecko market share added by non-Firefox browsers has been very small after Firefox on Mac got good enough to make Camino irrelevant in terms of the Mac experience. (This aspect used to be relevant when Firefox on Mac felt really un-Mac-like and Camino addressed that problem. K-meleon never had a significant impact and SeaMonkey has always been backward looking instead of taking Gecko to new markets.) In theory, 1b and 2b could be a big deal, but to have an big impact, significantly more investment in this area would be required. With Mozilla Corporation not investing in this area, e.g. Dreamweaver, which has the big usage numbers, embeds Blink. If 1c is an alternative to Web sites experienced in Firefox (or another browser), the use case isn't really in favor of the Web but is instead about trying to move users off the Web paradigm, which seems like a negative from the point of view of advancing the Web. The impact of 2c could be good for the Web or could be tangential. 1d, 1e, 2d and 2e aren't really that Web-relevant. In my experience from meetings (which I don't get to experience often, since I work remotely), trying to justify Mozilla Corporation's investment in them by arguing from a Web-oriented mission doesn't work. Of course, for people who have bought into using XULRunner as an alternative to Qt, Mozilla losing interest in supporting XULRunner is a serious problem and one that may be getting insufficient empathy. Still, appealing to showcasing the versatility of the XULRunner platform (which is off-Web) or appealing to internal or proprietary apps that are not seen (which suggests there hasn't been notable Web-relevant contribution to Gecko to make the sources of contribution known) is unlikely to be persuasive in the light of the Web-oriented mission. On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 12:35 PM, Paul Fernhout <[email protected]> wrote: > The Mozilla mission page says, at the top, "We're building a better > Internet", but then says lower down, "Our mission is to promote openness, > innovation & opportunity on the Web." Note that the second sentence you quote changed from "the Internet" to "the Web" in early September 2012. August 31 2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20120831102626/http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ September 10 2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20120910100207/http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ (The way I found out was that in the past I was making a point about email with an appeal to the Mission, looked up the Mission to be sure I didn't misremember how it was phrased and was surprised to find that it had changed.) > That mission page is surprising when you think about it, given that Mozilla > seems to be > confused about the difference between a whole (the internet) and a part (the > web). On > the the Mozilla Manifesto that situation is reversed -- "the web" is > mentioned in the title > up top and then not mentioned directly in any of the next ten points which > almost all > mention "the internet". That confusion may in turn lead to some conflicts and > related > strong feelings based on related misunderstandings or widely differing > priorities. Indeed. -- Henri Sivonen [email protected] https://hsivonen.fi/ _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
