Microsoft Dev Implores Mozilla To Surrender And Bring Firefox To Chromium
There are mixed opinions on Microsoft's decision to rebuild its Edge browser around Chromium, the same open source platform that powers Google's own Chrome browser. For at least one Microsoft programmer, however, the decision is not only the right one for Edge, but Mozilla should "get down from its philosophical ivory tower" and do the same thing with Firefox.
Microsoft announced its own plans to embrace Chromium in December, saying at the time that it would be a somewhat slow transition over the course of this year, with its first preview build expected to debut in early 2019. What this ultimately entails is ripping out its browser's EdgeHTML rendering and Chakra JavaScript engines, and replacing them with Google's Blink and V8 engines, and then adding its own customizations (it will include support for Chrome's extensions, too).
Mozilla responded to the announcement with a disparaging blog post, in which the Firefox developer criticized Microsoft for "hand[ing] over control of even more of online life to Google." After stewing on Mozilla's thoughts for more than a month, Microsoft developer Kenneth Auchenberg shared a different and somewhat combative perspective on Twitter.
"Thought: It's time for Mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent?," Auchenberg wrote.
In a follow-up tweet, he added that this is his personal opinion, meaning he is not speaking on behalf of Microsoft. Nevertheless, it's interesting that he took a shot at Mozilla. It was also met with instant blow back from various people who read the tweet.
"You could have said the same thing 10 years ago about Chrome's 2 percent versus Internet Explorer's 70 percent. Leave Mozilla be. We may need them," responded Chad Loder, founder of Rapid7.
Others pointed out that competition is good for the web and for developing standards. And one of the comments pointed out that having a smaller market share doesn't necessarily mean Mozilla is not contributing to the web.
While mostly one-sided (in favor of Mozilla not adopting Chromium), it's an interesting discussion, and one that Auchenberg is actively engaging in. It's also civil, for as far as we scrolled down. Hit the link in the Via field below to check it out and/or to add your own input.
