> this probably means more work gets done on Gecko, Servo, the Monkeys, and Rust
Well, does it? Are they moving devs from PDF.js to the Rust ecosystem? It seems more likely to me that they would either lay them off, or move them to the PDFium stuff. Same applies to Shumway.
What a backwards step either way. As for Servo, how's it doing these days? Is it anywhere near done? What terrifies me is Mozilla would drop Servo when it's 80% done, just like it did with all its other projects, because "well, we already have Gecko, and it works, and it's too much work to finish Servo".
Aside from Rust and some Firefox tech, I haven't seen anything concrete come out of Mozilla in a long, long time. Rust, FWIU, has its own organization and is no longer handled by Mozilla alone (thank god); everything else gets killed off like a westerosi wedding.
As I mentioned elsewhere, there haven't been any full time mozilla devs on PDF.js for quite awhile. I'm not sure I actually see the whole maintenance cost savings argument since PDF.js has practically cost Mozllia nothing the last few years. A lot of bug fixes have come from unpaid contributors in that time.
Initially, PDFium was pitched as a freebie if we added support for chromium's flash and then we'd also get improved PDF printing and form support. However, the amount of effort that has gone into supporting PDFium is already far beyond what it would have taken to improve PDF.js form support and help improve Firefox's printing (which would have benefited the web in general). Though, this is my very biased opinion as I was tech lead of PDF.js.
Good god. So the project was already unmaintained, and now they're dropping it in favour of a maintenance burden, all the while regressing from a JS solution to a plugin-based native one?
I was wrong, Mozilla isn't in a free-fall. They hit the ground and are now digging the grave to bury themselves in.
Thanks! Good to see a blog. I'm very excited about Servo; like I was saying, I just really hope it won't get killed off before it reaches the finish line and replaces Gecko.
I don't think they'll kill Servo. They need to modernize Gecko, and there's so much potential in Servo to do so that it would be a waste throw the code out.
scrollaway is not behaving like a troll. Mozilla have engaged in some very bizarre moves in recent years. Whilst I don't think Servo is in trouble, it's fairly clear the leadership of Mozilla has become erratic. Thankfully the development of Servo goes beyond just one company.
Not necessarily moving devs; people have different competencies. But keep in mind that—despite being a nonprofit— Mozilla does pay its developers, and most of the work is done by those paid developers. Layoffs of non-core-project devs free up budget to hire more core-project devs.
OTOH, this probably means more work gets done on Gecko, Servo, the *Monkeys, and Rust. Which is pretty good.