It seems at some point they became aware of how unsuited C++ is for parallel processing, and how important it would be for browsers in the future. Even compartmentalization or running tabs in their own process is a form of parallelization. This requires an efficient way of sharing memory and preventing race conditions and errant writes, as well as a way to protect these processes from cross-site scripting attacks, buffer over- and underruns, etc.

Computing hardware has also moved on from the CPU-centric world and the gains in battery life from dedicated GPU hardware being used even for rendering tasks, and now for font processing and other things were too good to pass up.

I'm a long time follower of Mozilla's development, and extremely excited about what's happening with Firefox.

(I'm also currently a Chrome user, leaving in large part due to profile corruption issues and inferior built-in development tools. I hope to be able to run Firefox and WebRender on both Ubuntu and Windows.)

are you referring to microsoft's com (component object model)?

Rust actually has a similar mechanism in its standard lib, the Result enum whuch resembles Maybe from Haskell, but has either a returned value if successful (which can be the empty object ()) or an Error.

XPCOM was modeled on the Microsoft version using the same vtable tricks that it used to enable dynamic dispatch through interfaces.

Glad to see they got it to work.

Edit: if there is any, can someone give me a link to the part of the source tree that has it?

And many of the Rust things that make FF56+ fast can be found here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum

Do they also have any write-up on how did they find Rust during these changes? Was the back count lower than usual? Did the see an increase on productivity?

There is https://blog.servo.org/, but it's mostly gradual updates on things, not a general overview.

otherwise here's the list: http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=&path=*.rs%24

- The URL parser (rust-url). This is not shipping, because it's incomplete and there are some mismatches to deal with. But it exists.

- Stylo: Servo's CSS engine in Firefox. By far the biggest one, this is shipping in beta and nightly, and should be there in the 57 release for everything but Android

- webrender: Servo's GPU-focused renderer. Not shipping, can be flipped on in nightly. Still has work to be done

- encoding-rs: All encoding operations go through this now. Shipping

- The U2F stuff: A lot of the U2F code is in Rust. Shipping in nightly though I think it's still off by default (but that will change soon?)

As far as the location of the code:

The root rust crate is at https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/toolkit/libr... . Everything can be reached from it, and the cargo file that has all these links is https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/toolkit/libr...

- All of Servo is vendored in tree in https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/servo . Not all of Servo is used, the majority of the used code is from https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/servo/compon...

- Webrender is vendored in tree in https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/gfx/webrende...

- The U2F HID stuff is vendored at https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/dom/webauthn...

- There's a bunch of stuff in libcubeb ; I don't even know what it's there for (https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/media/libcub...)

- You can find "c api" rust crates scattered throughout, like mp4parse_capi, rust-url-capi, encoding_glue . These depend on the actual crate (usually, a crate that's published to crates.io) but expose an API that C can call into

- Finally, any dependency from crates.io is vendored in https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/third_party/... . Note that this includes build time dependencies (so you'll find crates that deal with CLI parsing and terminal color info that aren't actually used by firefox). Despite the folder being labeled "third_party", a lot of that code is maintained by us, but in separate repos and published to crates.io. In particular, large chunks of Servo are reusable published crates.

Perhaps if they focused on making web apps as capable as native apps first, it would have been a viable platform.

Gamepad API spec efforts began as part of this, for example. Then another vendor kicked their own inferior spec out the door without talking to anyone and that ended up being the de-facto standard (not the first time). Other APIs like exposing battery status, network connectivity status, and the ability to notify with vibration were in the works, just to name a few I remember.

For these reasons I switched to waterfox.

And staying true to their mission, Mozilla bought Pocket and is now releasing it as open source [1].

You're speaking of "betraying the foundation of the Open Web", but Mozilla is the only one out of the big players that isn't guilty of betrayal, the only big player that tried opposing patent encumbered video codecs or DRM, that have been promoted by Google, Microsoft and Apple, the W3C being basically a charade.

If you're upset of W3C EME, your anger should be directed at the parties responsible for it, which are Google, Microsoft and Netflix and which now control the industry, with a majority market share I might add, which would make all resistance moot.

So I hope you're boycotting Google, Microsoft and Netflix, because otherwise it's unfair to expect that from Mozilla, an organization with a responsibility towards its employees, users and customers.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-po...

It's arguably not so smart to spend millions of dollars to buy the company behind pocket to release it opensource when an opensource alternative already exists.

Turns out mozilla did not buy pocket as much as the 10 millions user base and 1 billion saved link to get a foot on the mobile platform and helps with their upcoming recommendation engine. Not exactly putting the user first.

Besides there's no integration of pocket into shaarli whereas wallabag has one. Also where is the option to self host a pocket service ?

Not sorry, but pocket sucks on many counts compared to open source alternative.

I've been boycotting microsoft (because microsoft), google (because privacy), apple (because vendor lock-in), netflix (because pollution and bandwidth saturation and killing p2p) was before mozilla made its betrayal to their own words for their own profit. Yup I tend to boycott all opponent to net neutrality and open web. Neither google, microsoft, apple, nor netflix bear responsibility for mozilla deciding to bake support for DRM for fear of becoming irrelevant. To me they showed that they do not put their money where their mouth is and as such are not worthy of trust, also their priorities are not aligned with an open web based on their actions.

Had mozilla been serious about opposing they would not have implemented it in their browser to be netflix compatible out of fear of losing market share. I've had a difficult time reconciliating myself with mozilla "let's do one evil here so we can try to do one good there" approach to things.

To set the records straight, Free Software has nothing to do with choice, as can be seen by how GCC and other projects were developed.

I did try wallabag. I appreciate the effort of its developers, I wish the project succeeds, but the mobile apps are pieces of shit compared with Pocket. So arguably, that open source alternative you're speaking of does not exist.

I really don't understand how Mozilla is not putting the users first, because by their actions, it seems to me like they are.

The really interesting phenomenon however is that I'm not seeing the same vitriol whenever Google's Chrome is being discussed on HN. It's like there's this really vocal minority that really wants Firefox to die, this comment included. No worries, if the current trends holds, Firefox will end up being dead and then you'll be able to have a choice between Chrome, Edge or Safari.

Or you'll be able to fork Firefox, invest in whatever projects you want to invest, build whatever features you want to build and in general put your money where your mouth is.

Can't wait to see that happening. Good luck.

I will believe that when I see the code. 7 months now still no code, and outside of the single blog post no other comments from Pocket, Read It later, or Mozilla has given any indication they will Open Source it. In fact Read It Later is still a for profit corporations operating as a subsidiary of the For Profit Mozilla Corporation, not the Mozilla Foundation the non-profit organizations

>Mozilla is the only one out of the big players that isn't guilty of betrayal, the only big player that tried opposing patent encumbered video codecs or DRM

They did... When???

>If you're upset of W3C EME, your anger should be directed at the parties responsible for it, which are Google, Microsoft and Netflix

I can be upset with W3c, Netflix, Google, Microsoft and at the same time be upset with Mozilla.

I am more upset with Mozilla because they are a Non-Profit organization that had (and I stress Had) a mission to promoting Open Standards, Open Web, and User Privacy. They have turned their back on that when those issues became less popular than performance. They turned their back on those principles because market share.

They have stopped attempting to education the public on why they should care about EME, about privacy, about anything really.

I find it sad that Mozilla is no longer a leader creating conversations about why the Open Web is needed for Society, about way Standing up for Privacy and User Freedom is important. Instead they have choosen to play follow the Leader to MS and Google.

Where is the 1990's Mozilla when Microsoft wanted to maket Active X a Standard and they stood up and said NO

Where is the 2000's Mozilla when w3c wanted to drop HTML in favor of XHTML and they formed WHATWG to force the W3C in to adopting HTML5 we have today.

Where did the Leader in the open Web go? Where did Mozilla go and what is this abomination that replace it?

I always felt that Mozilla was just forced in a role it never really wanted.

If you remember Mozilla was a child of the browser wars and my guesss is that if Netscape wasn’t cornered by MS it would still be closed source today.

Even today you can see that business is still in their DNA, the for-profit subsidiary.

However although Mozilla is far from perfect, they are our only hope.

It was the internal codename and user-agent for netscape and became the name of mozilla a reminder that their objective is to be the number 1 browser and the new target to replace had been IE.

It was killed by moving focus from users and long term to quarterly profits and short term, around the time Jonvon Tetzchner was pushed to leave the company.

wait are you talking about the leader in the open web or about mozilla here ?

I just believe that if Firefox dies then for sure "Open Web" will die.

But, yeah, of course I am not happy with Pocket. But it still better than using Chrome.

There was some discussion of doing things this way back when it was still called Phoenix. The Seamonkey suite was bloated and slow, Phoenix was the stripped-down browser that just did web browsing but had an extension system to add in extra features. But instead of adding features through the extension system the Mozilla team decided to add them into the base.

2. Mozilla Inc acquired it as a Commercial Proprietary Venture, not as a Open Source project under the Mozilla Foundation the non-profit

3. While it is Owned by Mozilla Inc, it of operated as a Separate Commercial Company separate from the Non-Profit so no it is "shares with it self"

4. The integration occurred long before the acquisition

Mozilla is now an enemy of the Open Web, the EFF is one of the last organizations left actually standing up for the Open Web. Mozilla is just another Commercial Browser with anti-user features

To be clear I am not laying all the blame at the feet of Mozilla, clearly the Open Web is not an important issue, as even in Linux circles there are countless people that have chosen Google over freedom, making endless excuses and justifications about why choosing chrome was just pragmatic but in making that "pragmatic" choice they sent a clear market signal that performance and netflix was more important the Open web, privacy, and user freedom.

They sent a clear market signal to Mozilla that principles do not matter, and Mozilla took that market signal to heart and turned its back on the Principles of the Open web and privacy to focus more on Performance and Usability to appease those users

This is not hyperbole, by the way: when you adopt the sort of you-agree-with-me-completely-or-you're-my-enemy rhetoric you're using here, well, people's lives are what you're saying you're willing to sacrifice. Mozilla could have taken a suicidal stand on principle, and I guarantee it would have hurt a significant number of people, and possibly led to lives lost (through joblessness, through emboldened powerful interests flush with victory over an all-in opposition, through any number of mechanisms).

So. How many human lives would it be worth to you to get EME out of browsers?

yes, yes it is

The idea the opposing EME and keeping EME out of the HTML5 Standard would have some how "cost lives" is moronic and hyperbolic to such a degree I will not even waste my time responding to it.

So imagine a world in which you get your way. Every browser is forced to un-implement EME, the standard is force-amended to not include it anymore, etc.

Now what? Well, what happens now is popular media stays popular, and continues to be delivered via big binary-blob plugins with horrible security properties.

What's the human cost of hacks? What's the human cost of the security issues those plugins open up? How many people end up financially ruined due to personal information being stolen? How many people end up on the street because their credit gets trashed? How many in prison because a plugin vulnerability turned their computer into a node for serving kiddie porn and murder markets over Tor?

It is nowhere near unreasonable to ask how many lives you'd consider an acceptable cost for defeating EME, because there absolutely would be a human cost to it. It's a human cost we're already paying right now, and the major argument in favor of EME is that it helps us reduce or eliminate that human cost.

And this is where single-issue "you are 100% with me or 100% my enemy" stances are proven to be utterly morally bankrupt. It's not just that you implicitly accept that human cost as a means to serving your end. It's that you won't even acknowledge that the cost exists. That puts you in the company of some very evil people, and should perhaps get you to re-think your position.

EME is big binary blob plugins called CDM's, EME is just a different API to access the binary plugins that will have (and have already had) all kinds of security issues

>What's the human cost of hacks? What's the human cost of the security issues those plugins open up? How many people end up financially ruined due to personal information being stolen? How many people end up on the street because their credit gets trashed? How many in prison because a plugin vulnerability turned their computer into a node for serving kiddie porn and murder markets over Tor?

Hyperbolic Much, Everyone Info is already out there now and it was not Flash or Java or any browser vunerablity at all that caused it. The idea that the source of people having their Credit Card data and other personal info stolen is the browser shows your ignorance in the field of InfoSec.

Browser are a source for Fraud and Ransomware. Databases of Ruin are targets for ID Theft, that is the database of Large Corporations like Equifax, Target, Yahoo, Anthem, Sony, Adobe, Ebay, etc etc etc

Companies that collect and store PII, they are not hacking individual computers to obtain PII, they are dumping databases

>>It is nowhere near unreasonable to ask how many lives you'd consider an acceptable cost for defeating EME, because there absolutely would be a human cost to it. It's a human cost we're already paying right now, and the major argument in favor of EME is that it helps us reduce or eliminate that human cost.

So you assume in this moronic equation of your that there are zero lives lost in the implementation of EME, The sharing of knowledge via the open web is a huge driver of getting people out of poverty, and improving the lives of billions world wide. In change political regimes that abuse, and torture their population.

How many lives will be lost because all knowledge is locked into wall gardens and accessible only via "approved" platforms, and only for "approved" purposes.

The plugin world had big binary blobs that need the ability to absolutely control at least most or all of the browser and possibly other parts of the computer too.

The EME world has far smaller binary blobs communicating over a narrow defined API which does not give them control of the browser.

So. You don't actually know what you're talking about, and resort to misrepresentations and insults to try to cover up for it. Real great "principled" stand you're taking there.

So it is you that do not know what you are talking about

Please point to the portion which backs your assertion.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric I was responding to was very much of the "people who only 99.99999% agree with me will be first against the wall when the revolution comes" school of thinking.

Exactly so there was not need to include it in the Standard

>and web-based distribution of major popular media will use that DRM in whatever form it takes.

Lost of popular media does not use DRM at all

>and I've argued at length that killing DRM cannot be done via "principled stands"

No it can only be done by principled stands

>it has to be done via market forces, as it was with online distribution of music.

That was killed by a principled stand not by market forces, the record labels wanted DRM, consumer did not give a shit, a few companies made a principled stand to say no...

That said, even if you want to claim it should be market forces that dictate DRM, then let the market decide by not ham fisting it into a Standard for HTML5.

That distorts the market and is the exact reason MS, Google and Netflix wanted to ensure it was in the Standard so they would not have to explain to the market why the DRM was there, why X device did not work with their products or have to compete in the market place on DRM or no DRM. DRM is "standard" now so there is no market competition for it.

I love all the DRM supporters (which you clearly are despite your claims to not be) that say "DRM was inevitable and putting in the standard would not change anything" Well then why put it in the standard? If it does not change anything, if it does not change the market, if having it in the standard is pointless why did MS/Google/Netflix/MPAA fight so hard to get it in?

because it does in fact matter. It does in fact change the market, and the conversation. Something being a "Standard" normalizes it in the market, allowing it to deployed faster, easier and with less consumer backlash. That was the entire point of the EME Spec, to normalize DRM to the consumer to make it less controversial, and more palatable

Apple introduced a large legal online music store with DRM. Apple got huge. Huge enough that record labels got scared and needed to break Apple's position. They turned to Amazon to start a competing music store, but had a problem: they needed to have the music from Amazon play on devices from Apple, or else people wouldn't shop at Amazon's music store. Since Apple probably wouldn't license Apple's DRM (since, after all, it would be for someone to break Apple's market position), the only option left was DRM-free. And lo and behold, Amazon became the first big music store with major-label music available DRM-free. And once there was one DRM-free store, it became hard to argue, from a market perspective, that there should be any that weren't. So Apple's ended up DRM-free too!

Market forces. Not people taking stands on principle.

That said, even if you want to claim it should be market forces that dictate DRM, then let the market decide by not ham fisting it into a Standard for HTML5.

The fact that you keep claiming EME is DRM tells me that you either don't actually know how EME works or what it does, or that you are willfully lying about it. Which is it, please?

I love all the DRM supporters (which you clearly are despite your claims to not be)

And here we are, back at the assertion that anyone who differs from your position by even a tiny amount must actually be 100% your enemy in every way. This is the kind of thinking that the twentieth century taught us to be very careful around, because it tends to lead to lots and lots and lots of dead bodies, all of them people who were "guilty" of being insufficiently perfectly compliant with the stated ideal.

ROFL.... That is ... wow... Nothing about that is factually accurate, to state the Record Labels was the driving force behind DRM free Music...

Ummm No...

>>>The fact that you keep claiming EME is DRM tells me that you either don't actually know how EME works or what it does, or that you are willfully lying about it. Which is it, please?

The fact you believe EME has any other purpose except DRM tell me you do not actually know the purpose of EME, or what is does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPfdOOiuOHI

And just for the record, responses like "ROFL" and calling things "moronic" (as you did in your other comment) don't really make you look like you know what you're talking about or like you're someone who should be taken seriously.

And just for the record, responses like your revisionist history, and Hyperbolic non-sense don't really make you look like you know what your talking about or like you're someone who should be taken seriously