Re:Vivaldi integrates Mastodon in its desktop browser
by lucideer on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @10:59AM
(#33895863)
Not sure how long it was brewing internally, but the decision to move from Presto to Webkit was publicly announced in 2013; von Tetzchner stepped down in 2010 & resigned in 2011.
> the fact that all businessmen, especially new one, also make honest mistakes
But yes, absolutely this. The repeated decision to forgo open-sourcing is (imo) a fatal mistake - it's the number 1 cited reason for people not switching to Vivaldi & also the real tragedy of Presto's shutdown: no possibility of a community fork - for what was an engine that always outperformed all competitors efficiency-wise (Webkit was faster when coupled with new hw & a brick tonne of RAM, but still knocks out even the fanciest setups today when you open more than a tab or three).
It's a pity that Vivaldi doesn't see the business potential in building another new browser engine. With Mozilla making Firefox an adware crap, I think Vivaldi may even be able to get half a million dollar in online funding for the promise of another open source browser engine. Projects like Netsurf and SerenityOS browser already have done half the work and just need an experienced and talented leadership to give them momentum and Vivaldi can certainly provide that ... Even Webkit is quite decent and just needs a multi-platform push.