Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz Consider that Mozilla being cooked has a few decades of history.

Back around 2007ish, I was working with a few folk who either came from or later went to Mozilla. Anyhow, some of them were involved with the XHTML 2.0 spec.

Which was finished.

But then got ditched.

Because Googleites insisted a "living spec" was the right thing, which can only be implemented by whoever throws the most money at it, and we now have HTML5 and a browser engine monopoly.

And Mozilla?

[skedarwarrior@techhub.social]

@jwz Why is this tagged brand necrophilia?

Weird ass stuff man

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz Mozillans didn't like it, but Mozilla also considered a unified web more important than open standards, where the definition of "open" includes practically open to implementors.

So fuck you very much for two decades running, Mozilla.

[davidr@hachyderm.io]

@GreatBigTable @jwz #zenbrowser

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@jens @cstross @jwz

IIRC the WHATWG was set up before Google had its own browser (I think it was Mozilla + Opera + Apple at the time?) and it almost made sense, although there was no reason to ditch XHTML 2.0 altogether. What really drives me mad is that EVEN IF one could consider the XEvent and XForms interface to be suboptimal for the kind of “dynamic” web that was being pushed (possibly by Google behind the scenes) that was really no reason to throw away the whole of XHTML 2.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@jens @cstross @jwz

There are still so many features that had been introduced there (client-side includes with fallback, “everything is a link”, etc) that are still sorely missing 8-(

I wonder if there was also a growing dislike for XML in general behind this choice? (hurr durr namespace confusing). It's ironic that we have to thank MS for pushing for the little support of XML in browsers we still have (and they are now working on removing 8-/).

[pelle@veganism.social]

@csstrowbridge
lots of browsers are just #chromium with a hat on. 🤠 ( #vivaldi, #brave, ... )

there are good independent browsers like #lynx and #offpunk, which can run on #android in #termux. even though they're terminal apps, scrolling and clicking works.

#librera on #android can be used for reading web sites too, even though it's not a browser as such.

then use an eat-shit browser only for the parts of the web that requires you to eat shit (run #javascript).

[czauner@social.vivaldi.net]

@lispi314
Fair point, but as we all can see in Mozilla's example: A license and public source-code means shit.

And I for sure have better things to do than walzing through an entire Browser-Sourcetree.

It boils down to: What do you value more? A license-culture-war, or the absence of forced-on AI-slop?

Well, if the licensing is more important to you, then you can either a) swallow the AI stuff or b) write your own browser.

[lispi314@udongein.xyz]

@czauner At the moment, I'd be more inclined to moving fully onto Nyxt & webkit (despite the *many* issues I have with webkit).

Ideally, Servo would reach sufficient completion for wrapping into Nyxt and we'd have a browser with superior user-empowerment to literally everything else.

[kennergf@mas.to]

@jwz imagine a lot of useful stuff that could be done with that

[czauner@social.vivaldi.net]

@gienion

Yes, but as far as I know, they just 'disabled' the AI-Stuff.

whatever that exactly means. I'm seriously too old to take any Browser onto a test-drive.

But I'm somewhat bewildered that there not more Browsers out in the wild with a hard 'no AI' stance. As there is definitely a market for these in Data-sensitive environments. Companies might even pay subscriptions to get 'we do not transmit anything to AI-Clouds' in writing as CYA for rules & regulations stuff.

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz Yes, the WGs were running in parallel for a while. Of course, you don't come up with something like that in a few days. But chrome I'm fairly sure was a thing already.

[sfoskett@techfieldday.net]

@jwz that’s why their CEO is worth so much: Brilliant business leadership!

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@jens @cstross @jwz IIRC the WHATWG was created in 2004, but Chrome is from 2008. I think Google might have been putting pressure on Mozilla & Opera to push for the whole “web app” angle because of their forays into Gmail and Maps that started around that time. When Chrome was first released the WHATWG and the W3C had already been armwrestling on «who gets to decide what HTML is» for one or two years, and with Chrome entering the fray the W3C basically gave up.

[q3qd@mstdn.party]

@jwz Pocket 2.0 except this will probably kill firefox for power users.

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz Indeed. https://www.w3.org/standards/history/xhtml2/

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz WHATWG started in 2004, with Mozilla, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Apple forked KHTML into WebKit in 2005.

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz The line is straight when you know the route it took, seemingly coincidental otherwise.

But as the HipCrime Vocab defines "coincidence": you weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

And, err, though I'm in danger of exhausting my quote quota, the proof is in the proverbial pudding.

[jens@social.finkhaeuser.de]

@oblomov @cstross @jwz As you will note by some research, in April 2005, so before the publication of WebKit, there was already discontent in the KHTML community in how Apple was developing WebKit as a fork.

How can that be? They complied with the letter, but not the spirit of the GPL. https://web.archive.org/web/20050428230122/http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1001