Re: The future of binary embedding

On 4/5/2011 8:22 PM, Ami Ganguli wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Asa Dotzler<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> No, that is not the question. There is no question about "caring" here and
>> it's both rude an insulting to phrase it that way.
>
> I think it's a legitimate question.  Maybe the thing is to phrase it
> differently:
>
>    "is embedding by third parties considered strategic enough to
> Mozilla's mission for it to invest its limited resources in it?"

Perhaps read the original post again?

I'll try to tl;dr it.

The person who leads the Mozilla project's embedding effort, Benjamin 
Smedberg, does not think that in-process embedding capabilities, 
including the current gtkmozembed, javaxpcom, and ActiveX work, are 
strategic enough to Mozilla's mission for *anyone* to invest resources 
there. The existing implementations are not only not strategic, they are 
incomplete, problematic, and their maintenance costs far outweigh any 
benefits so they are being removed from the Mozilla code repository.

Benjamin then goes on to say that after separate-process rendering is 
implemented for Firefox

 > we may consider ways to make really simple multi-process embedding
 > a possibility. If you are interested in helping to begin
 > implementation of this multiprocess embedding solution, please let
 > me know, and I will help guide you in the right direction.

So, if you care about a possible future multi-process embedding 
implementation, and you're willing to help or can find others who are, 
you may be able to get some help from Mozilla in making that a reality

> My opinion is that having a richer embedding ecosystem around Gecko
> would help bring in more contributors long-term and be a real boost to
> all the projects that rely on Gecko, Firefox included.  But that would
> require more investment by Mozilla in make Gecko an attractive
> embedding solution to begin with.

Speaking for myself only here, I've heard this from many people for many 
many years and I don't really believe it's the obvious win you and 
others think it would be.

There's no free lunch and any efforts around building a better embedding 
solution and an embedding ecosystem have to come from other projects. I 
can think of several technical undertakings that, in my opinion, would 
do far more to help bring in contributors and make Gecko better than 
spending more efforts on embedding.

- A