Matt A Tobin wrote:Do I need to spell it out for you? It is entirely possible to build Pale Moon's application code along side Waterfox's Application code along side SeaMonkey/MailNews Core and Thunderbird/MailNews Core/Chat Core and InstantBird/Chat Core on one unified platform codebase.. I totally know how to make that happen.
The real question is.. Will these other projects pull off something that is worth the effort for Pale Moon to join up with them.. Can these projects all cooperate together and will such an alliance hold up over time.. Will this actually go anywhere.. No one knows.. Thus far, Pale Moon is the only one that has done this stuff.. The rest are rebuilds and in comm-central's case platform leeches (and no I am not adding a negative connotation here this is purely from a technical level.. I hope you guys can tell the difference).
If Tycho proved anything it is this.. Whatever happens, whatever decisions are made, there is no reason ever to expect Pale Moon won't stay true to being Pale Moon. Like I said, will it be worth it to us? Sure it would be of great worth to them because I don't think they have scratched the surface yet of what is actually going to be required to pull off our trick again. Sure it can be done.. We proved that again and again but WILL it be done and will whatever they come up with either separate or together even be viable or will each project compromise the shared platform solely for their own uses and just be no better than Mozilla.. Will they even consider the non-application code a platform others can use.
This project has already been through that. When I first joined up the platform code wasn't really fit to be used by anything BUT Pale Moon because as a rebuild with some independent development, at the time.. No one else was expected to use it.. That wasn't even a real possibility at the time and didn't even cross anyone's minds. It had specific changes and even breaking changes that were Pale Moon specific. When FossaMail first came along it wasn't even built against the Pale Moon backend because AT THE TIME.. It simply couldn't be. One of the things I set out to do was to resolve these issues and put my case forward that even if in the end no one ever took advantage of our platform code.. It should be done properly so the possibility remained viable. That took a little convincing but I presented my case and Moonchild agreed.
Now assuming SeaMonkey/Thunderbird/Instantbird continues on on its own or latches onto Waterfox they are gonna accept any changes to platform because that is what they have been forced to do so long.. Or they may over compensate for sudden freedom by making all kinds of bad decisions on their own.. Same goes with Waterfox.. They don't entirely build their browser and the codebase in a standard mozilla way so changes they make may not accommodate standard mozilla procedure both Pale Moon and SM/TB would expect.
So you see.. It can get very complex and very confusing very quickly. It could end up as one of two bad options.. One group becomes Mozilla Lite and dictates everything to the other groups or it ends in a free-for-all and god knows what will be the end result.
Obviously, the solution is a firm alliance with a governance made up of representatives of all concerned projects to maintain a central base repository. However, conflicts in ways of doing things or what should and shouldn't happen could see that crash and burn quickly.. That assumes such a thing could even be attempted.
Despite my hopes and dreams of a grand vision of a great future where we all come together to form the "Mozilla that should have been".. I have to accede to reality where .. It could.. It can.. But likely won't happen. At the very least not in a way that would be worth it to our project or our users.
However, we should just wait and see what happens. I will say this though.. If it looks like something could happen.. I will be the first one to help.. Trust.
I think I see the broad outline of what you're saying- essentially a common platform code with contributions from multiple projects, likely based on the existing Pale Moon platform code base and going from there, with each project still handling their application code base independently (With the obvious caveat that being open-source projects, all would be able to use anything they might choose to use from the others- where, when, and if they wanted to, if they could make it work with their own application code).
I think that type of cooperation would be a very good thing, and would help a relatively small number of overall developers maximize each of their individual impacts by one one person having to do a give task on the platform code and it automatically benefiting all the projects involved. It also puts more people in the mix and thus hopefully more ideas, giving the platform the most solid ideas and the most developer support possible going forward. So, it somewhat addresses the perceived developer shortage- and is clearly a good thing relative to the status quo, provided that the platform code is well managed by the hypothetical consortium of projects sharing a common platform code.
Having said that, though, there is another issue going on- which is that many websites do not feel they have to provide a function website to Pale Moon users, because we are so few relative to the major browsers. I've seen estimates ranging from 500,000-750,000 Pale Moon users, which is a lot, but still less than 1% of the web. I don't know what threshold we'd have to reach to get broader support, but I am thinking at least 5%. This is where folding other projects and their users into Pale Moon would help- instead of, say, 5 browsers with half a percent of the market each, we could have one browser with 2.5% of the market and grow from there. All these browsers could present the same user agent string to sites and sites could see for themselves that the marketshare is getting big enough to cater to the way they do other browsers. Similarly, though obviously Thunderbird is an email client and not a web browser, if a deal could be worked out to say Thunderbird is powered by Pale Moon or to otherwise expose the Pale Moon brand to Thunderbird users, that's a win.
If all the collaboration is behind the scenes, it does have many benefits relative to not collaborating, but it doesn't necessarily do much about the problem of websites refusing to deal with any browsers not named Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox (Or that aren't able to feed the same user strings and use the exact same rendering engine under the hood). I even saw that directvnow.com (New streaming service from the satellite company meant to compete with Sling and Playstation Vue) now doesn't even list Firefox as being a supported browser! Directv Now may still work with Firefox, I don't know, but I was just browsing (Not a subscriber) and at one point I clicked on the free trial button in Pale Moon to get a closer look at terms and conditions, and it demanded I use a supported browser, and listed only 3 (!), none of which were Firefox. Even Firefox is falling below the threshold where every site will support it (It's at 9% or so marketshare now, right?).
Take a look:
https://www.directvnow.com/accounts/Bro ... orted.html Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer- that's it.
I get what you're saying and it's a good helpful plan, but I am not sure it by itself addresses the *other* big issue Pale Moon is facing, which is a web that's moving away from supporting smaller browsers (The only obvious solution to which, other than adopting the same exact rendering engine as a larger browser [Which is less than ideal], is to become a bigger browser in terms of userbase. That's where true mergers as opposed to cooperative deals would help more. However, obviously, if all one can get are cooperative deals, it's better than nothing.).
Still, even with square tabs back Mozilla still stays the on advanced users spitting company, which has done that already since quite a long time. Discriminating Anti-functionality developers still stay exactly that and it is not going to change because they change suddenly something back to "normal" and make it again not-Chrome-like!
