UXP development: it doesn't magically happen.
Posted: 2021-07-24, 09:20
In other words: we need your (community members') help for development.
Some time ago1 we've discussed2 our options going forward3 with Pale Moon, and from that we've landed now on our current implementation of the platform (UXP) and its individual applications building on it (Pale Moon, Basilisk, Borealis, Ice*-UXP, Ambassador, and various other forks, rebuilds and hack jobs).
When we made this decision, we knew it was going to be a difficult road, but with everyone involved in the community doing their best to help out and support the project, there was a very positive outlook to be able to provide the necessary technological implementation for what was to come -- that is, before it became clear that there was going to be a hard push for a full browser monoculture. I did state that there needed to be more involvement and support by the community even without that to stay ahead of the inevitable problems we ran into with Tycho.
But, as it looks now, that necessary involvement is not happening.
There seems to be growing complacency that we can be treated like other browser vendors out there that have hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fund however many paid developers to implement new or radically different technologies. But that is simply not true. It does not magically happen if you wait long enough. We do have a bounty program to incentivise help in development, but even that goes completely unused because people seem to be happy to just complain about the same known issues but not do anything about them.
That will, of course, lead to some consequences; the main one being that web compatibility will suffer. But compatibility always involves at least two parties -- and the default behaviour to always blame us as a first response is both incorrect and extremely unfair.
Now, there are of course plenty of excuses anyone can make for not getting involved, and all of them will have some validity, without a doubt. They can range from the misconception that one needs to have years of programming experience before even starting, to something as simple as personally disliking certain members of the community. However, community involvement can be so much more than the difficult task of implementing core features into a very complex piece of software - it is just as much about spending the time to advocate for (or against) certain technologies being used on the web; educating web masters that what they are doing is wrong and dangerous; contacting library and framework developers and opening discussions with them about what is healthy for their and everyone's future; offering simple solutions for many of these problems on the web.
So, once again: We need your help. If you enjoy Pale Moon/Basilisk/other UXP software and use it on a daily basis, please consider giving something back in terms of coding, poking programmer friends you may know, helping with forking extensions, advocating for or against technologies on websites, and whatever else you can think of that might help us survive and might help staving off a full browser monoculture result.
Thanks for reading.
1: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15505
2: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15507
3: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18211
Some time ago1 we've discussed2 our options going forward3 with Pale Moon, and from that we've landed now on our current implementation of the platform (UXP) and its individual applications building on it (Pale Moon, Basilisk, Borealis, Ice*-UXP, Ambassador, and various other forks, rebuilds and hack jobs).
When we made this decision, we knew it was going to be a difficult road, but with everyone involved in the community doing their best to help out and support the project, there was a very positive outlook to be able to provide the necessary technological implementation for what was to come -- that is, before it became clear that there was going to be a hard push for a full browser monoculture. I did state that there needed to be more involvement and support by the community even without that to stay ahead of the inevitable problems we ran into with Tycho.
But, as it looks now, that necessary involvement is not happening.
There seems to be growing complacency that we can be treated like other browser vendors out there that have hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fund however many paid developers to implement new or radically different technologies. But that is simply not true. It does not magically happen if you wait long enough. We do have a bounty program to incentivise help in development, but even that goes completely unused because people seem to be happy to just complain about the same known issues but not do anything about them.
That will, of course, lead to some consequences; the main one being that web compatibility will suffer. But compatibility always involves at least two parties -- and the default behaviour to always blame us as a first response is both incorrect and extremely unfair.
Now, there are of course plenty of excuses anyone can make for not getting involved, and all of them will have some validity, without a doubt. They can range from the misconception that one needs to have years of programming experience before even starting, to something as simple as personally disliking certain members of the community. However, community involvement can be so much more than the difficult task of implementing core features into a very complex piece of software - it is just as much about spending the time to advocate for (or against) certain technologies being used on the web; educating web masters that what they are doing is wrong and dangerous; contacting library and framework developers and opening discussions with them about what is healthy for their and everyone's future; offering simple solutions for many of these problems on the web.
So, once again: We need your help. If you enjoy Pale Moon/Basilisk/other UXP software and use it on a daily basis, please consider giving something back in terms of coding, poking programmer friends you may know, helping with forking extensions, advocating for or against technologies on websites, and whatever else you can think of that might help us survive and might help staving off a full browser monoculture result.
Thanks for reading.
1: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15505
2: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15507
3: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18211