Ephera

We've got a WebAssembly web-UI at $DAYJOB. Implementation language is Rust, we use the Leptos framework (although other mature frameworks are available for Rust).

Pros:

• Same language and similar tooling as in the backend. Most libraries work the same way (obviously excluding libraries that read from the filesystem, for example). This is especially good, if you've got lots of "full stack" devs.
• Same model classes as in the backend. If you change a field, the compiler will force you to fix it on both sides. It is compile-time guaranteed that backend and frontend are compatible.
• Rust is a nicer language than JS/TS. I find especially Rust's error handling via Result and Option types + pattern-matching works really well for UI stuff. You just hand the Result value over to your rendering stack and that displays either the value or the error. No unset/null variables, no separate error variable, no ternaries.
• Having a strict compiler makes it less bad when you're lax on testing, and frontend code is a pain to test.

Cons:

• If you've got pure frontend folks, or people who are deep into React or Angular or whatever, those are not going to be as productive.
• The JS ecosystem is massive, you just won't find as many component libraries for Rust, which can definitely also reduce productivity.

With me being in a team with few frontend folks, I would definitely opt for it again.

This post is federated from Mastodon.

The original meme is about radio:

Netscape. Specifically the homophobe guy that's now leading the Chromium-based browser Brave.

I'm being a jackass about it, because that was 28 years ago. You can't say they should stop bloating the web and then bring up an example from before Google even existed.

We're talking something like 500 full-time devs currently working on Firefox vs. a handful of unpaid volunteers working on the forks.

So, they might survive, but they won't make a ton of progress. And security vulnerabilities would become increasingly difficult to keep fixing.

None that will continue to exist, if Mozilla falls apart...

Google has the deal with the Mozilla Corporation, whereas this is the Mozilla Foundation. It should have relatively little influence, if any...

Yeah, I'm sort of hoping the folks they laid off weren't actually the advocacy folks, and they're just additionally doing the restructure and moving the advocacy folks into the other departments.

But yeah, I don't fucking know what to think of it. I do have a base-level of trust that they'd make a sensible decision in some dimension. But I'd really like to know more where they're headed now...

Damn, I definitely won't stop donating, if they're this short on money, but that was basically my understanding of what they do, primarily advocacy.

Is MDN and the webstandards work also part of the Foundation? It certainly feels like it'd be more non-profit-y work. I guess, they do hold ownership of the Corporation, so they could also just tell the Corporation to deliver that.

But yeah, I'd like some increased messaging of what other work they do, or how much advocacy they can continue to do. Obviously, that's not an insane number of employees left either way...

This is the Mozilla Foundation. They're legally a non-profit, so this isn't supposed to mean that they're reconsidering their stance. They can't do that. It's rather just them saying "shit's hard, yo".

Pretty sure, Google is at the forefront of that endeavor. Apple has no interest in keeping up. And Mozilla needs to stay in the talks for whatever Google proposes to ensure the webstandard can be implemented by others.

I do not see why you think the Linux Foundation could stomp 500+ devs out of the ground and do a better job. That's three times the size of the current Linux Foundation. Nevermind that the Linux Foundation is purely non-profit. Paying a living wage to that many devs is pretty much just not going to be possible.