[kwlug-disc] Firefox blasphemy: time to switch to Blink rendering engine?

[Ronald Barnes]

I'm starting a fresh thread for this thought.


We currently have 2 web rendering engines of any significance: Firefox's 
Gecko and Google's Blink.

Those names may now be obsolete but I think they're the most-recent 
names.  And I'm entirely unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem, but 
doesn't Safari use some version of Blink?


Would it be damaging to anyone for Firefox to switch their rendering 
engine to Blink?


It's not 1996 anymore, and Google can't have the same impact that a near 
mono-culture of IE had back in the day, since the software's open source.


And trying to write responsive designs to 2 different engines (3 if 
including iOS?) on desktop & mobile is still a bit of a pain.


Who would be hurt by a modern day web rendering engine mono-culture?


Besides the devs working on Gecko at Mozilla?

Would Mozilla be in a better place to innovate if they didn't have to 
spend a lot of time and money trying to keep up to the Chrome "standard"?


I honestly can't say it would matter to me, and might even be beneficial.





Digression: the multitude of Linux distros & desktops - do they hurt the 
ecosystem with too much talent chasing dead ends?  Or lead to new ideas 
being developed?



rb