Asm.js? Emscripten? WebRTC? Come on, Mozilla has really been pushing the limits of the web lately, in new and interesting ways that no one else will try.
Asm.js is, at best, a truly atrocious hack. Emscripten is only marginally better. They're both quite inferior when compared to NaCl and PNaCl, for instance.
Trying to further entrench JavaScript is not a step forward, and I don't think it's something that should be encouraged or considered positive. Actively trying to move away from JavaScript toward a more general, and sensibly-designed/implemented in-browser runtime would be beneficial. Even embedding Lua, Python, or some other reasonable language would be helpful. But creating horrid JavaScript subsets is not helpful.
Unless I'm mistaken, WebRTC mostly came out of Google, not Mozilla. So maybe this is not a good example for you to use?
Who cares if you can run Quake or Skype in a browser? Nobody wants that because browsers suck. They're just so, so, so limited compared to native tech. Mozilla should be working on getting us the fuck away from Javascript, HTML and CSS and severely limited browsers.
We need to get over our disdain for "atrocious hacks" like asm.js and Emscripten, and instead see them as a strategy to advance the open Web platform, without requiring the cooperation of other players who have competing interests. The end goal is to connect more people without giving control to for-profit companies like Google and Apple.
Why would we want to "advance" sideways? What have happened to "the best tool for the job"? Where does this moronic "web for everything" attitude comes from?
As for the last sentence: I wonder in what state would Mozilla foundation be if not for Google's money.
It's fine for us hackers to use the right tool for the job, but the business of end-user platforms tends to be dominated by a few players, with strong network effects. Microsoft wants people to use Windows for everything, and has succeeded at that on PCs for a long time. Apple wants people to use iOS for almost everything and Mac for the rest, and with iOS at least, they've been quite successful. Google wants people to be highly dependent on Google services; Android and Chrome are means to this end, and Android in particular is firmly under Google's control despite technically being open-source.
proponents of software freedom and people's freedom in the online world want people to use free software as much as possible, especially at the platform level. Note that this desire, unlike the ones listed in the previous paragraph, is altruistic, not self-interested. So far, work on free-software platforms for end-users has focused on GNU/Linux desktop environments. Unfortunately, efforts in this area were always fragmented, and are becoming more so.
But we already have another platform that has serious market-share among end-users and mind-share among developers, and is not owned or controlled by any single player. That's the Web platform. This is why Mozilla is pushing the Web platform to rival the proprietary platforms that are currently dominant. It's a means to accomplish lofty goals that are undeniably worthwhile on a global scale. We need to keep the end goals in mind and recognize that the best way to reach these goals in the near future and given the constraints of an imperfect world might be something as displeasing to us hackers as the Web platform.
As for Google's money, why is that a problem? If Mozilla can maintain a mutually beneficial agreement with Google, such that Mozilla is able to reach its goals while Google also gets what it wants without harming users, then it's all good.
> I wonder in what state would Mozilla foundation be if not for Google's money.
Google isn't paying hundreds millions of dollars to be Mozilla's default search engine because Larry and Sergey are nice guys. Google gets a fantastic return on their investment. I'm sure Bing or Yahoo (which is still Bing) would gladly pay Mozilla for that privilege. The web might be a better place if Google's near-monopoly dominance was knocked down a few notches.
