> Igalia is a major contributor to each of the major Web engines (Blink, Gecko/Servo and WebKit). In 2019 they were the #2 committers to both the WebKit and Chromium codebases and in the top 10 contributors to Gecko/Servo. Igalia has helped the interoperability of some features across web engines; they implemented CSS Grid Layout in WebKit and Blink. They are maintainers for several areas of the Chromium codebase, such as CSS Grid Layout, MathML, Ozone-Wayland and MathML in Chromium.
> Igalia is a private, worker-owned, employee-run cooperative model consultancy focused on open source software. Based in A Coruña, Galicia (Spain), Igalia is known for its contributions and commitments to both open-source and open standards. Igalia's primary focus is on open source solutions for a large set of hardware and software platforms centering on browsers, graphics, multimedia, compilers, device drivers, virtualization, embedded Linux, and device drivers.[2][3]
Edit: I also imagine most of the answer to "Who is funding Igalia?" in the FAQ of a similarly Igalia-led project, Wolvic, is relevant here [2]:
> Generally speaking, Igalia is funded by a wide variety clients. Some of our contracts allow or encourage us to discuss the work; others do not.
> Igalia works on a lot of things, from graphic drivers to multimedia, as well as the web platform. Igalia’s model expands the ability for investment into the web platform and web engines. We think that is not only good for businesses, developers, and users, but fundamentally useful to the long term health of the Web.
> Igalia itself re-invests in things we feel are important, but that we think under-served or else very, very interesting. Very often we are able to find good alignments with client work. Igalia is also the maintainer of a few official WebKit ports, including WPEWebkit, which powers millions of devices. We are able to do this and build a team around a diverse combination of investments, which in turn makes WebKit better and helps the larger web ecosystem remain healthier. Our ideas around XR are not dissimilar.
[1] https://people.igalia.com/mrego/servo/igalia-servo-tsc-2022/...
I was around when webkit browsers started to appear. Back then, the engine was leveraging almost a decade of work on KHTML. It wasn't something pulled out of thin air. All popular browsers nowadays have their roots in 90's and early 2000's codebases.
Servo is a very cool project as well, I'm rooting for them!
While I share the hope, the situation is (imho) very different. OpenVPN is FOSS while Chrome is proprietary... OpenVPN is a tool which still helps many many many users while Chrome is a mixed bag - pretty good browser made by a worlds largest advertising company.
What does that mean, when there's active development of the github repository?
It's never been deactivated has it?
(My naive understanding)
1. Making a fully secure no-JavaScript browser for Tor usage
2. A secure browser that works on major websites
3. Android support
4. Embedding support
5. Extensions support
6. All missing features supported by both Firefox and Chrome, roughly in order of addition to the web standards
7. Replace Firefox
8. All features supported by any browser
Also, since Tor browsing is often done with JavaScript off, and removing JavaScript removes a huge amount of web features that need to be supported (including a JavaScript engine, which I think Servo still doesn't have a pure Rust implementation of), it's much easier to make a usable browser for this use case than others.
Maybe I should revive the Gonk port[0]...
That's the case. From homepage:
> Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards.
>A few months ago, we announced we would be taking over stewardship of what was then the Firefox Reality project, spinning off a new browser based on Reality’s foundations that would follow its own evolutionary path: Wolvic.
It wasn't too hard to read between the lines for what was happening especially considering how political Mozilla is from the inside. The decision to stop the project some time later wasn't much of a surprise from then on.
Now it seems they are pushing for Servo as a browser and goal by itself.