Weekly Journal 168 - Web Browsers, Blogs, Open Source

Web Browsers

I’ve been evaluating the Arc browser and it’s reminding me of the dismal state of the web browser market. I still use Firefox as my daily driver on my personal computers, but the performance gap between it and Chrome continues to grow. It’s disappointing that the industry has settled on one browser, namely Chrome/Chromium. Given the web’s origins, I wouldn’t have expected a single browser engine to dominate the industry like this. I’m going to continue using Firefox for now, but it feels like a forgone conclusion that I’ll be switching to a Chrome-based browser in the near future.

Blogs

I went through the list of blogs I subscribe to this week, and in a similar vein I noticed most of what I’m subscribed to now are company sponsored. Most of the blogs by individuals are gone or haven’t been updated in years. It feels like everyone has moved over to creating podcasts and video content. What’s left is mostly corporate marketing trying to pass itself off as objective content. Some days I wonder if it’s worth continuing this blog.

Corporate Open Source is Dead

Jeff Geerling published an article on his blog covering the death of corporate open source. While open source itself is still growing and thriving, I think Jeff is correct that events of the past few years, like the Hashicorp and Redis license rug pulls, and Red Hat closing access to their distribution sources is marking the end of an era. I still think there is a path to building a business around open source, but I also think that open source isn’t compatible with the unicorn-level returns that typical venture capitalists and other investors are looking for. Somewhere along the way, the definition of success become synonymous with billion-dollar valuations and it may not be possible to achieve that level of revenue while remaining faithful to open source principles and the social contract.