Microsoft Project Manager Says Mozilla Should Get Down From Its 'Philosophical Ivory Tower,' Cease Firefox Development

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A Microsoft program manager has caused a stir on Twitter over the weekend by suggesting that Firefox-maker Mozilla should give up on its own rendering engine and move on with Chromium. 'Thought: It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really 'cared' about the web, they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than five percent?' wrote Kenneth Auchenberg, who builds web developer tools for Microsoft's Visual Studio Code.

Auchenberg's post referred to Mozilla's response to Microsoft's announcement in December that it would scrap Edge's EdgeHTML rendering engine for Chromium's. The move will leave Firefox's Gecko engine as the only alternative to Chromium, which is used by Opera and dozens of other browsers. Few people agreed with Auchenberg, including engineers from both Mozilla and Chromium. Long-serving Mozillian Asa Dotzler was not impressed. 'Just because your employer gave up on its own people and technology doesn't mean that others should follow,' Dotzler replied to Auchenberg. Auchenberg clarified that he didn't want to see Mozilla vanish, but said it should reorganize into a research institution 'instead of trying to to justify themselves with the 'protectors of the web' narrative.'

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