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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree but I also see it more as WebKit as the "Linux kernel" of browser engines. Safari and Chrome both use WebKit but are very different in what they offer.. so they're like the Ubuntu and RedHat.

Is it a bad thing that AIX and Solaris fell by the wayside in a rush to Linux? I don't think so. So neither should adopting WebKit as a sort of common kernel in browsers, IMHO. But that's all it is.. MHO ;-)

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"Is it a bad thing that AIX and Solaris fell by the wayside in a rush to Linux? I don't think so."

Note that Solaris innovated with ZFS, which helped spur Linux to implement btrfs. Competition matters, even in OS kernels.

I'm a little ignorant of the details here, but was ZFS a part of the Sun kernel?

I know the linux kernel is mostly monolithic, is the Solaris/openIndiana kernel the same?

Even if it is, it seems unlikely to me that the core kernel team had much to do with ZFS.

It's really more about competition between file systems, or so it seems to me. Maybe I'm splitting hairs.

Yes it was part of the kernel. Sure it had a team dedicated to it but so does everything big.

The difference is that we've been actively moving to trying to make things people actually care about (like, say, access to basic information or government services) kernel-agnostic, and we view cases when a specific kernel is required to accomplish some basic computing task as a failure. With browser engines, some people think that way but many don't, as this discussion makes clear.

But Linux isn't even close to being the only kernel being worked on. Neither absolutely nor from a marketshare perspective.

So Firefox would be Mach, Trident Windows and the assorted other smaller browser engines other 'kernels'?

But WebKit isn't even close to being the only engine being worked on. Neither absolutely nor from a marketshare perspective.

Hence, the comparison. Firefox and IE both comprise a major chunk of the market.

What's your point? There's also Trident (IE) and Gecko (FF), just like there's NT and BSD.

There are dozens if not hundreds of kernels in development today. Some developed as small niche side projects. Some in proprietary embedded products. Some purely as research experiments. I do not see that type of diversity in browser engines and I think it is absolutely as important.

Diversity for the sake of diversity isn't going to get anywhere. That is basically gambling that something good will fall out of a different implementation just because it is different.

Instead, focus on solving problems. If the best way to solve a problem is to use webkit, then why do otherwise? If the best way is to go back and fork webkit from 2 years ago, and start your project from there, do that instead.

But don't be different just because you want to be different. Target your ambition toward something more meaningful.

difference ensure competition and variety of point of views. The problem with monoculture is that it _enforces_ the lack of difference. So if the guys in control of the monoculture stop progressing, or progress in a direction that you do not agree with, you're basically fucked and it takes enormous effort and time to change it.

It happens so many times and with so many things (not even software related) that I'm amazed it's not the first thing that comes to mind.

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