> There's a BIG difference between "no one else will implement" and "no one else CAN implement."
That's true, but is it the right question?
Browsers could also have implemented ActiveX, back in the day. There was nothing stopping them - except that it would have been very bad for the web and for non-Microsoft OSes. Thankfully, other browsers did not implement ActiveX or else it would have still been used today.
The real issue is that no one but Google thinks NaCl is good for the web. In that sense it is similar to Microsoft with ActiveX. Of course, there are big differences too - NaCl is open source, so it would be easier to implement, if another browser changed its mind. Still, that is just a matter of technical convenience - if NaCl were closed source, the other browser vendors could still reimplement it. But again, the issue is that only Google thinks it is worth implementing in a web browser.
Kudos to Google for making it open source, but open standards are just as important for the open web.
> The real issue is that no one but Google thinks NaCl is good for the web.
Are you sure about that? I like NaCl. I don't know about depending on x86 instructions, but I like the idea of NaCl. I think it's pretty clear that the web needs some kind of low-level VM that's closer to the metal than JavaScript. It's been argued that LLVM isn't the answer, so maybe PNaCl is on the way out, but overall I think NaCl makes sense in Google's strategy: they want to see web apps take over. They want the web to replace Windows and OS X. Therefore it's natural that they want to download native or near-native code to the browser, and NaCl is just a way to do it safely. It's _not_ the same thing as ActiveX, I really believe that. However, it's clear that it's necessary to be extremely careful, and I'm not convinced they need to go 100% native -- I think a solution like PNaCl is more along the right lines. Web apps and games are not going away, and I think it's clear that we need something easier to statically optimize than JavaScript as the runtime system for the web.
Sorry if I wasn't clear before, when I said "no one but Google thinks NaCl is good for the web", I was talking in the context of browser makers. I meant the fact that Google is the only browser maker that thinks NaCl is good for the web.
> Web apps and games are not going away, and I think it's clear that we need something easier to statically optimize than JavaScript as the runtime system for the web.
We can do that in a portable, standards-based way without a complete break like NaCl with its downsides.
Consider what the PyPy compiler does to RPython: It compiles RPython, a subset of Python, down to C, by statically discovering all the types and so forth. The same can be done for JavaScript, since the performance-sensitive code people are writing is almost always statically-typed (but implicitly, without writing types) anyhow, just like RPython.
In fact we are already moving towards that now, with technologies like the global type analysis in SpiderMonkey TI. With a few more years of work, that approach should make performance-sensitive JavaScript as fast as we need it to be. There is no technical impossibility here, it just takes time - we are half-way there, with things like RPython showing this is definitely feasible.
NaCl uses the NPAPI which is pretty standard, it's used for flash for example and is supported by Firefox, Opera and webkit. This means NaCl could be plugged in those browsers without being reimplemented.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. From Wikipedia:
"""Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering."""
Nothing of this applies to Pepper API or NaCl. Mozilla can implement Pepper API and NaCl or can even just take NaCl as whole because it is, oh boy, oh boy, open source with a permissive license.
You think proprietary software is software that you can't use without license, but proprietary API is something other than an API that you can't use without license?
I mean the dictionary definition of "proprietary": controlled by a single proprietor, in this case Google. Google proposed the Pepper API on the plugin-futures mailing list a year or two ago, but Mozilla and Apple believed that it was unnecessary to maintain a parallel Pepper API for plugins to use when Web APIs were already there (and could be improved where they were not sufficient). Google implemented and pushed Pepper anyway. Thus, proprietary.
Likewise, Google is not open to input regarding the direction of NaCl, or whether it is a good idea for the Web. It is also proprietary.
Whether proprietary-but-open-source technologies are good for the Web is a separate discussion -- clearly, Mozilla and Google disagree. But it's unarguable that NaCl and Pepper are proprietary technologies.
An open source implementation is not the same as an open standard and is still not enough. By not having a separate standard oter browsers would either have to support bug-for-bug compatibility with NaCl or be forced to use the reference implementation without any changes (so it might as well have been distributed as a obfuscated binary).
You'd think it would be good to see the problems this will unleash on openness before it's too late and we have to say 2 years down the road, on the next embrace-extend move, that Google has a history of this.
Google is using their muscle to push for the adoption of a Google-exclusive technology in browsers that Google's competitors have said they cannot support because it is not truly open. If you can't see that this is embrace, extend & extinguish in action, then you're either naive or your memory is too short.
They are different, but both are true here, and they are related.
It's not truly open because it is not standardized, nor even proposed to be standardized, and it relies on other non-standard technologies (Pepper). Also, it is incompatible with the open web because it is not hardware-independent, which is another type of openness it lacks.
They do open up a lot of stuff, and provide a lot of free stuff too. They have a lot of talented people as well.
But their base strategy is to control our most powerful tool. For that you need to kill standards. And hey, talented people sure know how to put things on the right balance, at the right time.
I'm not sure who you think can compete with Google. For most people "the internet" is Google.com.
Google.com tells you to get Chrome.
Most top 10 downloaded software bundle Chrome, often with default optin and even default launch.
Companies which aren't big enough to fight are bought out.
See a trend?
What's funny is that my comment gets back to 0 or 1 then back to minus and so on.
What it shows is that this is controversial and many actually agree with my "wharrgarble". Maybe you should give it a deeper though. We'd be better in 5 years from now, if everyone though about such things with a little more criticism.
"I'm not sure who you think can compete with Google. For most people "the internet" is Google.com."
I thought the meme was that for most people facebook.com is the web?
All Google cares about is that whatever tech is out there doesn't prevent them from displaying Ads to as wide an audience as possible. This is a very different motive than what Microsoft has which is to control your entire PC experience.
Google has more or less been playing by the "open, free, web standards based" rules until it's browser got too big to fail.
Then started pushing out things like NaCl that aren't standard, and while open, very hard to implement in a way that stays compatible to Google (and arguably not something you want to implement if your focus is web standards of course).
To make sure of that, you buy how some game studios to release for that platform, and eventually only on that platform (See Bungie+MS, since you like these examples).
This is a lock-in, and that's the first extinguisher, and the worth part: it's only the tip of the iceberg we're starting to see.
Wanna wait til it gets bad for everyone just cause you like Google? Then you'll get in the "oh noes, Google deceived us" in 3-5 years?
Well, it'll be far too late. Better to voice things now (and it may already be too late).
For most people, the Internet is the site that gets them to things they want to see. This can be Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, or even Digg. It all depends on what they're comfortable using.
