Platform Development • Re: Future of GTK2 and Pale Moon

I didn't sign up for this thinking we were curating a museum. I never got the impression that was MC's goal here, even if some of our users kinda wish it was.

Let me be very clear on this:

No.

This project was never about curating a museum or preserving things in their exact state the way they were 15 years ago. Quite the opposite. I did make concessions to the user base not moving forward a few times when I really wanted to, personally, but that is not and has never been the underlying vision for the project. Did that mean Pale Moon and the platform weren't exactly shaping up to what I wanted? Absolutely. But that was a compromise that was necessary if I didn't just want to build something "just for myself and others can take it or leave it" (like a good number of Linux distros seem to be). So, some users got some of what they wished for, and I got some of what I wished for. Regardless, Pale Moon and UXP are supposed to develop, to be maintained, and to be modernized as time goes on. The GTK2 issue is a problem, but at the same time I've also kind of let the Linux portion of our community guide itself in that respect. You can either come to a satisfactory solution, or you don't. As I indicated elsewhere though, I don't think it's feasible (or sane) to start vendoring a whole graphics subsystem with the browser, and so my answer to bundling gtk2 libs with the browser will just have to be a solid "no thanks". It's going to be a pity if NPAPI on linux will be dropped because of decisions by distro maintainers to remove GTK2 and making it hard to obtain; but the reality is that the plugins people want to be running are old and don't have GTK3 versions. It simply goes out of scope for us.

If you want to run a nostalgic browser, you can always run an old and unmaintained version of whatever you prefer for using it with local plugins as well. But you have to start treating it as a purpose-built application just for that task and not a general-use web browser to be used for the Internet. You'll have to specialize.

There are also essential differences between GTK and XP support and e.g. a processor architecture. You can't even compare them in how they hook into the platform. There are massive differences in scope. So, be carefuly trying to compare them when you're discussing things here because you're likely comparing apples and kitchen sinks.