> whole thing seemed like platitudes

Agree — this is a deeply under-informed article, and most comments hours in don't seem to realize it.

While the policy limits mentioned are real, most supposed technical limitations mentioned and alleged to be solved by openness are not real. Others have made such apps or features when they put in the work to leverage libs/APIs already provided.

For instance:

“Every time I open Firefox on my testing Android phone, with its cool extensions and the Gecko engine, I remember the iOS version, much inferior because it lacks the features that make Firefox on Android an alternative capable of, over there, competing with Chrome.”

Kagi Orion browser, which implements Firefox extensions on iOS, shows that Mozilla could have implemented Firefox extensions on iOS.

A majority of readers believe, and repeat, that such things can't be done, yet they have been implemented by others and available for some time.

And so Firefox on iOS is indeed much inferior, but that appears to be because the original goal seemed to be a minimum viable app that would nevertheless sync Firefox bookmarks, not because one can't implement Firefox extensions.

Counter-examples exist for most every technical claim the article makes, where it says you can't, others already do.

It's specious.

- - -

As for gecko versus webkit, that's a battle both sides should consider a detente, there are larger stakes, and both sides should be keeping their eye on that ball.

If someone made a vertically integrated Mozilla phone -- something like palm phone hardware + Mozilla client suite + Proton services for instance -- that blocked any other engine and controlled the OS integration points for security and privacy reasons, I would support that Maker's right to market that thoughtfully engineered pro-human experience.

( I do want a Palm + Mozilla + Proton phone so tightly integrated it's impervious to Pegasus type attacks. Like the original PalmOS phone, and original iPhone design intent, I want the only "apps" it runs beyond the core communicator capabilities it ships with to be sandboxed fully open HTML5 PWAs: https://www.flyingcowdesign.com/web-design-services/html5-is... )

Here are just two reasons of many reasons I support maker choice to continue to market a product that becomes very successful, where choices within the product offering are made by the maker:

(a) If the last barrier to corporate web products abandoning all but one rendering engine being everywhere falls away, neither WebKit nor Gecko will be targeted by banks, utilities, travel, government sites, etc., and Google fully controls web standards. You have no farther to look than their various adtech "privacy" standards proposals to see where that ends up: blink (by whatever name) and consumer profile everywhere. It's bad for the web, and it's bad for humans.

(b) I don't believe in forced decomposition of a product experience's hardware, firmware, operating system, and software. There are experiences that uncoupling prevents, and consumers should have a right to purchase tools that make no compromises from firms with a right to market them.

Removing either the Steam + Linux + DIY gaming parts or the PS5 console experience from the market would be a disservice to free choice.

Ironically, draft legislation exists pushing both agendas and any incremental laws towards no DIY (think of the children and our security!) or only DIY (ban vertical integration!) collude at eroding the more fundamental right to make, market, and own, your choice.