[Raion]

So compared to 15 years ago, where we had 4 major rendering engines, we've basically got two now. 

The four from 15 years ago: Trident, Presto, Gecko, Webkit/Blink

The two today: Webkit and Gecko/Servo.

This is worse because Mozilla, long the underdog of the internet, went political slowly starting in the 2010s. They've not let up, and they're basically now an activist group. I'm not here to argue the merits of their positions or not, rather point out that it's dangerous for them to insert themselves as the arbiter of what is and isn't acceptable. All of the corporate/activist pandering we've had in recent years, whether towards legitimate groups or not, has made the internet a worse and less safe place. All we've done is sow resentment and hatred of people more. You don't get people to change by shoving what you believe is right down their throats, that usually causes people to dig in deeper. I would know -- I have a friend who right now argues for the Confederacy and has sympathies to neo-Confederate movements. Anyone who just straight up trashes his opinion digs him in deeper. So I've tried to show him that as he's isolated/shunned from his peers, maybe his position is untenable. 

Google, Microsoft, Apple are all effectively aligned in alliance, as Blink/Webkit share a codebase and many features. This is not unlike the early 90s when Microsoft and many others rebranded NCSA Mosiac with a few proprietary extensions (Trident is descended from Mosaic)

Outside of those, you have a few derivatives. UXP/Goanna for Mozilla, which is maintained by the Pale Moon/Basilisk project. Only issue is that MoonChild and Matt Toobin are douchebags who abuse the MPL's terms to act like power tripping internet police rather than, you know, just giving people nice reminders and not being a bitch about it. Don't immediately escalate to "citing" people for it. That's just wrong. There's also Waterfox, but people don't like their parent company. I use Vivaldi, which has a proprietary version of Blink. Theres a handful of others that are outliers. Plus Chinese browsers like UC Browser, which... well use at your own risk if you really wanna. 

There's not a whole lot of choice, there's not a whole lot of optimism to be had, and as Wirth's law bears down on an increasingly obese internet, we're left with no choice. 

Sorry to be all doom and gloom, but guys, we need to tear the whole internet standard down and start over. Not Gemini. That's no the future. Neither is Gopher. But we need something that's "good enough" for most work, but isn't fucking bearing us down with a ton of JS and shit.