Igalia

Creating an Urban Forest

2024-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

En Galego

Igalia, in partnership with Galnus, has facilitated the signing of an agreement with the City Council of A Coruña to implement an ambitious project: the creation of an Urban Forest in Bens, within the city limits.

Igalia, an international software consultancy specialized in Open Source technologies, was founded in A Coruña more than 20 years ago and the company’s headquarters remain in the city today. As a company, we are deeply committed to social and environmental values, and this commitment has led to various reforestation projects in several areas of Galicia, the region of Spain where A Coruña is located. These initiatives have been made possible through collaboration with Galnus, Igalia’s main partner in environmental initiatives and a specialist in reforestation.

Galnus is a Galician company that specializes in the reforestation of native forests. They played a crucial role in this effort by leveraging their extensive experience in ecosystem restoration and biodiversity promotion.

The previous collaborations between Igalia and Galnus include reforestation of the communal lands of Rois, the restoration of the Atlantic rainforest in the Fragas do Eume Natural Park, and the recovery of riparian forests along the areas of river Lambre and Esmelle. Currently, efforts are also underway to restore 7 hectares in the Courel area affected by the 2022 wildfire. Given Igalia’s strong ties to the city of A Coruña, pursuing a project with the city had long been a priority. Since the beginning of the two companies collaborations in 2019, we have been working on a proposal for an urban forest, and we celebrate the agreement with the City Council as the first concrete step.

Urban Forests are a widespread concept in many countries, where large forested areas, primarily composed of native species, are managed with minimal human intervention to allow natural evolution. These spaces not only contribute to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems but also offer citizens ideal settings for recreational, sports, and nature-related activities.

In the case of A Coruña and its wider metropolitan area, there is a significant lack of urban forests or native woodlands. This project represents an opportunity to recover the native Atlantic forest in the region. It marks an ecological milestone for local ecosystem restoration and showcase Galician biodiversity.

The plan developed by Galnus includes several implementation phases over the coming years. Igalia will take the lead in this initial phase with the planting of the first 3000 trees. The creation of a forest is a long and slow process, and although Igalia will remain an involved and active participant in the coming phases, the forest will greatly benefit from the involvement of other companies and organizations. Therefore, Igalia and Galnus encourage collaboration from different stakeholders, whether from the business sector, institutions, or civil society.

We are convinced that this project not only fosters sustainable development but also strengthens collaboration between businesses and local communities for the benefit of the environment. This is an exceptional opportunity to create a positive and lasting impact on the protection of ecosystems and biodiversity in Galicia.

Igalia, en colaboración con Galnus, acaba de impulsar a sinatura dun acordo co Concello da Coruña para levar a cabo un ambicioso proxecto: a creación dun Bosque Urbano en Bens, dentro do termo municipal da cidade.

Igalia é unha consultora internacional de software especializada en tecnoloxías de código aberto e foi fundada hai máis de 20 anos na Coruña, onde hoxe continúa estando a sede da empresa. Somos unha organización con un forte compromiso con valores sociais e medioambientais, e foi este compromiso o que deu lugar a varios proxectos de reforestación en varias áreas de Galicia. Estes proxectos foron posibles grazas á colaboración con Galnus, socia de Igalia en traballos medioambientais e experta en reforestación.

Galnus é unha empresa galega especializada na reforestación de bosques autóctonos. Tiveron un papel decisivo nesta tarefa pola súa ampla experiencia na restauración de ecosistemas e promoción da biodiversidade.

As colaboracións anteriores entre Igalia e Galnus inclúen a reforestación dun monte comunal en Rois, a restauración do bosque atlántico no Parque Natural das Fragas do Eume, e a recuperación de bosques de ribeira nas zonas do río Lambre e Esmelle. Actualmente tamén se está a traballar en restaurar 7 hectáreas na zona do Courel afectada polo incendio de 2022. Debido ao forte vínculo que Igalia ten coa Coruña, facer un proxecto na cidade foi sempre unha prioridade. Dende o comezo da colaboración entre as dúas empresas en 2019 estivemos a traballar nunha proposta para un bosque urbano, e celebramos este acordo co concello como os primeiros pasos concretos.

Os Bosques Urbanos son un concepto extendido en moitos países, onde grandes áreas forestais, compostas principalmente de especies autóctonas, son xestionadas con mínima intervención humana para permitir a súa evolución natural. Estes espazos contribúen non só á conservación da biodiversidade e os ecosistemas senón que tamén ofrecen aos cidadáns un entorno ideal para o deporte, o lecer e o contacto coa natureza.

No caso da Coruña hai unha falta significativa de bosques urbanos, que se suma á carencia de bosques autóctonos na área municipal. Este proxecto representa unha oportunidade para a recuperación do bosque autóctono atlántico na zona. Marca un fito ecolóxico para a restauración do ecosistema local e é unha mostra da biodiversidade galega.

O plan desenvolvido por Galnus ten prevista unha serie de etapas de implementación nos anos vindeiros. Igalia liderará esta fase inicial na que serán prantadas 3000 árbores. Con todo, a creación dun bosque é un proceso longo e gradual, e aínda que Igalia continuará a se implicar de forma activa nas seguintes fases, o bosque beneficiaríase da participación doutras compañias e organizacións. Por este motivo, Igalia e Galnus animan á colaboración de diferentes actores, tanto do ámbito empresarial como do institucional e da sociedade civil.

Estamos convencidos de que este proxecto non só impulsa o desenvolvemento sostible senón que tamén fortalece a colaboración entre empresas e comunidades locais en prol do medio ambiente. É unha grande oportunidade para xerar un impacto positivo e duradeiro na protección dos ecosistemas e a biodiversidade en Galicia.

MathML 2024

2024-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

As we have for several years now, Igalia continued its work on MathML. Thanks in part to some funding from the MathML-Core Support Collective, we were able to do more than we would have been able to otherwise.

This work was mainly geared toward advancing mathml-core integration in WebKit and Firefox, and our tasks were largely inspired by addressing feedback from the MathML Working Group and public submissions to Interop 2024 which were not chosen. We have made a very large amount of progress this year on these, with MathML now passing many tests for CSS styling of width, height, margin and border in all engines. These are useful properties in their own right, but are also fundamentally necessary for polyfilling other proposed features, or helping address other kinds of ragged support across browsers from the developer’s side.

\int_{\frac{3 π}{4}}^{\frac{7 π}{6}} \frac{10 sin θ}{\sqrt{4 - 4 {sin}^{2} θ}} 2 cos θ d θ = 10 \int_{\frac{3 π}{4}}^{\frac{7 π}{6}} sin θ \frac{cos θ}{\sqrt{{cos}^{2} θ}} d θ

MathML rendered natively and styled as text with CSS

The work (detailed below) was overwhelmingly focused in Firefox and Safari, since the initial integration of CSS in MathML-Core was completed in our Chromium implementation. But, there were even a few patches made to Chrome. Along the way we also contributed several minor spec edits to match reality and opened a few new spec issues we’d like to sort out. We added 251 new MathML related subtests to Web Platform Tests and greatly improved the interoperability around these basics.

While we made very considerable progress, there is still much to do, even just in good CSS support and interoperability. Two MathML related issues (CSS styling over MathML Core and Mathematics Rendering) were submitted to Interop 2025. We hope they can get the attention and priority of others, either directly from vendors or through financial support.

In 2025, Igalia will continue to look for funding and opportunities in order to make it increasingly possible to easily publish native Mathematics on the web. You can help us keep this work going, and close gaps more rapidly, but supporting our work directly via donation (one time or recurring).

Donate

What we did in 2024, specifically…

Chromium

Uploaded [mathml] Remove element
Landed CHECK failure with MathML + ::first-letter
Reviewed Fix offset mapping from a DOM text to a rendered text with text-transform:math-auto
Add non-regressions tests for bugs with stretchy fence
mathml minsize/maxsize
5924353: Account for spacing around mo in WPT test width-height-001.html
5941615 Update legacy-mrow-like-elements-001.html to expect display `block math’

WebKit

Firefox

Spec & tests

Reported Make ::first-letter and ::first-line pseudo-elements not applied to elements with display: math
Edited spec Make ::first-letter and ::first-line pseudo-elements not applied to elements with display: math
Edited spec Rewrite section for SVG/HTML
Opened Add tests for ::first-letter and ::first-line with MathML
Reported Interpretation of spaceAfterScript for mmultiscripts’s prescripts
Landed Add tests for Selection.toString() and text-transform
Opened Idea: Consider introducing CSS math-leading-space / math-trailing-space properties
Open MathML support in the HTML Sanitizer API
Analyzed Incorrect test added for text-transform, but the test seems correct per the spec.
Provided detail analysis of menclose
Work on mo minsize/maxsize
MathML-Core Friday May 24, 2024
MathML-Core April 29, 2024
MathML-Core March 25, 2024 Agenda

There have also been many other various changes by us and others to:

Misc

November Conference News

2024-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

The whirlwind that was October gives way to a much gentler November, where Igalians will be at four events throughout the month. Catch up with us at:

NodeConf EU 2024, November 4–6 – Joyee Cheung will present “require(esm) in Node.js core” at this, one of the biggest Node.js-related events of the year.
Node.js Collaboration Summit 2024 — Joyee will also be presenting here, with a discussion of recent Node.js module loading customization and CJS/ESM interoperability.
electronica 2024, November 12–15 — We’ll be hanging out at Booth 120, Building B4, so even if you don’t catch us at a talk, stop by the booth! As for the talks, we’ll have two from Christian Gmeiner:
- “Demystifying the Open Source Graphics Stack on Linux: From Kernel to User Space with a Focus on Embedded Systems”
- “Mesa3D Unveiled: From glDrawArrays(…) to GPU Magic”
JSNation, November 21 — Philip Chimento will deliver a remote talk titled “Temporal: Modern Dates and Times in JavaScript”.

We always enjoy talking with people, so if you’ll also be at one of the first three events, please take a moment to flag us down and say hi! And if you have any questions regarding any of our talk, are interested in having an Igalian bring a talk to an upcoming event, or you’d just like to learn more about Igalia, please feel free to reach out.

October Conference News

2024-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

If you thought September was a busy month for conferences, just wait until you get a load of October: Igalians will attend, speak at, or otherwise participate in twelve events across just 31 days! Look for us at:

ViteConf, October 3 – Joyee Cheung will remotely present “New & Upcoming Features in the Node.js Module Loader”
SquiggleConf, October 3-4 - we’ll be in attendance and are also proud to sponsor the event!
BlinkOn 19, October 8–10 — we’ll have quite a few Igalians in attendance, and present the following talks:
- “Windows native profiling support in Chromium and V8” (José Dapena Paz)
- “An update on Ozone/Wayland” (Max Ihlenfeldt)
- “Modularization of //chrome/browser/” (Antonio Gomes Netto)
- “Progress of Blink for iOS” (Gyuyoung Kim)
- “A chromium based, multi-device, open source browser for XR devices” (Sergio Villar )
- “Using Chrome for building Apps” (Tiago Vignatti)
- “line-clamp” (Andreu Botella)
- “Web History: Coralie Mercier” (Brian Kardell)
GStreamer Conference 2024, October 9–10 — our entire Multimedia Team will be in attendance, and will deliver the following talks:
XDC’24, October 9–11 — just about the entire Graphics Team will be present, with the following talks presented:
- “EBC - A new backend compiler for etnaviv” (Christian Gmeiner)
- “Enhancements to the Raspberry Pi GPU driver stack” (José María Casanova Crespo)
- “etnaviv status update” (Christian Gmeiner)
- “Device-Generated Commands in Vulkan” (Ricardo García)
- “Adding test machines to a CI-Tron instance, and making use of them in GitLab” (Eric Engestrom with Martin Roukala)
- …plus, Melissa Wen will lead the Display/KMS meeting on October 11
QueerJS, October 10 — Nicolò Ribaudo will give a talk about “Teaching your editor a new programming language”
RISC-V Summit US, October 22–23 — Alex Bradbury will deliver the “RISC-V LLVM State of the Union”
WebKit Contributors Meeting, October 22–23 — we’ll have people there both in person and remotely, and will give an update on the status of our WebKit contributions over the past year as well talks on other subjects
LLVM Developers’ Meeting, October 22–24 — Mikhail Gadelha will present a quick talk on “RISC-V Support into LLVM’s libc: Challenges and Solutions for 32-bit and 64-bit”
Ubuntu Summit 2024, October 25–27 — Rakhi Sharma will present “Servo: Building a Browser Rendering Engine in Rust”

In addition, we’ll be in attendance and manning expo booths at:

Open Source Summit Japan, October 28–29
AWE EU 2024, October 29–30

Whew!

We always enjoy talking with people, so if you’ll also be at any of those events, please take a moment to flag one of us down and say hi! And if you have any questions regarding any of our appearances, are interested in having an Igalian bring a talk to an upcoming event, or you’d just like to learn more about Igalia, please feel free to reach out.

Interop 2025 Opens for Proposals

2024-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

Each year since 2020, Igalia has joined with browser vendors to work on the annual Interop project, to jointly prioritize the advancement of web interoperability.

We begin the process with a call for proposals, asking the larger web development community what features they want to see included in Interop 2025. From today through October 9th, 2024, the feature submission form is open to one and all. For insight into how proposals will ultimately be chosen, see the Interop 2025 proposal selection process.

Prioritization is difficult, but it depends heavily on having things to consider and signals to discuss. We encourage you to take part in the process by submitting pain points, liking or commenting on other submissions, and helping send signals through public discussions on social media, blogs, and anywhere else. In the end, this is about all of us. The Interop team looks forward to your thoughts!

Updated 18 September to correct the closing date of the proposal period.

September (plus a little August) Conference News

2024-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

August is traditionally the month most of Europe goes on holiday, and Igalia is no exception, so our conference schedule was a little light this month, except for one event sneaking in at the end. September is when things really kick into gear, as we’ll be at eight events around the world, with talks galore:

AWE Asia, August 26–28 — Felipe Erias will be presenting “Augmented and Immersive Experiences on the Web”, a look at the challenges of taking the capabilities of each device and form factor into account, as well as also contending with the limited and fragmented nature of existing XR platforms on Tuesday, August 27th.
Scheme 2024, September 2–7 — Andy Wingo will be keynoting this series at ICFP Milan with “Scheme on WebAssembly: It is happening!” on September 7.
State of the Browser, September 14 — Stephanie Stimac will present “Funding the Web Ecosystem”, an examination of how we currently fund the web, why it’s a problem, and possible ways to fix it.
IBC2024, September 13–16 — Miguel Gomez will present “Improving WPE’s graphics pipeline” on Monday, September 16. We’ll also be showing off WPE WebKit, maybe with a surprise or two, at our booth: Hall 5, 5.A55. In addition, we’ll have people attending the related RDK Global Summit on September 17.
Open Source Summit Europe, September 16–18 — Max Ihlenfeldt will present “Stabilizing Chromium’s Wayland Support: Implementing and Testing Fallback Tab Dragging”, a dig into automated testing and protocol extensions within the Wayland compositor, on Monday September 16. And late-breaking news: Christian Gmeiner will be presenting “Mesa 3D unveiled: from glDrawArrays(…) to GPU magic”!
Linux Plumbers, September 18–20 — There will be three talks presented by Igalians:
- “Using sched_ext to improve frame rates on the SteamDeck” by Changwoo Min
- “Dealing with GPU resets” by André Almeida
- “Using DL servers for FIFO tasks starvation avoidance” by Thadeu Cascardo
- In addition, André Almeida will be leading the “Graphics & DRM” micro-conference
Kernel Recipes, September 23–25 — Two of our number will be in attendance, and we’re also official Supporters of the conference.
TPAC, September 23–27 — The annual gathering of the W3C’s governing bodies, member institutions, working groups, and interested parties, where we’ll have quite a few attendees. Igalia is proud to be a Bronze Sponsor of TPAC and a contributor to the TPAC Inclusion Fund, and prouder still to be a member of the W3C.
LinuxDay2024, September 28 — Christian Gmeiner will be presenting an encore of “Mesa 3D unveiled: from glDrawArrays(…) to GPU magic” at this free, one-day German-language event.

(Updated 29 Aug 2024 to clarify activities around IBC2024 and the RDK Global Summit. Updated 30 Aug 2024 to add Christian Gmeiner’s talk at OSS Europe. Updated 3 Sep 2024 to add details of Andy Wingo’s talk at Scheme 2024. Updated 11 Sep 2024 to add Christian Gmeiner’s talk at Linux Day 2024.)

The European Union must keep funding free software

2024-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Foreword

Igalia would like to co-sign the joint statement below, originally published by petites singularités and translated as well as we could, to express support for European Union funding for free and open source software. The support of the EU through NLnet and the Next Generation Internet programs has enabled Igalia to build out the commons in the interest of everyone, not just when those interests coincide with those of Silicon Valley. Igalia projects with EU funding include the Servo browser engine, the Wolvic XR web browser, browser alternatives on Android, and even fundamental research into automatic memory management and layer-7 firewalls. We hope that in future the EU continues to show forward-thinking support for fundamental free and open source software engineering, as they have up to now through the NGI Zero funds.

An Open Letter to the European Commission

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programs, part of European Commission’s Horizon program, have funded free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NGI0 Commons Fund). This year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programs for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is no longer mentioned as part of Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry and Space).

NGI programs have shown their strength and importance in supporting European software infrastructure, and as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible. NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This kind of ecosystem diversity establishes the strength of European technological innovation. Maintaining the NGI initiative in order to provide structural support to software projects which are at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure.

Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than simply North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.

Previously, Cluster 4 allocated 27 million euros to:

“Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe” ;
“A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life” ;
“A structured ecosystem of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons”.

In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organizations managing these European funding consortia.

NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem. Most of its budget is allocated to fund third parties by the means of open calls. These provide structure to commons that cover the whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research and innovation in Europe.

Moreover, NGI facilitates exchanges and collaborations across all Eurozone countries, as well as “widening countries” ¹. It is a successful initiative, similar to the Erasmus program that preceded it, which is still progressing. NGI also contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project funding does. It encourages implementing projects funded as pilots, backing collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects, interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding schemes.

While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer data, the EU can’t afford this renunciation.

Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020 is, by design, the opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an international collaboration.

This is all the more essential in the current geopolitical context: The challenge of technological sovereignty is central, and free software allows us to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty in the digital world as a whole.

In this perspective, we urge you to preserve the NGI program as part of the 2025 funding program.

As defined by Horizon Europe, widening Member States are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Widening associated countries (under condition of an association agreement) includes Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine. Widening overseas regions are: Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands. ↩

Igalians Celebrated with Prestigious Awards

2024-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

In the past few weeks, two of our colleagues at Igalia (both members of our compilers team) have been honored with awards.

ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Award

The ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Award is given to “an institution or individual(s) to recognize the development of a software system that has had a significant impact on programming language research, implementations, and tools.”

In 2024 this award was given to Rust and named 11 specific contributors, including our own Tim Chevalier. Congratulations, Tim! We’d also like to congratulate, and thank, all of those named for their important and innovative work.

Aaron Turon , Alex Crichton , Brian Anderson , Dave Herman , Felix S. Klock II , Graydon Hoare , Marijn Haverbeke , Nicholas D. Matsakis , Patrick Walton , Tim Chevalier , Yehuda Katz , All Rust Contributors Past and Present

RISC-V International Board of Directors Software Contributor Award

RISC-V International is the “home of the open standard RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), related specifications, and stakeholder community” with thousands of members across 70 countries. Each year the board of directors nominates and recognizes outstanding contributors in the RISC-V Hall of Fame.

This year, our colleague Alex Bradbury was honored with their Software Contributor Award. Congratulations, Alex!

July Conference News

2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

For the first time in a while, we have a month with only one event in it, but it’s a big one! Igalia will be out in force for GUADEC, the GNOME community’s largest conference, which is being held July 19–24 in Denver, Colorado. In addition to attending as many talks as we can, Igalians will be on stage a total of six times:

Philip Chimento, “The Newest JavaScript Technologies in GNOME” (with Andy Holmes and Evan Welsh)
Patrick Griffis, “Developing WebKitGTK Made Easy - wkdev-sdk”
Georges Stavracas, “Calendaring in the modern desktop”
Georges Stavracas, “State of the shell” (with Carlos Garnacho and Florian Müllner)
Emmanuele Bassi, “Moving Past Quiet Introspection”
Georges Stavracas, “Making WebKitGTK accessible again”

We always enjoy talking with people at events, so if you’ll also be at GUADEC, please take a moment to flag one of us down and say hi! And if you have any questions regarding any of our appearances, are interested in having an Igalian bring a talk to an upcoming event, or you’d just like to learn more about Igalia, please feel free to reach out.

Igalia at AWE USA 2024

2024-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

AWE USA 2024, billed as the world’s largest spatial computing event, is celebrating its 15th annual event June 18-20, 2024 in Long Beach, CA. The event boasts over 6000 attendees, 500 speakers and 300 exhibitors.

Igalia will be in attendance to showcase the latest in Wolvic, so if you are attending, please be sure to stop by the booth and say hello! The team will be showcasing our Wolvic partnerships and supported devices, including the Huawei Vision Glass and Magic Leap. For more information about what we’ll be highlighting, check out the announcement on the Wolvic website.