Why are most open source browsers based chromium as opposed to gecko? I would think much of the OSS community would be opposed to using google owned software.

If I remember correctly, it is much harder to use Firefox's components outside of Firefox than it is to do with Chromium/Blink. There is a reason why there is no relevant Electron alternative based on Firefox/Gecko. On Android the situation is different but not on any other platform: https://mozac.org/

HeckFeck

Is/Has there been much interest in doing this at Mozilla? More people using their renderer is good for them in the long run.

avery42

Yes. There was an experimental project called Positron [0]: "a experimental, Electron-compatible runtime on top of Gecko". It was discontinued in 2017 [1].

AFAIK the only thing around nowadays is GeckoView [2] for Android.

[0]: https://github.com/mozilla/positron [1]: https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ [2]: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/