Mozilla, Intel, Red Hat and Fastly today announced the launch of the Bytecode Alliance, a new open-source group that focuses on “creating new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI).”

Mozilla has long championed WebAssembly, the open standard that allows browsers to execute compiled programs in the browser. This allows developers to write their applications in languages like C, C++ and Rust and have those programs execute at native speed, all without having to rely on JavaScript, which would take much longer to parse and execute, especially on mobile devices.

Today, support for WebAssembly is part of all the major browser engines. Companies like Figma and Autodesk have experimented with it or are using it in production. I do not get the sense that mass adoption of the technology is near, though, and the barrier to entry is high for most developers. Indeed, today’s announcement probably marks the first time I’ve heard about WebAssemly this year.

The Kenyan Data Protection and Privacy Act 2019, was signed into law last week. This GDPR-like law is the first data protection law in Kenyan history, and marks a major step forward in the protection of Kenyans’ privacy. Mozilla applauds the Government of Kenya, the National Assembly, and all stakeholders who took part in the making of this historic law. It is indeed a huge milestone that sees Kenya become the latest addition to the list of countries with data protection related laws in place; providing much-needed safeguards to its citizens in the digital era.

Strong data protection laws are critical in ensuring that user rights are protected; that companies and governments are compelled to appropriately handle the data that they are entrusted with. As part of its policy work in Africa, Mozilla has been at the forefront in advocating for the new law since 2018. The latest development is most welcome, as Mozilla continues to champion the 5 policy hot-spots that are key to Africa’s digital transformation.

In Tracking Diaries, we invited people from all walks of life to share how they spent a day online while using Firefox’s privacy protections to keep count of the trackers that tried to follow them.

Whenever you’re online, a multitude of third parties attempt to record what you’re doing, largely without your knowledge or consent. Creepy! That’s why Firefox has turned the tables, letting you block and see the trackers. Read on to find out how many trackers tried to trail Tiffany LaTrice Williams throughout his day, and how she felt about it.

The Bytecode Alliance is an industry partnership with the aim of forging WebAssembly’s outside-the-browser future by collaborating on implementing standards and proposing new ones. The newly formed alliance has "a vision of a WebAssembly ecosystem that is secure by default, fixing cracks in today’s software foundations". The alliance is currently working on a standalone WebAssembly runtime, two use-case specific runtimes, runtime components, and language tooling.

Today we announce the formation of the Bytecode Alliance, a new industry partnership coming together to forge WebAssembly’s outside-the-browser future by collaborating on implementing standards and proposing new ones. Our founding members are Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat, and we’re looking forward to welcoming many more.

Mozilla has been heavily invested in WebAssembly with Firefox, and today, the organization teamed up with a few others to form the new Bytecode Alliance, which aims to create "new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI)." Mozilla has teamed up with Intel, Red Hat, and Fastly to found the alliance, but more members are likely to join over time. The goal of the Bytecode Alliance is to create a new runtime environment and language toolchains which are secure, efficient, and modular, while also being available on as many platforms and devices as possible. T

Mozilla has been heavily invested in WebAssembly with Firefox, and today, the organization teamed up with a few others to form the new Bytecode Alliance, which aims to create "new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI)". Mozilla has teamed up with Intel, Red Hat, and Fastly to found the alliance, but more members are likely to join over time.

The goal of the Bytecode Alliance is to create a new runtime environment and language toolchains which are secure, efficient, and modular, while also being available on as many platforms and devices as possible. The technologies being developed by the Bytecode Alliance are based on WebAssembly and WASI, which have been seen as a potential replacement for JavaScript due to more efficient code compiling, and the expanded capabilities of being able to port C and C++ code to the web.

On Tuesday Fastly, Intel, Mozilla, and Red Hat teamed up to form the Bytecode Alliance, an industry group intent on making WebAssembly work more consistently and securely outside of web browsers.

WebAssembly is a form of low-level bytecode that can be created by passing code in higher-level languages, like C/C++ and Rust, through a compiler. It's been described as an assembly language for a conceptual machine rather than a physical one. That means it can be run on various processor architectures and operating systems. It's a bit like Java, but for a structured stack machine rather than the JVM's fully-general stack machine.

Wasm, as WebAssembly is known to its friends, is faster than JavaScript – about 20x by one measure – and has other advantages in terms of security, portability, size, and load-time efficiency. It's been implemented in at least four major browsers – Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari – and now Bytecode Alliance members aim to help it move beyond the browser.

Many of the use-cases for wasm involve in-browser applications, such as running games or other performance-sensitive tasks. But wasm also has potential outside the browser, for content distribution, server-side handling of untrusted code, hybrid native apps on mobile devices, and multi-node computation.

Back in 2015, a consortium including Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and the WebKit project announced WebAssembly. This week, Mozilla, Intel, Red hat, and Fastly announced a new consortium called the Bytecode Alliance, which aims to foster WebAssembly and other "new software foundations" that will allow secure-by-default ways to run untrusted code, either inside or outside the Web browser environment.

For many, this raises an obvious question: what is WebAssembly? WebAssembly (wasm) was and is a potentially exciting project, offering a way to run native bytecode inside the browser for potentially very large increases in performance over the Javascript engines in use both then and today.

Javascript is frequently misunderstood as a scripting language that is interpreted at runtime. Although it is generally loaded into the browser as source code, it may be either interpreted or compiled to bytecode and executed. Compilation means higher performance execution—particularly inside tight loops—but it also means a startup penalty for the time needed to do the JIT compilation itself.

THE MOZILLA FOUNDATION has joined forces with three big industry players to form the Bytecode Alliance.

The new open-source consortium sees the browser maker snuggle up with edge-cloud maker Fastly, chipmaker Intel and enterprise Linux distro Red Hat.

The Bytecode Alliance has been formed to up the security game in the open-source development field, with a secure platform that will allow developers to run code safely on any device, running any operating system, to test it before it's released to the big wide world.

Essentially, think of it as a world of sandbox but a sandbox for cheetah poop, not domestic kitty poop.

Wasmtime, the WebAssembly runtime from the Bytecode Alliance, recently added an early preview of an API for .NET Core, Microsoft’s free, open-source, and cross-platform application runtime. This API enables developers to programmatically load and execute WebAssembly code directly from their .NET programs.