[HN Gopher] Welcome to Ladybird, a truly independent web browser
___________________________________________________________________
Welcome to Ladybird, a truly independent web browser
Author : goplayoutside
Score : 899 points
Date : 2025-02-28 01:29 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jofzar wrote:
| Everywhere web developers felt a disturbance and couldn't figure
| out why.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Big discussion 8 months ago (1077 comments, 757 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791
|
| 1 year ago (625 points, 284 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39271449
|
| 2 years ago (1341 points, 473 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126
| xiaoyu2006 wrote:
| I got to know this project through the one year old post. I was
| quite buggy and can't even render github.com back then. The
| improvement is huge.
| MontagFTB wrote:
| This is the SerenityOS browser split off into its own project. I
| have respect for Andreas and hope this browser continues to
| mature.
| andrewchilds wrote:
| This is the first time I'm looking at SerenityOS and I really
| appreciate the Win98 vibe. Also this opening line from their
| FAQ: Will SerenityOS support $THING?
| Maybe. Maybe not. There is no plan.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Good - we already have an overload of scrum/agile driven
| planning sucking the life out of the joy of programming in
| our corporate lives.
|
| Let him enjoy making a great browser.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I think the browser is a bit more organized (OP is
| referring to the OS), but I do hope they maintain the
| tinkering vibe, too.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Can someone catch me up, how close are they to migrating it to
| Jakt?
| JBits wrote:
| I believe they're migrating to Swift instead of Jaht.
| grg0 wrote:
| Can you really be an independent web browser when Google
| basically controls the W3C?
|
| I'll be using this as soon as it comes out anyway. It's not like
| there are a lot of alternatives in this space, so I very much
| welcome fresh takes.
| keyle wrote:
| Yes, the web browser is independent, not the web
| specifications!
| grg0 wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but it means nothing
| to "own" the browser when, realistically, you're going to be
| playing catch-up with the whims of the one corporation that
| basically controls nearly all decisions on the spec.
| afavour wrote:
| They're not legally bound to implement every spec the W3C
| publishes.
| danielhep wrote:
| The spec only has the power it does because of the market
| share of Google's browser though. More people using
| independent browsers means less power by google to single-
| handedly control the spec.
| edoceo wrote:
| They can still control the spec. Ladybird would need a
| seat at the table to start the change there.
|
| But if there is more browser diversity, and less support
| for Chrome Only things, maybe that starts (continues?)
| the path of Chrome becoming IE6
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| You can always just ignore the spec, if you have a big
| enough market share.
| dzaima wrote:
| Basically noone other than browser vendors will look at
| the spec anyway. The reality is effectively descriptive,
| not prescriptive.
|
| Sure, without having a majority marketshare a browser
| can't by itself push for their new features to be
| supported by other browsers, but they will effectively
| disincentivize website owners to not use features they
| don't support if they have marketshare of any
| significance. At which point it'd be in W3C's best
| interest to allow Ladybird to participate, or else their
| work gets underutilized.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| If enough people use it, websites can stop following the W3C.
| _benj wrote:
| This seems so much more relevant in light of the recent Firefox
| new terms and conditions. I think the writing was on the wall but
| I didn't wanted to see it.
|
| It might be time to explore librewolf or Vivaldi again
| beretguy wrote:
| Brave blocks more stuff than Vivaldi, FYI.
|
| https://privacytests.org/
|
| I would say
|
| #1 LibreWolf
|
| #2 Brave
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Does brave still do the purchase referral code swap thing?
| TylerE wrote:
| Brave is, and always has been, super scummy.
| getlawgdon wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| WD-42 wrote:
| Wasn't their entire original premise the Basic Attention
| Token? It was some kind of crypto that you'd buy and then
| the browser would block ads for you and instead pay a
| small amount to the website owners. Problem was if the
| website owner wasn't part of the program they'd just keep
| the tokens for themselves, something like that.
| dankwizard wrote:
| No BAT wasn't the controversey. Unless you count the
| "Tipping any website but if the website didn't accept BAT
| it went back into the pool".
|
| The controversy came when it was found out they were
| inserting their own affiliate code into links. That's
| scummy.
| WD-42 wrote:
| OK that does ring a bell. The whole project always seemed
| a little on the scammy side and I wasn't sure what the
| browser actually brought to the table that Firefox
| didn't, so why even check it out?
| homebrewer wrote:
| Much better performance on less powerful hardware (I
| don't care about synthetic benchmarks, do your own
| testing and you will notice the difference).
|
| Vertical tabs. Built-in tor support, built-in efficient
| adblocker that supports ublock origin rules, but is
| complied into native code.
|
| More anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting measures (in
| total, and only counting those enabled out of the box).
| Configurable shortcuts for absolutely everything.
| Probably something else I'm forgetting.
|
| Plus a bunch of crypto bullshit, but it's disabled unless
| you make an effort to enable it.
| TylerE wrote:
| There's far more that.
|
| Privacy violations - https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurre
| ncy/comments/nxce6t/brav...
|
| Bundling crapware
|
| https://community.brave.com/t/brave-has-become-
| malware/51041...
| maineagetter wrote:
| A little research proves that this crusade by this guy
| against Brave is poorly researched https://np.reddit.com/
| r/brave_browser/comments/nw7et2/delete...
| TylerE wrote:
| Ok totally authentic account with no posting history.
| soundnote wrote:
| Purchase referral code swap thing? As far as I know,
| nothing like that has existed. There's a ton of FUD
| "reporting" about Brave out there intended to drive users
| away.
|
| There was a function that'd suggest a campaign partner
| while typing things in the address bar (eg. "binan" for
| binance.com, it'd show an ad for binance as one of the
| dropdown suggestions). For one day, it had a bug that if
| you wrote a complete url (eg. binance.com) in it and that
| matched a campaign partner, it'd give the ad as a
| suggestion. The bug was fixed within one day of being
| reported and the whole ad suggestion thing turned off by
| default.
|
| As far as I know, they've never done anything to referral
| codes within websites. The current browser does have a
| function where if you right-click a link, it gives you an
| option to copy a clean link by stripping tracking nonsense
| out of it. Eg. X links just become plain links to tweets
| and so on.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Even if I agreed with the "block ads and then show our own"
| business model, which I don't, I will never install a web
| browser, or any other application, that includes a
| cryptocurrency wallet.
|
| Sadly, this also includes Signal at the moment, but I won't
| be moved.
| edoceo wrote:
| And remember when KeyBase added that crypto crap? Downhill
| then dead.
| groundcontr01 wrote:
| I'm not baiting or anything, just purely curious --why not?
|
| And what do you use as an alternative to Signal?
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| https://simplex.chat/
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I'm lucky enough that all the people I communicate with
| regularly use iPhones, so, I use iMessage.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Brave's optional stuff is _opt in_. If you don 't like
| seeing the little icon for the Brave Wallet you can right
| click it to hide it.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| "Yes it comes with awful stuff but you don't have to use
| it" is not an argument. There are plenty of alternatives
| without that awful stuff in the first place.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's awful, _in your opinion._ Clearly plenty of people
| enjoy it, and it provides a simple means of monetization
| that 's far more on the up-and-up than the typical
| alternative of - 'spy on users, profile them endlessly,
| secretly monetize them.'
|
| I also am unaware of any reasonable alternatives with
| similar functionality and compatibility. Single click
| access/tweaking of a native ad blocker, auto-https,
| script blocker/toggler, anti finger-printing, and much
| more is just awesome. And for better or for worse the Web
| is built to target Chrome and so Chromium based remains
| desirable, even if it is clearly becoming more onerous to
| decrappify it over time. It may eventually prove
| unsustainable, but we're not especially close to that
| point yet and at that point a fork would probably _still_
| be more desirable than a new root.
| WD-42 wrote:
| I'd amend this list to place anything that can run UBO (the
| real version, not kneecapped lite version that now runs on
| chrome) at the top. AFAIK that still only includes Firefox
| and derivatives.
| yborg wrote:
| Vivaldi is still supporting Manifest v2 for the moment but
| said they will drop support once Chromium upstream drops
| support.
|
| Opera has has said they will continue to support them going
| forward.
| tech234a wrote:
| Also related is Mozilla's apparent removal of their promise not
| to sell user data:
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
|
| Additionally, it's worth noting the Vivaldi is Chromium-based
| ericjmorey wrote:
| The new wording seems to indicate that they still intend to
| keep your data private.
| MrLeap wrote:
| Reading down discussion indicates they're "sharing
| anonymized data with partners" and that some jurisdictions
| think that's at odds with claiming you don't sell user
| data. I.. agree? Sounds like selling user data to me.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| What can protect you from them changing their wording
| again?
| egberts1 wrote:
| "seems".
|
| Does it "seems" that we should see what you did there?
| ericjmorey wrote:
| The terms of service seem to facilitate the sync features.
| consumer451 wrote:
| This is an important detail. I must admit that I thought it
| was worse at first. I did get my pitchfork ready.
|
| However, sync does include your bookmarks, your browsing
| history, and anything else?
|
| Are you saying that these new ToS are just legal CYA for
| previously enabled features, and nothing else?
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| There is giant legal difference between "seem" and "are".
| Unless specified assume the worst.
| andrewchilds wrote:
| I switched from Arc to Vivaldi and have been mostly happy with
| the it. Arc has a very polished UI, but has a number of
| annoying UX decisions. I've found I could customize Vivaldi to
| a point where it's basically Arc without the UX annoyances.
| WD-42 wrote:
| One of the more important projects of our time.
| gunian wrote:
| how so?
| glenstein wrote:
| I think the diversification of options for web browsers is
| increasingly important, because Google has made Chromium the
| de facto standard for the web and positioned themselves to be
| able to drive standards changes that Google wants, such as
| DRM.
|
| And because building a browser can be so complex, even the
| major alternative browsers now are based on Chromium, which
| is controlled by a pool of Google developers. So Microsoft
| Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave, often referenced as
| alternatives to Google Chrome, are still to a significant
| degree Google Chrome under their respective hoods.
|
| The only truly independent browser from a credible company
| with reasonable market share to stand in the way is Firefox
| by Mozilla. There's also Safari from Apple, but if you're
| concerned about Google, Apple is not necessarily a reassuring
| alternative.
|
| Lady Bird seems like an ambitious and credible alternative
| intending to fully comply with modern web standards with a
| seemingly inspired and committed developer at the head of it.
| It can help maintain a diversity of web browsing options,
| which is increasingly important.
| cardanome wrote:
| Diversification is good but considering ladybird choose a
| liberal BSD license, there is no protection from Google,
| Microsoft and friends. If it ever takes off they can just
| do the good old embrace, extend, and exterminate on it.
|
| We need a GPLv3 licensed browser to ensure it will always
| stay open.
| CodeCompost wrote:
| Thing is, so was Firefox. Say, for example, Ladybird becomes a
| massive success. What is stopping it from going down the Chrome
| and Firefox route? No project is immune to money.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Just installed Waterfox a couple hours ago. (
| https://www.waterfox.net/ ) I'm getting fed up with all the
| latest Mozilla bullshit to the point I'm ready to switch
| browsers.
|
| Ladybird is starting to look good too, from an end user daily
| driver perspective, technically it has been impressive for a long
| time.
|
| One other thing I'm really hopeful is to embed Ladybird engine in
| a "first class" way. Think of if as an Electron alternative but
| in a sane way.
| depingus wrote:
| Waterfox looks worth a try, but I opted for LibreWolf because
| it's verified on Flathub and Waterfox is not. It looks like the
| Flathub version of Waterfox was packaged the same BrowserWorks
| Ltd that makes Waterfox, but they didn't take the extra steps
| to get verified so we can't be sure. Hopefully they can remedy
| that. Browsers are too important to install from untrusted
| sources.
| wongarsu wrote:
| For what it's worth, it's the opposite situation on Windows:
| The Waterfox installer is signed (even with an Extended
| Validation certificate), the LibreWolf installer isn't.
|
| Another thing that surprised me is that there is a Waterfox
| Android build in the Play Store. Reviews of that are however
| mixed.
| gs17 wrote:
| Similar on macOS, the LibreWolf team (somewhat
| understandably) refuses to pay for Apple's developer
| account to notarize their builds, so every update I have to
| remove the quarantine extended attribute (Homebrew can do
| this as part of updating now) or the OS helpfully tells me
| my browser is damaged and needs to be deleted.
| foxrider wrote:
| Librewolf is available on Microsoft Store officially tho
| egberts1 wrote:
| Waterfox got bought by an advertisement company System1.
|
| Not surprisen that Waterfox can be signed by Microsoft.
| halJordan wrote:
| It's been independent again since 2023, so multiple years
| egberts1 wrote:
| Did you check for changes in its Article of Board or
| Incorporation?
|
| Stealth BoD(s)?
| MrLeap wrote:
| > One other thing I'm really hopeful is to embed Ladybird
| engine in a "first class" way. Think of if as an Electron
| alternative but in a sane way.
|
| I have the same hope. If it were performant enough I would find
| reasons to use it for gamedev, even with quirks.
| foxrider wrote:
| Waterfox got bought by an advertisement company System1. You
| should looka at Zen Browser or Librewolf instead.
| halJordan wrote:
| It's been independent since 2023, so multiple years
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Interesting, they seem to be switching to Swift soon.
| dkga wrote:
| Noted that as well. Could be a reflex of swift's improved
| memory safety capabilities.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Wouldn't that make it slower than if in C++?
| lukeh wrote:
| Swift can be just as fast as C or C++. The danger, in my
| experience, is that it's not always clear what the
| performance implications of the language's many convenient
| abstractions are. (A random example, I recently improved one
| code path by over an order of magnitude by replacing some
| serialisation that used Codable with hand-rolled code. Still
| 100% Swift, just paid a lot of attention to avoiding RTTI and
| allocations.)
| rixed wrote:
| Swift had automatic memory management, so yes ( _)
|
| (_: Although anything can be made as slow as python yada
| yada)
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Swift is underrated, it's a good alternative to C++ for those
| not interested in Rust.
| sam345 wrote:
| I gather there are no binaries because it's for development use ?
| Are we all really supposed to compile it? Really should have
| alpha binaries. The only download link I can find is sourceforge
| and it looks sketchy.
| ratg13 wrote:
| It's not really worth running pre-alpha software if you are not
| a developer.
|
| It just opens the door for non-technical people to badmouth the
| software complaining that nothing works and expecting a fully
| functional browser.
| keyle wrote:
| Well this project is now more important than ever since Firefox
| basically sold its soul [1].
|
| Never say "Never"... Next is Thunderbird.
|
| Let's go Andreas!
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
| suobset wrote:
| Getting to know about this through here, and tbh I believe the
| writing has been on the wall for Mozilla for quite a while.
| This honestly does not surprise me as much as I thought it
| would.
|
| That being said, I am sad to see this fear of mine come true.
| Mozilla products were rock solid, and available on virtually
| every platform imaginable. I do not want to live in a Chromium
| and WebKit only world.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| And here I was thinking opensource was immune to
| enshittification...
| weikju wrote:
| It is, but people/corporations aren't.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| You obviously never used wordpress, lol
| aswerty wrote:
| I guess the quality here is resilience more so than
| immunity. I guess you can say opensource is much more
| resilient to enshittification.
|
| I think Mozilla has been a good example of that but the
| perception has been that resilience has been crumbling for
| years. Without an independent business model they have been
| in a really terrible position from the get-go.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| > Without an independent business model they have been in
| a really terrible position from the get-go.
|
| That's one way to look at it, I guess. You could also
| look at it like a business model will inevitably
| enshittify.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I think forks, such as Librewolf or Waterfox, will live for a
| while even if (and that's a big if IMO) Mozilla comes down.
| Consider donating to them (and to Ladybird).
| the-grump wrote:
| Vouching for librewolf. Not only does it not bother me with
| things like pocket and "Firefox sync", it also does not
| track me, and the browsing experience is genuinely
| superior.
|
| I didn't realize how much webgl and other cruft slowed
| things down until I started using librewolf.
|
| The one improvement I'm hoping for is that the project
| would be checked into the official Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora
| package repos as those are less risky than the repo
| controlled by the developers.
| abustamam wrote:
| Is it possible to do things like "send tab to device"
| using Librewolf? Sometimes I'll stumble upon a
| programming library in my feed on my phone and I want to
| send it to my desktop, and Firefox sync makes that
| possible.
| the-grump wrote:
| I have never used that so I don't know, but I use pocket
| for a similar purpose.
|
| Firefox sync is something you can enable, I believe
| llm_trw wrote:
| Mozilla has been pink washing itself for a decade.
|
| This has paid off incredibly well for them since anyone
| pointing out that it's primary purpose was to enrich the CEO
| while letting her band of merry women support their pet
| causes was called everything from a fascist to an incel.
|
| Till today the most blatantly farcical situation was that
| Mozilla funded women who code boot-camps while firing all the
| women who code inside Mozilla.
|
| I guess people are finally waking up when Mozilla pulled an
| Ubuntu and decided that everything you do through their
| software is something they own actually.
|
| They also flag and harass anyone who points out the grift.
| chubot wrote:
| What's crazy is that Firefox on Debian has been nagging me for
| weeks that I won't be able to use it after March 14th?
|
| I have never seen those nag screens in Firefox, near the
| bookmarks toolbar. I think that is working around Debian's
| policies, IIUC. I have never had software on Debian nag me to
| update
|
| It seems like this is under the guise of some DRM updates, and
| the like.
|
| So I'm supposed to update, and then they apply a new Terms and
| Conditions that I didn't agree to?
|
| And sell my personal data, I guess because there's a big market
| in AI now.
|
| Also Firefox seems increasingly buggy -- I have had to switch
| to Chromium for 2 particular sites, so I guess I need to find a
| new browser ...
|
| ---
|
| This reminds me of the Twitter thing where they asked for your
| phone number for security purposes, and then used it for
| advertising.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/25/twitter-u...
|
| I think Firefox is forcing updates ostensibly for one reason,
| but the real reason is because they found a market for data,
| and want to apply a new T&C
| ahartmetz wrote:
| >Firefox seems increasingly buggy
|
| Yes, seems. I think web developers are increasingly
| neglecting testing on it.
| acomjean wrote:
| I haven't found anything yet that fails just on Firefox.
|
| But I've noticed I have ublock-origin installed on Firefox
| and when the 2 sites that I had issues with started working
| when that was disabled...
| Narishma wrote:
| > Also Firefox seems increasingly buggy -- I have had to
| switch to Chromium for 2 particular sites, so I guess I need
| to find a new browser ...
|
| Is it Firefox that's buggy or those websites that only test
| on Chrome?
| reidrac wrote:
| In my experience it is usually something related to cookies
| that work on Chrome and not in Firefox, and in those cases
| I find hard to blame Firefox.
|
| Yet, sometimes you need to use those websites fore a
| reason. Firefox should perhaps make it easier so users
| don't need to fall back to a different browser.
| jdiff wrote:
| If it's related to cookies is it any more difficult than
| the two clicks to disable enhanced tracking protection
| for that site?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Firefox on Debian is not nagging me. Out of curiosity what
| reason does it give for not being able to use it in the
| future?
|
| Which version of each are you running? I use esr these days
| (I don't remember why I switched though).
| somat wrote:
| I am getting them on openbsd, I assumed it was going to be
| some sort of certificate issue, I was going to update, but
| with these recent reports of Mozilla getting ready to turn
| full bore into a ad company, I might just wait until after
| March 14th and see what happens.
|
| What is especially funny/insulting, is there is a click
| here to update button, and I am like "there is
| approximately a 0% chance that will actually work on
| openbsd".
|
| update I looked it up, they say it is a certificate issue.
| https://support.mozilla.org/kb/root-certificate-expiration
| rapnie wrote:
| I got the same message on an older version of Ubuntu where
| Firefox isn't installed via snap. On my main machine with
| Ubuntu / firefox snap I do not get this msg.
| tored wrote:
| Probably because snaps autoupdates without user approval.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I get it on my desnapified Ubuntu, but Ubuntu says firefox
| is up-to-date, and the "download update" button downloads
| firefox-135.0.1.tar.xz but there are _ZERO_ docs on how to
| update my current firefox. And running the unzipped firefox
| executable gives me a message that it can 't find my
| current config, so I guess that means no addons (ublock,
| privacy badger, container-tabs), bookmarks, or config.
|
| I'm taking this as a good reason to wait for an official
| Ubuntu update, tho, if this thread is accurate, it looks
| like all I'll need to keep my current version running will
| be new root certs.
|
| Or a new browser, unfortunately.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Wow what the fuck Mozilla. I've been complaining about the
| phoning home on startup and shut down for a long time but this
| is just disgusting.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| I don't understand what the issue is with that change in
| wording. They seem to indicate that nothing has changed as far
| as privacy and personal data is concerned.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Sometimes the takes you see about Firefox/Mozilla are so bad
| you have to wonder if there's some kind of astroturfing going
| on.
|
| This reword of the policy is completely fine - calling it
| Mozilla "selling its soul" is so bad faith it's basically
| trolling.
|
| Take this for example - Mozilla operates a VPN product where
| your traffic goes to a third party (a reasonably trustworthy
| one - Mullvad, but still a third party) - does that
| constitute selling your data in any country? Their lawyers
| presumably didn't want to take the chance so they reworded
| the policy to be more precise.
| jchw wrote:
| I wish to some day have as much optimism about anything as
| you have about Mozilla. How you can see the ToS change and
| this diff and conclude that the outrage is astroturfing is
| difficult for me to grasp. Both this FAQ entry and the ToS
| are specifically about the Firefox browser, the wording was
| unambiguous...
|
| They literally went and deleted a paragraph that said
| Firefox would "never" sell your personal data. If they
| needed to clarify a technicality, they wouldn't need to
| delete that.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| They replaced that paragraph with this:
|
| > Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that
| most people think about "selling data"), and we don't buy
| data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the
| LEGAL definition of "sale of data" is extremely broad in
| some places, we've had to step back from making the
| definitive statements you know and love. ...
|
| There are valid complaints you could have about this
| change (for example, I wish they were more specific about
| the potential legal issues), but calling this selling
| your soul is unironically bad faith trolling.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that
| most people think about "selling data")
|
| > calling this selling your soul is unironically bad
| faith trolling.
|
| It's not. One of their biggest selling (!) points is that
| they are privacy focused so when they make these changes,
| it is extra alarming. It's not like, e.g. Google, saying
| the same thing (which would be equally shocking but for
| opposite reasons.
| jchw wrote:
| The paragraph I'm referring to in that diff does not
| appear to be replaced directly by anything, it just got
| removed. They did, however, add _that_ non-answer
| paragraph separately, apparently hours ago.
|
| Reading between the lines, it's pretty obvious. They're
| making steps in a certain direction. Enshittification
| doesn't usually happen entirely overnight, but you don't
| have to extrapolate a whole lot to see the blatantly
| obvious eventuality this is all pointing to. This is well
| beyond typical levels of brazen for a first step.
|
| Realistically, Google removing "Don't be evil" also
| didn't _really_ mean anything directly, either... but
| that doesn 't mean it doesn't tell you anything.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| And now without cutting it conveniently before the fun
| bit:
|
| > Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that
| most people think about "selling data"), and we don't buy
| data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the
| LEGAL definition of "sale of data" is extremely broad in
| some places, we've had to step back from making the
| definitive statements you know and love. We still put a
| lot of work into making sure that the data that we share
| with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox
| commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying
| information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put
| through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
|
| You appear to have cut off the part where they say that
| actually yeah they have to stop saying they don't sell
| your data because _they are selling your data_.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| No, actually, they don't say that. They very clearly say
| that they don't (and don't believe most people will)
| consider what they are doing "selling your data", but
| that it may legally considered selling your data in some
| countries.
|
| For example, Firefox runs ads using your language and
| city/country (on the default new tab page) - but no other
| data. I think the vast majority people would fine with
| the privacy implications of that, but this may be legally
| considered selling your data.
| alt227 wrote:
| You missed off the important part:
|
| _" the data that we share with our partners (which we
| need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is
| stripped of any identifying information, or shared only
| in the aggregate"_
| glenstein wrote:
| Agreed, it's a ridiculous mischaracterization and part of a
| pattern that's become a self-sustaining spiral with no
| quality control.
|
| I don't believe it's astroturfing, simply just mind
| bogglingly awful arguments. Claiming the decline in market
| share is tied to inadequate browser features with no two
| conversations ever agreeing on what those features are. No
| coherent theory of cause and effect between features and
| market share while ignoring structural advantages that are
| much more important drivers, which Google leverages. Claims
| that CEO pay is the problem when it's 1% of annual revenue.
| Idiosyncratic interpretations of their published statements
| that make unfalsifiable assumptions about intentions. And a
| basic inability to grasp and compare the relative scale of
| different types of transgressions (e.g. Google is
| increasingly driving the web into deeper dependence on
| Chromium, but Mozilla once did a Mr. Robot promo!)
|
| I think the worst of the worst were on Lemmy where similar
| conversations happen and one person looked at a 990 form
| from the Mozilla Foundation, a standard non-profit
| disclosure form, and breathlessly went through the lines as
| if they were evidence of a conspiracy.
|
| I don't think everyone makes arguments that bad, but I
| think exposure to this normalized, low-quality discourse
| has socialized people into perpetuating the narrative with
| increasingly tenuous arguments.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's perfectly normal to hold good actors to a higher
| standard than bad actors. And the leadership should be
| fired instead of rewarding itself. What if they put 10%
| of the hundred million a year they got from Google for
| the last dozen years into an endowment instead? They'd be
| sustainable without needing to sell out.
| glenstein wrote:
| I don't know if you read everything that I laid out, but
| none of the above had anything to do with holding the
| good actors to hire standards. Thinking that a 990 form
| is secret evidence of a conspiracy because the nonprofit
| spent like $10,000 on a consultant here and there is at a
| fundamental level a form of information illiteracy. It's
| not like a principled attempt to hold them to a higher
| standard.
|
| And my contention is that it's things like those that
| increasingly are what people mean when they say
| "everything" bad Mozilla is doing. It's more like a tulip
| craze than a well thought out argument.
| mcny wrote:
| > Claims that CEO pay is the problem when it's 1% of
| annual revenue.
|
| I fully support Mozilla. I don't think this change is
| bad. However, I do think executive pay should be reined
| in. Not just the CEO but the board as well. It is also
| not just about the money but the culture as well. I
| sincerely believe the CEO shouldn't make more than the
| median employee salary. This is too much.
| 7bit wrote:
| If a CEO typically works 12-16 hours a day with no
| overtime pay I'm fine if he earns more than the employee
| who doesn't do overtime or gets paid. I also don't care
| if he earns slightly more than everybody else. It being
| median pay is certainly exaggerating.
|
| But unfortunately, many CEOs make at least 10 times the
| money of the median and often 100x or more.
| mcny wrote:
| In my experience, I have been "exempt" even though I have
| zero supervisory or management authority as an individual
| contributor. If there are people like me in any
| organization, the CEO should not get extra pay for being
| exempt.
|
| Yes, it is a little extreme to demand median pay but this
| is the starting point of a conversation to highlight that
| CEO make 10 or 100 maybe more times the median salary.
| glenstein wrote:
| >However, I do think executive pay should be reined in.
|
| I do too, but let's keep our eye on the ball for a
| second. CEO pay is not (1) driving Mozilla towards
| unprofitability, (2) taking developer resources away from
| critical investments in the browser (3) the reason why
| the market share is lower (4) a revelation of malevolent
| intent regarding user data and privacy (5) an indicator
| of moral equivalence with Google.
|
| It's a vague generality that's barely about anything, but
| it's half made arguments like these that are driving
| perceptions in these threads.
| nine_k wrote:
| The "not selling your data to advertisers" bit is removed.
| bithaze wrote:
| They're not linking to a change in wording? The "Does Firefox
| sell your personal data?" question was deleted entirely.
| Unless the parent comment or link was edited at some point,
| maybe.
| dwattttt wrote:
| Elsewhere in the commit is a change of wording. That
| particular part of the commit didn't have the updated
| statement.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Deleting or obsoleting every mention of "we don't sell your
| personal data" is pretty ominous. Yes, they don't come out
| and say "we now sell your personal data", but why would they
| remove the former if they didn't intend the latter?
| cpleppert wrote:
| To be clear on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/
| they changed this >>It seems like every company on the web is
| buying and selling my data. You're probably no different.
| Mozilla doesn't sell data about you, and we don't buy data
| about you.
|
| to this: >>It seems like every company on the web is buying
| and selling my data. You're probably no different. Mozilla
| doesn't sell data about you (in the way that most people
| think about "selling data"), and we don't buy data about you.
| Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of
| "sale of data" is extremely broad in some places, we've had
| to step back from making the definitive statements you know
| and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that
| the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do
| to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any
| identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or
| is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like
| OHTTP).
|
| Of course, saying "(in the way that most people think about
| "selling data")" makes the guarantee completely meaningless.
| The rest of the paragraph is just marketing puffery. Its
| meaningless bromides about how much they value your privacy.
| Notice they only say they put "lots of work" into stripping
| identifying information provided to commercial partners
| (which is just another way of saying selling). Again, this is
| meaningless. They went from a very strong guarantee to no
| guarantee at all. Any company that sells your data that makes
| any effort at all to strip identifying information can make
| this claim regardless of whether personally identifying
| information can be recovered with a modicum of effort.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| If we manage to read the next 2 questions on the list, or
| spend 30 seconds on a web search, one would find the link
| to Firefox's privacy policy which details the specific
| types of data they collect and how they use it, and has
| enumerated rights for users: https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/privacy/firefox/
|
| This is actually a much stronger guarantee than "we don't
| sell your data", which is not actually a strong guarantee
| at all. "Selling your data" is a nebulous term that means
| different things from person to person, and any company
| that doesn't literally exchange money for data could
| probably claim it with some level of credulity.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Speaking on "reading the next thing", let me repeat
| yjftsjthsd-h's comment below, which of course you ignored
| (a pattern for people excusing Mozilla in these recent
| convos):
|
| ----- yjftsjthsd-h 2 hours ago | unvote | root | parent |
| prev | next [-]
|
| And now without cutting it conveniently before the fun
| bit:
|
| > Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that
| most people think about "selling data"), and we don't buy
| data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the
| LEGAL definition of "sale of data" is extremely broad in
| some places, we've had to step back from making the
| definitive statements you know and love. We still put a
| lot of work into making sure that the data that we share
| with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox
| commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying
| information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put
| through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
|
| You appear to have cut off the part where they say that
| actually yeah they have to stop saying they don't sell
| your data because they are selling your data.
|
| reply --------
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| No, actually, they don't say that. They very clearly say
| that they don't (and don't believe most people will)
| consider what they are doing "selling your data", but
| that it may legally considered selling your data in some
| countries.
|
| For example, Firefox runs ads using your language and
| city/country (on the default new tab page) - but no other
| data. I think the vast majority people would fine with
| the privacy implications of that, but this may be legally
| considered selling your data.
|
| Being specific about what types of data they collect and
| how they use it is actually far superior to some nebulous
| promise that has no definition.
| spondyl wrote:
| I don't have any special insight on these events but I've seen
| that commit linked a lot.
|
| From a pure optics point of view, it looks extremely bad but
| reading some of the comments, it sounds like that repo is
| basically a mirror of some upstream project where terms and
| conditions/faqs etc are stored as pseudo-structured data and
| that they're migrating parts of that repo to some other
| project?
|
| I feel like a lot of context is missing publicly but if I
| squint, that seems to be what this comment is trying to
| express:
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love bagging on Mozilla as much as the
| next person but as extremely bad as it looks, I'm not convinced
| that it's literally what it looks like?
| chefandy wrote:
| I also lack any inside info, but that seems like the kind of
| thing they'd clear up pretty easily if it were that
| innocuous. And if you were going to slip something unpopular
| into a foss project policy, wouldn't you want the public
| updates to be vague enough to not technically be lying about
| anything while also being plausibly innocuous?
| spondyl wrote:
| > if you were going to slip something unpopular into a foss
| project policy, wouldn't you want the public updates to be
| vague enough to not technically be lying about anything
| while also being plausibly innocuous?
|
| If a company was being competently "evil"[1] then it
| probably would look like this!
|
| Personally, I don't know that I consider Mozilla competent
| enough to reach that bar though given a lot of their
| previous blunders seemed like, well, blunders and not
| finely crafted acts of trickery.
|
| > that seems like the kind of thing they'd clear up pretty
| easily if it were that innocuous
|
| I suppose in this scenario, if it were innocuous and this
| is just some automated mirroring thing that someone
| triggered without realising the optics of, I wouldn't then
| automatically assume that same organisation would have a
| level of coordination to recognise or put out a blanket
| statement about the issue?
|
| I mean, you'd think surely some amount of Firefox/Mozilla
| folks are very online and this would be raised internally
| but if this is downstream of some process owned by mostly
| legal and non-internet/chat using folks, it might make
| sense that they a) take some time to be notified, b) take
| some time to realise a lot of the internet is saying "What
| the fuck" and c) take a while to figure out what to do
| about it (ie; issue a press release to not make it worse?
| someone higher up acks and is like reverse whatever this
| mess is?)
|
| My only real basis for all this is I've occasionally run
| into some compliance/legal types in tech and they can have
| extremely bad mental models of the company and product they
| work for so I can feasibly believe this all being
| accidental but in saying that, I dunno who works for
| Mozilla and this is very much a stereotype I'm applying.
|
| Anyway, as above, I'm not saying this isn't malicious, just
| that personally I think the door is still open that this
| could all be a complete mess that has no real intent behind
| it
| spartanatreyu wrote:
| I honestly think that Wikipedia should buy Mozilla to fund
| Firefox
| weikju wrote:
| They should directly buy Firefox and let Mozilla perish
| qingcharles wrote:
| They have enough cash in the bank to fund development, so...
| somenameforme wrote:
| I don't think most people realize how huge Mozilla is. Their
| annual revenue has been flirting breaking a billion dollars
| for some time now and was ~$500 mil as of 2023 - primarily
| due to 'partnering' with Google, which was always a
| bellwether to anybody who cared to see it. Wikimedia has
| never broken $200 million per year. In other words, it's
| Mozilla that could buy Wikipedia, not the other way around.
| thorw93040494 wrote:
| But how much goes into firefox development? Maybe 2% of
| revenue like with Linux Fiundation and Linux kernel?
|
| Mozilla is ads company, it does activism, outreach, it
| organizes Marxist conferences, management gets paid
| millions... Firefox development is just tiny fraction of
| what Mozilla does.
|
| And frankly Wikipedia has the same overhead problem as
| Mozilla.
| wruza wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41620146
| thorw93040494 wrote:
| >> Mozilla isn't just another tech company -- we're a
| global crew of activists, technologists and builders, all
| working to keep the internet free, open and accessible.
|
| >> "Mozilla isn't your typical tech brand; it's a
| trailblazing, activist organization in both its mission
| and its approach,"
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-brand-next-
| era-o...
|
| I do not doubt they employ 750 people. I am saying they
| have tons of other projects. If you go throught their
| blog posts, Firefox has tiny fraction of posts.
| wruza wrote:
| Yep, I linked that subthread cause it puts some actual
| numbers into perspectives.
| bhaney wrote:
| The Wikimedia Foundation has developed many of the same
| corruption issues that Mozilla has. It would just be kicking
| the can down the road, and not very far at that.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Any particular reason to buy what they can fork regardless?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Well this project is now more important than ever since
| Firefox basically sold its soul [1].
|
| I'm still not convinced that Firefox is _The Actual Devil_ for
| potentially appearing to perform .000001% of the bad behavior
| that is fully-baked into popular Chromium browsers.
|
| But for the sake of argument, lets say that .0000001% >
| 99.99999%. What is the browser I can install+configure right
| now, that will perform what Firefox does every day. For ex:
| natively support containers, provide fully uncrippled
| element control, provide reader mode when *I* want it,
| locally save and sync windows, provide granular
| redirection control, and the other functions that are
| mostly unique to Firefox ecosystem ?
| gkbrk wrote:
| LibreWolf
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Why and how?
| eloisant wrote:
| It's literally Firefox without all the telemetry and
| Mozilla's cloud services. Also a few privacy-related
| settings but it's mostly that.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I will give LibreWolf a legit look-over. My browser
| conversations always start with "I need containers" - which
| rules out everything non-Firefox.
|
| Besides running Ffx, I'm also running Waterfox and Floorp -
| which just about exhausts my options for modern Ffx forks +
| Windows + Extensions.
| keyle wrote:
| Shame they don't sign their macOS builds.
| gkbrk wrote:
| Can they just sign it with their PGP key or something? Or
| does it require paying money to Apple for no reason?
| mariusor wrote:
| Zen browser which is a relatively modern fork of Firefox.
| https://zen-browser.app
|
| It's relatively new, but I liked using it more than other of
| the forks.
| sierra1011 wrote:
| Seconded for Zen.
| latexr wrote:
| The website looks good, but as I scroll down in mobile
| Safari the page starts glitching until it fully crashes and
| Safari says an error repeatedly occurred. It doesn't
| inspire much confidence when the web page for a web browser
| is broken.
| Propelloni wrote:
| FWIW, it works fine in FF mobile.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| I rather not
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887594
| mariusor wrote:
| Have you tested the waters with a request for the devs to
| remove whatever you consider suspicious in that list?
|
| I believe the current issue regarding Firefox is it's new
| terms of use, which are not presently in Zen browser.
| Other than that is a pretty close copy of Firefox, which
| is the point, and why I suggested it to parent as an
| option.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| I did not. However considering that they have advertised
| themselves as "privacy-focused" Firefox alternative and
| can't be bothered to do the most superficial of tests, I
| don't think they care or are competent[1] enough to
| change it.
|
| [1] https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/pull/927
|
| If you want an actual private Firefox alternative there
| are already multiple long standing and competent projects
| such as arkenfox, librewolf, mullvad and tor browser.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Containers is key. NoScript is wonderful. I cannot live w/o
| containers, but I'd really like to also have NoScript.
| mikae1 wrote:
| _> We've seen a little confusion about the language regarding
| licenses, so I want to clear that up. We need a license to
| allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox
| possible. Without it, we couldn't use information typed into
| Firefox to perform your searches, for example. It does NOT
| give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for
| anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.
| We've added this note to our blog to clarify, so thank you
| for your feedback._ [1]
|
| So, did the internet explode again for no reason?
|
| [1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/information-
| about...
| jackvalentine wrote:
| The question I can't find answered is why now?
| addicted wrote:
| They could have done this on literally any date and your
| question would apply.
|
| Usually the answer is something really mundane. They did
| a privacy policy review and realized a couple of their
| core fewtures break the policy.
|
| Or someone new joined the team who had an interest in
| their privacy policy and realized it contradicts.
|
| There could be a thousand mundane reasons for why now.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Or it could be that they announced an entirely new
| leadership team last week:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-
| growt...
|
| And their "aquisition" of an adtech company last year,
| and their rollout of its data collection into the
| browser: https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-ppa-ad/
|
| And the US DoJ ruling last year that Google had an
| illegal monopoly on web search, and one of the mooted
| remedies was to bar Google paying to be the default
| search engine in other browsers... and about 90% of
| Mozilla's income is Google paying to be the default
| search engine.
|
| But sure, "why now", maybe someone reported a typo or
| something.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| And while they were doing this privacy policy review they
| also just happened to delete their promise not to sell
| your data?
|
| >Mozilla has just deleted the following: "Does Firefox
| sell your personal data?"
|
| "Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from
| many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are
| designed to protect your privacy. That's a promise. " htt
| ps://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b
| ...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203096
|
| Yeah, could be a mundane reason for that too....
|
| Edit add: My sibling list some other things that just so
| happened to be going on...
| gloflo wrote:
| That's ridiculous though. Performing a search is taking
| text I entered, concatenating it to a URL and opening that.
|
| Nowhere in that process does Mozilla need to know about
| what is happening in the local browser of the user.
|
| By that logic, and with some hyperbole, a text editor would
| need a license from the user to be able to turn their
| keystrokes into visible text display.
|
| It smells really bad of privacy violation, data hoarding,
| targeted psychological manipulation (also known as
| advertisements), and behaviour analysis. That is why people
| are reacting so furiously.
| addicted wrote:
| > That's ridiculous though. Performing a search is taking
| text I entered, concatenating it to a URL and opening
| that. Nowhere in that process does Mozilla need to know
| about what is happening in the local browser of the user.
|
| Every browser I've used in the past decade does "search
| as you type" by default. That does require local access
| to your browser and your key strokes.
|
| Normal people wouldn't use a browser that didn't do
| search as you type.
| 0x0203 wrote:
| But at no point does any of what you type need to be sent
| to Mozilla. That only needs to be between the browser and
| the configured search engine and nothing in between.
| stevage wrote:
| It's sort of weird that by that argument Chrome is ok,
| because Google owns both the search engine and the
| browser.
| hnben wrote:
| GP does not imply, that it would be ok for chrome to send
| all non-google search-queries to google as well.
| hnben wrote:
| > We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic
| functionality of Firefox possible
|
| wow, that's scary.
|
| So either a) the current license doesn't allow some current
| basic functionality or b) the basic functionality of
| firefox is about to change
|
| I can't imagine how a) can be true. So b) must be true and
| quote implies, that firefox's basic functionality is about
| to change. And I do not see how it can change for the
| better regarding the context of the quote.
| tored wrote:
| Can I backup my container configuration to a json file on
| disk or do I still need to sync it to the cloud to save it?
| moralestapia wrote:
| Firefox has been trash for the past 10 years, let alone the
| Mozilla Foundation. There are some idealistic people that still
| vouch for them, they're only making a fool of themselves, lol.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| You are so right! I'm deleting Firefox right now and
| installing Chrome. I don't want anyone selling my data! /s
| moralestapia wrote:
| Brave is the good one these days.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| For crypto bros and those that excuse Brendan Eich
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| > crypto
|
| One-time disable and completely not intrusive. No popups.
| Nothing. It's the equivalent of firefox's suggested sites
| on the homepage when you install it that you have to turn
| off. Do you hold that to the same standard?
|
| > Brendain Eich
|
| Art, artist, etc
| grumbel wrote:
| It's not even a "one-time disable", it's off by default
| until you enable it and the icon in the URL takes two
| clicks to hide.
|
| And more generally, lack of easy payment is at the root
| of so many problems with the modern Internet, that I
| really can't blame Brave for trying this, quite the
| opposite, that's exactly the kind of feature we need.
| sph wrote:
| I don't have a rabid hateboner like most of HN for Brave,
| but I refuse to help Google/Blink expand their monopoly
| on the web so I'll continue to put up with Mozilla and
| their silliness until a decent enough competitor appears.
|
| Which is unfortunate because WebKit is terrible outside
| of macOS, so every single alternative browser is built on
| Blink and thus indirectly giving more power to Google.
| The web is too important to accept a monoculture, and it
| saddens me to see that most of my peers have no moral
| fibre to resist against it.
|
| As much as I dislike Apple, thank god they have a billion
| devices out there with an alternative engine, though they
| still happily take the bribe to force Google down your
| throat.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Brave is not, and has never been, the good one.
| Zetaphor wrote:
| Firefox is the lesser of the evils. I hate what Mozilla is
| doing, but I also don't want to cede control of the web to
| Google. Vote with your feet. I'm hopeful for Ladybirds
| future.
| basilgohar wrote:
| You know what the really sad part about this is? If we switch
| to an alternative browser, fingerprinting makes us even more
| easily tracked. It's lose-lose nowadays. We need political
| changes to make selling off our private data no longer
| profitable.
| mizzao wrote:
| For those of us that missed the memo -- what is happening with
| Firefox at a macro level, aside from that commit message you
| linked?
| N19PEDL2 wrote:
| I think it's related to this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065
| kleiba wrote:
| HNers, become part of this! Put your skills where your mouth is
| and start contributing code, tests, bug reports, etc.
|
| Get involved: https://ladybird.org/#gi
| liendolucas wrote:
| I truly can't understand. We live in world where you can
| potentially make business in so many ways, even if Mozilla
| asked me for some money to continue as a good faith browser I
| don't mind to pay for it. But for god's sake, can't a single
| human being come up with a business model that *IS NOT* related
| to our fucking private data?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| It's a lot easier to sell user data than to ask users for
| money.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Because given any business model not related to your fucking
| private data, they can also make _more_ money by also mining
| your fucking private data.
| n4r9 wrote:
| They make more money _and_ 99% of users don 't care enough
| to switch.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Why would I use this browser instead of, say, chromium?
| HappyJoy wrote:
| I'm interested because it isn't chromium
| dkga wrote:
| Not an expert, but as a veteran of the Browser Wars, I'm
| curious as to why?
| ratg13 wrote:
| Because when there is a monopoly, you are at the whims of
| the people that control it.
| johnklos wrote:
| Google is evil, and Chromium has too many Google-isms.
| Also, monocultures are bad.
| bitpush wrote:
| Let me guess, you wrote this on an Apple device where ..
| checks notes.. every browser is webkit.
|
| Monoculture is bad. smh
| p_ing wrote:
| macOS can run any engine. iOS cannot.
| bawolff wrote:
| The target audience is presumably people who dont like
| chromium, so the question kind of self-answers.
| dilDDoS wrote:
| Maybe I'm overlooking it, but is there any mention of how browser
| extensions will (or won't) work? I imagine I'm not alone in
| needing a password manager and ad blocking extensions for any
| browser I use. Either way, looking forward to seeing how this
| develops!
| TingPing wrote:
| I don't think they are thinking of that yet, the UI is
| barebones, they are working on the web engine mostly.
| anta40 wrote:
| I'll keep my eyes on this.
|
| Considering now most browsers are either Chromium (including
| Opera and Edge) or Firefox-based, a new alternative built from
| scratch will be interesting.
| bix6 wrote:
| I'm very excited but how will this survive without some sort of
| monetization?
|
| In the old thread I see the non-profit was seeded with $1M.
| That's 5 good US developers for 1 year. What next?
| MrLeap wrote:
| Andreas Kling is pouring his attention into this. He's a grit
| elemental. I believe he will accomplish this no matter how many
| people tell him it's a doomed effort, impossible, whatever.
| What happens in the longer term depends on if enough people
| value what he and his team does.
|
| Looking at what FF has recently decided about selling out its
| users, I think demand will catalyze.
| bix6 wrote:
| I love that term "grit elemental"! Hopefully Chris will
| continue to support the project. Fun rabbit hole learning
| about all this.
| ratg13 wrote:
| It says on the website they aim to always maintain 18 months of
| runway.. so basically scaling up and down as needed.
|
| They get sponsors through enthusiasm, which is the way it
| should be for a project like this.
|
| After reading their website, I know that I am going to request
| my company to donate, so there's at least one more
| contribution.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Why does it need to be accomplished without monetization?
|
| I'd gladly pay for a good browser, that respects my privacy.
| Quite frankly we all need to start opening our pockets for
| this; the idea that big companies will benevolently supply
| stuff like this to us for free without trying to spy on us is
| naive.
| fragmede wrote:
| I think it's more that without monetization, how will the
| project continue to exist?
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I think the term monetisation is being used in a broad,
| VC/corporate investment/selling services etc sense.
| Donations or paying for the browser also takes care of
| money.
| iamsaitam wrote:
| Perhaps, instead they can get 5 good developers from elsewhere
| for a decade /s
| WillAdams wrote:
| To anyone on the fence about this --- try it, it's fast.
| somethingor wrote:
| Fast is the last adjective I'd use to describe Ladybird in its
| current state
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Ladybird is lucky in that it has someone who knows how important
| marketing is, even for opensource projects. There are other
| opensource browser engine projects languishing because of lack of
| PR, patronage and / or volunteers. For e.g. NetSurf
| https://www.netsurf-browser.org/ - website is outdated because of
| lack of volunteers but the project has active development -
| https://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/ (already has
| partial support for CSS3, and Flex layout). It can develop into a
| great alternative if it had some more volunteers. Servo
| (https://servo.org/) is another project but it has some decent PR
| because of its Rust codebase and the Rust PR team. There's the
| Goanna browser engine too ( http://www.palemoon.org/ ) but, like
| Mozilla Gecko, the project isn't truly modular to offer a stand-
| alone browser engine as Goanna also strives to be an XUL
| renderer.
| your_challenger wrote:
| Learning to market yourself and your projects is so important!
| I wish I had the skills.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| Also, I really, REALLY wish the devs don't surrender to user's
| pressure for the plethora of features offered by the commercial
| products, done ASAP.
|
| Please maintain the tinkering, passion and devs-first codebase
| it has now, and don't end up as a huge mess just because users
| want things like VDPAU asap.
|
| I don't mind waiting a few more years. For the "just works"
| part of my life, I already have chromium+Firefox
| pizlonator wrote:
| I think that Ladybird's success has more to do with the fact
| that kling is one of the few people who knows how to write the
| whole browser than with marketing. But yeah, kling is also a
| great communicator.
| culi wrote:
| Thanks I forgot about NetSurf. After Microsoft abandoning Blink
| and Opera abandoning Presto to use Chromium, the internet needs
| these alternatives more than ether
|
| Is Palemoon the most popular Goanna-based browser?
| ThePinion wrote:
| Quick clarification: Microsoft abandoned Trident for
| Blink/Chromium.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Microsoft abandoned Spartan (the original MS Edge rewrite)
| for Blink, Trident was just phased out and left to die.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| heck yeah!!
| shmerl wrote:
| What's the motivation instead of let's say developing Servo?
| your_challenger wrote:
| More the merrier
| evo_9 wrote:
| How are Arc and / or Brave not truly independent? I'd really like
| to know, TY.
| fragmede wrote:
| Arc is VC funded, and Brave has Brandon Eich's fingerprints all
| over it (and he sometimes posts here) so we would have to first
| start by defining what we want independent to mean here, first.
| aorth wrote:
| I would say Brave is not independent because it uses
| Chromium.
| jakereps wrote:
| Did the title change since you asked, or what is claiming that
| they aren't? I don't see anything on the title, the README, or
| the website making the claim you want defended. It just says
| "a" truly independent web browser, that doesn't seemingly claim
| exclusivity to that status.
| asadotzler wrote:
| If it uses Chromium, it's hardly independent.
| digitalPhonix wrote:
| They both use chromium so they're not independent of some
| technology decisions made by Google.
|
| Whether that level of independence is important is up to you I
| guess?
| your_challenger wrote:
| I have to build it to use it? I am both annoyed and excited at
| the same time.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| Looking forward to the alpha release. Can't / shouldn't this be
| financed by the users in the end to be fully independent? Like
| Orion or Kagi.
| goplayoutside wrote:
| Ladybird became an official non-profit[0] last year. There's
| also a Donorbox link in the upper-right corner of
| ladybird.org[1].
|
| 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791 1.
| https://ladybird.org/
| mastazi wrote:
| I hope as many people as possible will consider donating. The
| donation link is in the linked page but I'm going to copy it here
| for convenience https://donorbox.org/ladybird
| goplayoutside wrote:
| Ladybird is a BSD-2[0] project from Andreas Kling, the same
| person behind SerenityOS.
|
| awesomekling does monthly progress recaps, January's[1] shows LB
| as the fourth most standards compliant browser, just behind
| Safari. For example, GMail, Google Calendar, and Figma all fully
| load now, though usability is not at 100% yet.
|
| The updates also have video versions[2], which include demos of
| Ladybird's rendering.
|
| Last year, Ladybird became an official non-profit[3] and received
| a $1mm donation from Chris Wanstrath (a Github founder). There's
| an optional Donorbox link in the upper-righthand corner of
| ladybird.org[4].
|
| 0.
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/LICE...
|
| 1. https://buttondown.com/ladybird/archive/this-month-in-
| ladybi...
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l8epGysffQ
|
| 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791
|
| 4. https://ladybird.org/
| matsz wrote:
| > Andreas Kling, the same person behind SerenityOS
|
| Important context - Andreas isn't involved with SerenityOS much
| anymore. He decided to prioritize Ladybird, which is arguably
| the more important project here.
|
| Also, he used to contribute to WebKit. Even ended up working at
| Apple for a period of time. Quite definitely the right person
| in the right place.
| hnfong wrote:
| More context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40560768
| qingcharles wrote:
| I can highly recommend Andreas' YouTube updates if you're
| remotely interested in browser dev. Really fun.
| biohazard2 wrote:
| Yes, they were fascinating! I truly miss them.
| arunc wrote:
| If the goal is to create a truly privacy respecting, safe browser
| that's focused on the web, why not write it in Rust?
|
| Genuinely asking as I've tracked numerous CVEs in Chrome and
| Firefox. Also I don't have much experience with Rust, so I don't
| represent the RIIR community!
| inetknght wrote:
| Your question is already asked and answered on the Ladybird.org
| website [0]?
|
| [0]: https://ladybird.org/
|
| > _Why build a new browser in C++ when safer and more modern
| languages are available?_
|
| > Ladybird started as a component of the SerenityOS hobby
| project, which only allows C++. The choice of language was not
| so much a technical decision, but more one of personal
| convenience. Andreas was most comfortable with C++ when
| creating SerenityOS, and now we have almost half a million
| lines of modern C++ to maintain.
|
| > However, now that Ladybird has forked and become its own
| independent project, all constraints previously imposed by
| SerenityOS are no longer in effect.
|
| > We have evaluated a number of alternatives, and will begin
| incremental adoption of Swift as a successor language, once
| Swift version 6 is released. (More background.)
| miere43 wrote:
| They were thinking about writing the browser in a more memory-
| safe language, and it looks like they are leaning toward Swift
| rather than Rust.
| https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031
| robenkleene wrote:
| You've gotten a couple of other answers, here already. I'll
| just add that unfortunately I don't have link but there's a
| podcast interview with Andreas out there where they go into
| more detail about this. He said that they tried write some
| features in Rust and the development team just didn't like
| working in the language, I think the overall reason was that
| object-orientated programming was not a first-class citizen in
| Rust.
|
| One other interesting tidbit is that the development team was
| excited to try Rust, but in practice disliked it, and the
| reverse was true for Swift.
| serviceberry wrote:
| The practical trade-off is that it is very, _very_ difficult to
| secure a modern browser. Major vendors employ large teams of
| full-time security engineers and still ship vulnerable code with
| regularity. Companies such as Brave don 't, but they get the
| benefit of getting many of the Chromium security features for
| free. Ladybird won't.
|
| The thing that works in your favor is that Ladybird is very niche
| at this point, so unless some well-resourced adversary hates you
| specifically, it's unlikely that you'd be targeted.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Obviously there are many types of security vulnerabilities, but
| one thing that should start paying off for Ladybird eventually
| is the move to a memory and race safe language (Swift). Of
| course, that will be a gradual process (they haven't really
| started yet and they will be using the Swift C++ interop so
| there will be C++ parts of the browser for years to come).
|
| They do also benefit from using off-the-shelf libraries like
| Skia, OpenSSL, image libraries etc. that the other browsers are
| using too. Previously they were rolling their own for
| everything but changed after the split from SerenityOS.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Will they, or it will be like Jank, just a kind of side
| endevour without commitment to actually make use of?
|
| It isn't as if Swift developer experience is that great
| outside Apple's ecosystem.
|
| While I would definitly use it when on Apple's ground, I feel
| less inclined to thouch it for anything related to cross
| platform GUIs.
| askonomm wrote:
| I don't think they'd use Swift for GUI building. Ladybird's
| GUI's are platform-dependent (Qt on Linux, AppKit on Mac,
| etc). From what I understand they want to use Swift as a
| replacement for C++.
|
| I haven't done a lot of Swift, but I did play around with
| it recently, and it seems to work fine even outside of the
| Apple ecosystem. It has a LSP you can use so you don't need
| XCode, they even develop a first-class plugin for VSCode.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is very ruff, you cannot rely on random packages to
| actually work cross platform, a bit like .NET Core early
| days.
| iamkonstantin wrote:
| The idea of a future where Swift can be productive on
| non-Apple systems is definitely in place. The reality is
| that it will be several years before the tooling is
| mature enough to consider for time/cost sensitive
| endeavours. That is, if Apple maintains their interest in
| that direction by then.
| ykonstant wrote:
| >It isn't as if Swift developer experience is that great
| outside Apple's ecosystem.
|
| That is indeed a serious problem for aspiring contributors
| to the project.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| > It isn't as if Swift developer experience is that great
| outside Apple's ecosystem.
|
| I keep hearing this - and have for years - but is it
| actually still true? Sure, you're never going to get Cocoa
| on non-Apple platforms, but with first-party VS Code
| support and a lot of the surrounding tooling open-sourced,
| is it all still [~that much worse than XCode~] as bad as
| all that?
| rixed wrote:
| Major vendors also employ teams of engineers to steal your
| data, identify and locate you, so it cuts both ways, depending
| on your threat model.
| mannyv wrote:
| Well, it's hard to say because every browser engine is old.
| There are layers upon layers of code in every engine. And the
| old stuff wasn't really designed with security in mind.
| igrunert wrote:
| Ladybird does have another slight advantage in that it only has
| an interpreter for JS and wasm, instead of maintaining multiple
| tiers of JIT compilation for both. That choice materially
| reduces the surface area for exploits.
| northisup wrote:
| I always read it as |[?]?... because its help
| 38 wrote:
| Need native windows version, not WSL
| thatxliner wrote:
| Put this back on HN when you can download it and try it out (like
| Servo).
| ABS wrote:
| you can do that today, I've been downloading and trying this
| out since before it was spun off SerenityOS
|
| HN is (supposed to be) a technical community so pulling the
| code and building it is no problem
| ykonstant wrote:
| No, this post is perfectly fine where it is: a dev forum full
| of people who may be interested in the source code and
| contributing to this ongoing project.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41208836 - Aug 2024 (192
| comments)
|
| _This Month in Ladybird: July 2024_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123449 - July 2024 (14
| comments)
|
| _Tell HN: When Firefox jumps the shark, the call to action is
| Ladybird_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40975596 - July
| 2024 (47 comments)
|
| _I 'm funding Ladybird because I can't fund Firefox_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40900648 - July 2024 (234
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird web browser funded by GitHub co-founder, promises 'no
| code' from rivals_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40870366 - July 2024 (20
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub
| Founder_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791 - July
| 2024 (744 comments)
|
| _Welcome to Ladybird_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40845951 - July 2024 (95
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird browser update (June 2024) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40838973 - June 2024 (1
| comment)
|
| _Ladybird browser spreads its wings_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746804 - June 2024 (304
| comments)
|
| _I 'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40560768 - June 2024 (262
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird browser update (March 2024) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39889576 - April 2024 (2
| comments)
|
| _Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer - The Case of the
| Ladybird Browser_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39342887
| - Feb 2024 (55 comments)
|
| _The Ladybird browser project_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39271449 - Feb 2024 (284
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird browser update (July 2023) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36939402 - July 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Chat with Andreas Kling about Ladybird and developing a browser
| engine_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 - July
| 2023 (65 comments)
|
| _Shopify Sponsored Ladybird Browser_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36502583 - June 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _I have received a $100k sponsorship for Ladybird browser_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377805 - June 2023 (166
| comments)
|
| _Early stages of Google Docs support in the Ladybird browser_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33511831 - Nov 2022 (84
| comments)
|
| _Github.com on Ladybird, new browser with JavaScript /CSS/SVG
| engines from scratch_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273785 - Oct 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Ladybird: A new cross-platform browser project_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126 - Sept 2022 (473
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird: A truly new Web Browser comes to Linux_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014061 - July 2022 (8
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird Web Browser_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31987506 - July 2022 (2
| comments)
|
| _Ladybird Web Browser - SerenityOS LibWeb Engine on Linux_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31976579 - July 2022 (2
| comments)
| zombot wrote:
| This posting has fortuitous timing, as of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065
| h4ny wrote:
| I don't understanding how post ranking works. At the time of
| writing the ChatGPT announcement has the following stats:
|
| - 833 points | 10 hours ago | 652 comments | 2nd
|
| And this post the following:
|
| - 432 points 5 hours ago | 155 comments | 6th
|
| Also interesting is that the EA CoC post has the following stats:
|
| - 828 points | 12 hours ago | 222 comments | 13th
|
| Subjective opinion: the comments here are mostly positive, the
| comments over there is a bit of a mix. I _feel_ that it's not
| quite justified as with many recent posts.
|
| The rule I have read a lot recently says if a post gets a lot of
| comments relative to opints then it can get flagged/deranked. Is
| it the number of parent comments/replies as well, does it depend
| on the author and commenter's points, the rate at which points
| and comments occur, etc.?
| consumer451 wrote:
| A lot could be said about this. Mostly there are algorithmic
| factors, and in some cases there are human fingers on the
| scales.
|
| > I don't understanding how post ranking works.
|
| The system is working as intended.
|
| Also, one of the rules of HN club: don't talk about the rules
| of HN club.
| ThatGuyRaion wrote:
| I wish I could get excited, but several design choices and
| aspects of the status quo we are facing have me worried:
|
| It's already a basically bleeding edge C++. Why is it so much to
| ask for developers to use a more mature and established iteration
| so I don't need a brand new compiler?
|
| What role is it gonna actually fill? It's not efficient enough to
| penetrate into the niche of Dillo or Netsurf. It's nowhere near
| as up to date on standards as Webkit, Goanna, Blink and Servo
| engines.
|
| The swift move means LLVM-only. Yay. \s
|
| What is supposed to sell this to normal users? Brave may be
| controversial, but its messaging is on point. Pale moon purging
| Mr. Tobin basically solved 99% of their brand issues. Vivaldi is
| what Opera used to be.
|
| Google's dominance through Chromium/Chrome appears commanding.
| Between Pale Moon getting censored from Cloudflare sites, to
| Firefox becoming a controlled opposition, to Microsoft JOINING
| THEM. I'm sorry, but I have trouble being optimistic.
|
| That said, I begrudgingly am ok with it. I wish they did things
| different.
| timschumi wrote:
| > It's already a basically bleeding edge C++. Why is it so much
| to ask for developers to use a more mature and established
| iteration so I don't need a brand new compiler?
|
| Because C++ got better and better in recent versions?
|
| You are essentially asking to forego large amounts of
| improvements that allow for writing more maintainable code,
| just because you are too lazy to install a compiler that has
| been released 1 year and 10 months ago (in the case of GCC 13)
| or 1 year and 5 months (in the case of Clang 17).
| fifticon wrote:
| I will add to the hundreds of comments.. Whatever happened to the
| thin waist of the wasp, in interfaces.. So, we design a system,
| for showing and interacting with data over networks. When we
| start with this, the outset is defining say a character set of
| 12-20-26 alphabet letters. Already with that, you could exchange
| information; at least the greeks could. We also managed to design
| the gopher protocol, the early world wide web protocol, telnet,
| and (god forbid) X-Windows. Early www already had some
| complications: Support for images, and form controls. A lot of
| these things were possible to do, even on a commodore 64.
|
| But still, take a look at the monstrosities we have built since,
| presumably to serve the same purpose.. It now takes an effort
| apparently bigger than that required to land a controlled drone
| on the moon, to deliver a working/full WEB BROWSER..? An
| application supposedly intended to allow you to browse pages of
| mixed text and images, require approximately --two-- (nah, one?)
| full virtual OS environments to function, a turing-complete sub-
| language, and is more complicated to build than the OS's that
| host it..
|
| I often wonder if all that was really necessary. It looks to me
| like we have made the 'interface' the most complex part of it
| all, leading to almost everybody just piggy-backing on the chrome
| investment (or what one chooses to call it.. It is an MS-like
| market control mechanism is what it is).
| voshond wrote:
| Because browsers don't just browse these days, they do all the
| heavy lifting and not just for the nerds like us, but actually
| make it accessible to the normies. They do all the compliance
| work to all the standards too. There is no standards of sending
| something to space yet.
|
| I do so much in my browser these days, things I had to have 15
| applications for back in the ie days.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| You still have 15 applications, it's just that now they
| appear as tabs in your browser - which is actually a virtual
| machine in disguise.
|
| I see the news in the front page of HN: Edge, Firefox,
| Ladybird. The problems with privacy, funding, etc. will
| remain as long as one refuses to do an "AT&T" on the Web,
| that is delegate the non-essential browser functions (text,
| image display) to other applications (e.g. VLC for video,
| audio).
|
| With a strong emphasis on banning remote code execution (JS),
| the father of all evils.
|
| It may be convenient to call a coworker from Teams in your
| browser, but it is not a sane way to do it because we end up
| to where we are now: browser oligopoly. Convenience can be a
| trap; scammers and phishing use it all the time by including
| "direct" links. People are told again and again to know
| better and use their bookmarks instead.
| Groxx wrote:
| The kind of flexible dynamic delegation that'd need
| (outside extremely simplistic uses) really doesn't exist in
| any OS that I've seen. And it would have to be quite
| sophisticated, to resist abuses and ensure latency is as
| low as it needs to be. I'm not sure we'd be in any better
| place if that happened - browsers would be simpler, but
| OSes and those media players/plugin-able things would gain
| significantly more complexity to offset it.
|
| If your goal is to get rid of all the fancy stuff, then
| yeah - gopher still exists, all UX can be thrown out the
| window, it all exists today. But I don't think that'll go
| anywhere, except in extreme niches.
| katzenversteher wrote:
| Well said, I feel the same. While I never used gopher I still
| remember e.g. the usenet vs. web forums. I mean being able to
| add images and stuff like that to discussions was helpful in
| many cases, I prefer the user experience of the usenet.
| whutsurnaym wrote:
| It's one thing to make a rocket to take a human being to space.
|
| It's another thing entirely to make a "rocket" that will take a
| human being to space, or to school, or to work, or to the mall,
| or to the bank, or to church on sundays. And also it functions
| as a TV, a telephone, a radio, an encyclopedia, a games
| console, or anything else one can imagine. And then you wrap
| that up in a user interface that my grandmother can use without
| a NASA astronaut's level of training (YMMV).
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| And also backwards compatible forever and platform agnostic
| amelius wrote:
| And it serves more cookies than my grandmother.
| amelius wrote:
| The web specifications should have been written in Haskell with
| a test suite. From there, it should be just a matter of
| optimization. Still a big task, but completely doable in a
| package by package basis.
| danjl wrote:
| If you just want to display pages of mixed text and images, it
| would be much easier. However, browsers are closer operating
| systems, capable of supporting rich desktop apps, without the
| antiquated desktop APIs. Browsers have more sophisticated
| security than desktop systems, and provide direct access to
| hardware resources like cameras, microphones and GPUs. In fact,
| webGPU would probably be considered a much better interface for
| GPUs than the desktop APIs like DirectX, WebGL, though maybe
| Vulkan is just as good. Browsers are also forming the basis for
| WASM development, though there are other deployment platforms,
| browsers are the biggest.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > An application supposedly intended to allow you to browse
| pages of mixed text and images
|
| This has not been the intended scope of the World Wide Web for
| well over 20 years, so this is not a reasonable supposition to
| make.
|
| Of course, you are free to make claims about what the intent of
| the World Wide Web _ought_ to be.
| applestone wrote:
| Just compiled, seems to be able to render websites ok, youtube
| loads, but pretty slow. Might be out of the scope of the project
| (atleast at current funding levels) however it would be cool if
| it had it's own search engine.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Where is the connection? A browser is a software that accesses
| and renders the output of services. A search engine is a web
| service. Totally unrelated. That is like saying it would be
| cool if they had their own ice cream truck...
| warkdarrior wrote:
| I'd pay for a browser that came with its own ice cream truck.
| Don't care for a browser with a search engine.
| torginus wrote:
| Curious - how well does this support the 'long-tail' features?
| What I mean by that are stuff that relatively few websites use,
| but requires a large amount of code to support? Things like
| WebCodecs, WebRTC, WebUSB etc.
|
| Does this have a CanIUse equivalent?
| askonomm wrote:
| It's fairly easy to compile and give it a spin to try stuff
| out. It'll log to terminal everything it does/doesn't do,
| including things it does not support. You can also then go to
| https://html5test.co/ to see a bunch of stuff with relative
| ease.
| samiv wrote:
| I applaud the effort but seriously though I just wonder...
|
| For reference, Chromimum (and therefore Chrome) is a monster of a
| project and has at this point probably over 10 million lines of
| code and has taken +20 years to develop with thousands of
| developers involved.
|
| I can only conclude that: a) the modern WEB is
| so complicated that this is the minimum required level of
| complexity to run and render modern WEB safely b)
| chromium is extravagantly over engineered and the actual amount
| of complexity and code needed to run and render modern WEB is
| actually much less c) Ladybird is actually not
| targeting the same features but some "suitable" subset of
| features.
|
| If the answer is A) how does the small team working on Ladybird
| think they can actually pull this off? Are they all 10000x
| developers?
|
| Or maybe the answer really is C thus making this a _toy /hobby_
| project?
|
| One could of course then hope that the answer is b) but somehow I
| don't feel like it is.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| The answer is probably some combination of all 3. The modern
| web is indeed insanely complicated, Chromium is a massive
| enterprise project with all the resulting inefficiencies one
| would expect, and a competing web browser should likely aim to
| support the 90% use-case and ignore a large fraction of the
| total complexity in the process.
| jcelerier wrote:
| Note that chrome's codebase loc count contains some huge third-
| party libraries such as ffmpeg - pretty sure a lot of it is
| unused.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Chromium also includes things like a complete PDF renderer,
| etc.
|
| I used to work a bit in that codebase, but I don't recall the
| core "blink" renderer portion being at all the largest part
| of the codebase.
| gawa wrote:
| Regarding A, I found this blogpost from 2020 interesting to get
| some sense of scale :
| https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope....
|
| As for C, the "suitable" subset really depends what we expect
| from a browser. In my experience, I was forced to use a Chrome
| based browser only for work, because mostly for google web apps
| (Google Cloud and Google Meet come to mind). For browsing the
| small web, I'm sure smaller browsers can work well. I tried
| some, but was usually put off because of the lack of
| adblockers, and I also quickly miss the element picker zapper
| feature of the ublock origin extension.
| culi wrote:
| A ton of that code is web APIs that, although standardized and
| accepted, are not really what most would consider critical to a
| browser. Stuff like Speech Synthesis API[0] or Device Motion[1]
| might be important to a PWA but are rarely relevant to the web
| in general
|
| [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynth...
|
| [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/DeviceMotio...
| igrunert wrote:
| While the modern web is complicated, there's a few things
| working in Ladybird's favor.
|
| Web Platform Tests (1) make it significantly easier to test
| your compliance with W3C standards. You don't have to reverse
| engineer what other engines are doing all the time.
|
| The standards documents themselves have improved over time, and
| are relatively comprehensive at this point. Again, you don't
| have to reverse engineer what other engines are doing, the spec
| is relatively comprehensive.
|
| Ladybird has chosen to not add a JIT compiler for JS and Wasm,
| reducing complexity on the JS engine. They're already reached
| (or exceeded) other JS engines on the ECMAScript Test Suite
| Test262 (2).
|
| There's a big differential between the level of investment in
| Chromium and the other engines - in part because Chrome /
| Chromium are often doing R&D to build out new specifications,
| which is more work than implementing a completed specification.
| There's also a large amount of work that goes into security for
| all three major engines - which (for now) is less of a concern
| for Ladybird.
|
| I'm confident that the Ladybird team will hit their goal of
| Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version on Linux and macOS.
| They'll cut a release with whatever they have at that point -
| it's already able to render a large swathe of the modern web,
| and continues to improve month-on-month.
|
| (1) https://web-platform-tests.org/ (2) https://test262.fyi/
| sho_hn wrote:
| The Chromium codebase also implements requirements that you
| may not need to take on for just a web browser, e.g. all of
| the infrastructure to make it ChromeOS, including for example
| being a Wayland compositor and a lot of other stuff. The
| projects are somewhat apples to oranges.
| eikenberry wrote:
| All of the above?
|
| a) the modern WEB is stupidly complicated, it jumped the shark
| a while back b) enterprise development practices make this an
| almost certainty (though I haven't studied the code) c) it is
| targeting a subset, but this has 0 to do with it being a toy or
| not
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| I keep longing for a day when FOSS crowd realize that their goals
| are political, not technical, in nature, and thus require broad
| political action, numbers, solidarity and force more than yet
| another project promising what previous dozen failed to achieve.
|
| But I do not have much hope.
| pjmlp wrote:
| GPL is all about politics, that is Richard Stallman's
| background regarding his world view and how it applies to
| computing.
|
| All other FOSS licenses are only a rebranding of Public Domain
| and Shareware variants that we used to have, with the
| respective commercial value when used as carrot for commercial
| products.
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| Yes, Stallman and his generation was more aware of this
| reality, yet we are losing it. It is similar across all
| dimensions of the society, where younger folk take for
| granted what was gained only after long struggle, as a result
| losing it, bit by bit.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > GPL is all about politics
|
| People use this excuse to make open source software about
| politics that has nothing to do with software, ownership etc.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is no excuse, it is literally Richard Stallman's view on
| the four user freedoms, how to enforce them legally, and
| naturally all of those that agree with his point of view.
|
| Note that all the hobby stuff I have on Github created by
| myself, unless forced by existing licenses, are GPL based.
|
| Even though I am not into FOSS politics, I once were, that
| time is long gone.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My take is that 15 years of booming software market and
| endless high paying jobs made people indifferent to the
| way open source software was/is being exploited by tech
| as a form of unpaid labour, because a) having an open
| source portfolio ended up being a kind of resume or
| bragging card that help get you a high paying job and b)
| the money being spread around was big enough that people
| didn't really care anyways. Nobody was starving.
|
| I think it's shifting. I think we'll see a return to
| copyleft licenses as people realize the stuff they're
| writing that is actually valuable is just a couple
| commits away from being some new AWS component they _will
| get no compensation_ for, and that starts to matter a lot
| more.
|
| 20-25-30 years ago we were a lot more aware of this
| stuff. There's a reason the Linux kernel is GPL.
|
| If corporate entities want your stuff bad enough, they
| can negotiate a separate license.
| ragnese wrote:
| Look into where the term "open source" came from (the "Open
| Source Initiative").
|
| Here's a quote from Wikipedia
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source):
|
| > Open source as a term emerged in the late 1990s by a
| group of people in the free software movement who were
| critical of the political agenda and moral philosophy
| implied in the term "free software" and sought to reframe
| the discourse to reflect a more commercially minded
| position.
|
| The GPL and Free Software were _always_ political from the
| very moment Richard Stallman conceived of the GPL.
| grumbel wrote:
| The problem with FOSS isn't a lack of politics (they have
| plenty of that), but tunnel vision focus on software, when
| everything that is going wrong with the modern Internet is
| based around data (who stores it, who controls it, who can
| access it, who pays for it, ...).
|
| One would expect something like the similar to the GDPR to grow
| out of the FOSS movement, but it didn't. The FOSS movement
| still has nothing similar on offer. Handling of data remains a
| complete blind spot for the movement.
| moi2388 wrote:
| That's a very good point!
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| "The problem with FOSS isn't a lack of politics (they have
| plenty of that)"
|
| The point of politics is to shape society through, well,
| policies. Considering your point on "tunnel vision focus" I
| think we agree, it is just that I use the term "politics" in
| broader, and older, sense.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The FOSS crowd doesn't have a unified goal. Some would love to
| outlaw tracking in browsers, thinking they then can have Chrome
| without tracking. Some would disagree, and think that tracking
| is what enables Chrome to be as good as it is.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I just wish this was GPL (or any other copyleft licence). With
| everything that's happened over the past decade I would have
| thought it was obvious. If you contribute to permissively
| licenced software you are working for corporations for free. If
| you contribute to a copyleft project you are working for the
| community. I just don't want to see history repeat itself. If
| this ever gets good enough it will be eaten by big tech just like
| everything else. Copyleft is what we need. Stallman was right.
| nonelog wrote:
| How is it financed?
| roxolotl wrote:
| Nonprofit[0] supported by sponsors[1]
|
| 0: https://ladybird.org/posts/announcement/ 1:
| https://ladybird.org/#sponsors
| sylware wrote:
| Sad, still dependent on the same horrible c++ (or similar). It
| would have been more appropriate with using a lean C99+ dialect
| which you can compile with small C compiler alternatives (that is
| impossible to do with c++ and similar due to abysmal syntax
| complexity).
|
| There is no independence at being dependent on the same ultra
| complex SDK.
| TinkersW wrote:
| I scanned through it, and it is actually pretty easy to read
| C++. Though they could use to learn what comments are.
| sylware wrote:
| You missed the point: c++ _is_ the issue (and usually similar
| language).
| pkphilip wrote:
| Is there any possibility of getting pre-built binaries? If these
| can be released as nightlies or at least from time to time it
| will really help with the adoption.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Adoption is not wanted yet. This is pre-alpha stage software
| that is not ready for end users
| glitcher wrote:
| Good timing with these other HN entries on the front page:
|
| Mozilla deletes promise to never sell Firefox data
|
| Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions
| in Edge
|
| Looks like it will be an alternate browser kinda day in the top
| stories...
| warkdarrior wrote:
| It does not seem like Ladybird supports uBlock Origin, at least
| I cannot find any references. Does it?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| the browser is in pre-alpha, so it's not that it doesn't
| support it, it's that the groundwork hasn't been laid yet.
|
| Give it time
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| aka "no, it doesn't support it yet"
| exabrial wrote:
| Can we have a "Disable Javascript" in the developer menu, pretty
| pretty please? Safari had this and some ding dong took it away.
| butlike wrote:
| everyone using a lissajous curve for their logos nowadays; who's
| going to be the first to sue everyone else?
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