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Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

blog.cloudflare.com

41–50 of 510 posts

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#41
post #31

This sponsorship is very important for the project. Not for financial reasons, but because it gathered recognition from the company that creates much of the critical infrastructure and bot protection services. Without this recognition, the engine could have been blocked by impassable CAPTCHAs, which for the end user would mean the project is dead at its roots.

Agreed, and definitely a sign something is very wrong with the internet.

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#42
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openly aligning with DHH is certainly a choice. After all being created by DHH is the only feature they list on their website. Didn't care for the DHH controversies for a long time but if you start writing white national blog posts[1] I don't know what to say anymore. [1] https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

[flagged]

It's not really about whether it aligns or not, it's more about whether it's true. What he says about London isn't true, but it is divisive and fearmongering.

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#43
post #19

I’m skeptical. Cloudflare clearly wants to move us to a future where only approved browsers are allowed to access the web. People have been fiercely debating whether that’s a terrible thing, or whether that’s the least bad practical solution on offer for website owners. I don’t want to make a judgement on that, but I don’t think the observation that CF is pushing us in that direction is very controversial. But an ind…

Responding to a dead comment from a banned account:

> The big new game for them is AI crawler metering. Don’t think browser matters much anymore from their perspective.

Truly open browsers are easy to spoof. Approved browsers with whatever attestation features they champion builtin are hard to spoof. So browsers do matter.

Edit: authentication => attestation for accuracy.

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#44
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openly aligning with DHH is certainly a choice. After all being created by DHH is the only feature they list on their website. Didn't care for the DHH controversies for a long time but if you start writing white national blog posts[1] I don't know what to say anymore. [1] https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

[flagged]

Sure they can, but can't I have an opinion and share that with others anymore?

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#45

Cool to see Ladybird get some corporate love. I wish Firefox got more varied sponsoring from multiple sources, too.

The problem with Firefox is that the money has to go through Mozilla, and Mozilla is not spending most of that money on Firefox. You cannot sponsor the development of Firefox directly, so your money ends up being wasted.

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#47

Ladybird is great, but Omarchy is a weird choice. Why can't DHH / Basecamp sponsor David's hobby distro if he wants? The browser ecosystem is dangerously centralized and another independent rendering engine would be welcome. In contrast, I don't see the value in yet another flavor-of-the-week Linux distro. Even sponsoring Arch directly would make more sense here.

I have to say, a single announcement that Cloudflare is sponsoring specifically these two projects does start to look a bit like an attempt to curry favour with the grassroots part of the tech right: give “their guys” some money and praise and maybe they’ll stay off Cloudflare’s back for a bit. And to be clear, that’s not to say that it’s bad to sponsor Ladybird, or maybe even Omarchy.

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#48
post #39
post #31

This sponsorship is very important for the project. Not for financial reasons, but because it gathered recognition from the company that creates much of the critical infrastructure and bot protection services. Without this recognition, the engine could have been blocked by impassable CAPTCHAs, which for the end user would mean the project is dead at its roots.

Maybe one company should not be able to decide which browsers we are allowed to use.

I agree with you. But that’s the reality we have to deal with.

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#49
post #19

I’m skeptical. Cloudflare clearly wants to move us to a future where only approved browsers are allowed to access the web. People have been fiercely debating whether that’s a terrible thing, or whether that’s the least bad practical solution on offer for website owners. I don’t want to make a judgement on that, but I don’t think the observation that CF is pushing us in that direction is very controversial. But an ind…

Cloudflare supporting Ladybird makes sense for the same reasons that Valve invests in Proton. Cloudflare's job is easier if everyone standardizes on a few approved browsers, but right now the three major browser engines are controlled by Google (IIRC most of Mozilla's funding comes from Google) and Apple, just as Valve's Steam is heavily dependent on Microsoft's Windows.

Both companies are basically hedging against future incentive misalignment with other (larger) companies, and reducing their dependencies on platforms they have ~zero influence over.

Re: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

#50

I cannot for the life of me understand the Omarchy hype. The Linux community has been theming their distribution installs for decades. What distinguishes this from that?

>What distinguishes this from that?

More eyes on it, DHH has a big following.

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