Changing how we develop Ladybird • Hacker News Board

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#91

Post by leoc » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:33 AM UTC

merelydev wrote: post #47

Opensource doesn't mean open to contributions. The source code is available, you can fork it and apply your patches there. This is the way to go to reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and to reduce time of mainters reviewing LLM slop.

> Opensource doesn't mean open to contributions.

That's not entirely true. It's certainly the case that Ladybird is still under an open-source license, but the whole idea of the "Open Source" label was to move the emphasis away from having a free license to actually being open to patches in practice.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#92

Post by lukaslalinsky » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:36 AM UTC

I wonder how can a new browser engine survive with the source available model. Like, why would anyone support this, unless they have business association with the Ladybird developers?

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#93

Post by boneskull » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:37 AM UTC

I don’t understand how you’re supposed to cultivate new maintainers if you shut down contribution.

Is this a sponsored project where maintainers are just hired?

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#94

Post by javawizard » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:39 AM UTC

cpcallen wrote: post #42

On the one hand, if you grew up in the baazzar, moving to the cathedral might feel like the "death of open source" even if it is really just a return to an earlier way of working. On the other hand, while not accepting external code contributions will certainly improve their security posture it will also make it more difficult to identify who to invite to join the priesthood.

> it will also make it more difficult to identify who to invite to join the priesthood

The point that this announcement is trying to make is, of course, that AI has already made that particular signal approximately worthless for that purpose.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#95

Post by lukaslalinsky » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:39 AM UTC

sppfly wrote: post #6

Zig is moving to this direction is well.

Indeed, while there is communication that the situation with merging external pull requests should improve, the reality is that it's easier to land a patch in Linux, than in Zig.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#96

Post by bayindirh » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:39 AM UTC

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #92

I wonder how can a new browser engine survive with the source available model. Like, why would anyone support this, unless they have business association with the Ladybird developers?

It's not source available. It's OpenSource(TM) because of the BSD-2 license.

This is not unheard of. The most famous models are emacs & SQLite. SQLite doesn't accept outside patches, emacs is developed opaquely and only releases are put forward.

You can do this with GPL, too. You put out tarballs of the releases only.

There's a great misconception between Free Software, Open Source, and Open Development (bazaar model). They complement each other, but they are completely independent things.

Addenda: Looks like emacs' Git repo is publicly accessible now, but it's not a requirement for GPL or Free or Open Source software.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#97

Post by postepowanieadm » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:39 AM UTC

koteelok wrote: post #9

Stuff like this makes me wish AI had never happened. An open-source projects losing the ability to find and mentor new maintainers is so disappointing.

They have rewritten a huge change of their project using llms.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#98

Post by siwatanejo » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:40 AM UTC

troupo wrote: post #84

siwatanejo wrote: post #46

While I understand the motivation for this change, I have to highlight something: GitHub's slogan 'social coding' is becoming more and more true these days. Now opensource will become a thing that only "influential" people can contribute to. We're back to nepotism, not meritocracy. Down hill we go.

> Now opensource will become a thing that only "influential" people can contribute to. No. Having access to a slop generator doesn't entitle you to acceptance to any and all open source projects. You're still responsible for the quality of your contributions. Something that is completely lost on bullshit artists.

Don't put words in my ~mouth~ (keyboard) that I didn't ~say~ (type), I'm not saying I want my contributions to be accepted on equal footing even if they are generated by AI. What I'm saying is that solving this problem this way is going to make opensource much worse. We need a better way, and I'm not sure which is the better way, sorry.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#99

Post by siwatanejo » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:41 AM UTC

splittydev wrote: post #24

Wasn't the entire goal of Ladybird to have an open and independent browser engine? Making it effectively closed to contributions makes it.. Not independent anymore. It's now dependent, on few people who work on it, just like any other closed-source or corporate-controlled browser.

Exactly! It's not opensource anymore: it's fork-or-transparent source.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#100

Post by pelagicAustral » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 9:41 AM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #86

anilakar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you grew up in a junkyard, getting adjusted to the social norms of a bazaar might feel like your way of life is being threatened.

In your analogy, is the junkyard the development model of vibe coding? I look forward to the book: The Cathedral, The Bazaar and The Junkyard.

fwiw I asked Claude to look at GP's post and write me a story titled "The Cathedral, the bazaar and the junkyard" and I have a pretty good time reading his riff.