Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

t-shaped.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#11

Post by DiggyJohnson »

ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

I'm not sure if longing is the right word, and I think you may be confusing excitement and buzz around Serenity and Ladybird as longing for another free browser, when it is more accurately excitement and curiosity about a technically very impressive project.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#12

Post by DiggyJohnson »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #8
ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

Firefox isn't made, run, or owned by the Mozilla Foundation, though. You're thinking of the Mozilla corporation , which is a for-profit company working on the Firefox product. The Mozilla Foundation is a separate advocacy and campaigning non-profit (which is also why donating to the foundation means your money goes towards advocacy and campaigns, not Firefox)

It's disingenuous to not explain the connection between these organizations. You're making it sound like they both happen to be named "Mozilla", when the reality is much more nuanced and interdependent, but in terms of their current funding and leadership, as well as their history.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#13

Post by NoboruWataya »

ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

I think it's more excitement about the idea that it is possible to write a web browser from scratch, than about this specific browser. This is just one of the most promising implementations of that idea.

I am very much team Firefox and think it is important to protect and promote it as much as possible. But I don't think the attention that people are giving to Ladybird would otherwise be dedicated to Firefox. Maybe when Ladybird gets more functional and stable they might become competitors but not right now.

IMO it is exactly because building a fully featured browser from scratch is considered basically impossible today, that we so desperately need Firefox to succeed.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#14

Post by metaxy2 »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #9
ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

Adding another free browser changes nothing. People don’t choose free browsers because people don’t choose. The owner of the platform chooses (with the notable exception of Windows where Google has spent billions of dollars to advertise it).

Chrome is also very big on macOS even though it's not preinstalled, although yeah, that also has to do with the marketing. It seems hard to find good stats on this but it's definitely in the web developer zeitgeist. On mobile, though, people do pretty much just use whatever comes installed.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#15

Post by fifilura »

He was lucky that the fix was to disable the functionality.

More likely would have been that it was non-compliant but chrome renders it anyway.

And from there starts the work of figuring out how exactly to make it bug-compliant with Chrome.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#16

Post by [deleted] »

jwells89 wrote: post #7
ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

Some of the discontent comes from Firefox not being very interesting compared to other browsers. The various Chrome-clones are doing interesting things like adding toggleable vertical tabs built in (Vivaldi, Edge) or even vertical-only (Arc) and Arc is playing with using native OS widgets for UI across platforms for example. There’s also functionality advantages. All the chrome-clones have better out of the box profi…

[deleted]

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#17

Post by TheRealPomax »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #12
TheRealPomax wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox isn't made, run, or owned by the Mozilla Foundation, though. You're thinking of the Mozilla corporation , which is a for-profit company working on the Firefox product. The Mozilla Foundation is a separate advocacy and campaigning non-profit (which is also why donating to the foundation means your money goes towards advocacy and campaigns, not Firefox)

It's disingenuous to not explain the connection between these organizations. You're making it sound like they both happen to be named "Mozilla", when the reality is much more nuanced and interdependent, but in terms of their current funding and leadership, as well as their history.

No, it's not. Having worked at the foundation for a decade: to the vast majority of folks, the difference that matters is that "one makes Firefox, the other does campaigning/advocacy/outreach".

The history behind why there are two different entities is fascinating, but also doesn't change the fact that they are two completely different companies with completely different org charts and completely different focuses, united under the Mozilla manifesto.

(And even in the tech crowd, far too many people have no idea that there are two different things called Mozilla, and that their donations to the Foundation go to "the things the Foundation does", not Firefox)

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#18

Post by squarefoot »

ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

> However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it.

Having more options in the FOSS world is always a good thing. Firefox unfortunately lost market share because the Mozilla Foundation does absolutely nothing to promote it, and that's not going to change until they find a better source of revenue than Google.

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#19

Post by intelVISA »

ofrzeta wrote: post #3

Related (chat with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620450 However I don't understand why many people are longing for Ladybird as another free browser. There are already some and Firefox is losing marketshare every day. So please do use it. Ok, I guess Mozilla Foundation's running the Firefox project is not to everyones liking, so that would be a valid reason. But n…

It's time to sunset Firefox and usher in The Next Age of libre browsers.

Mozilla has betrayed FOSS for Google monies, at last the chickens come home...

Re: Understanding Complexity Like an Engineer – The Case of the Ladybird Browser

#20

Post by DiggyJohnson »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #17
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disingenuous to not explain the connection between these organizations. You're making it sound like they both happen to be named "Mozilla", when the reality is much more nuanced and interdependent, but in terms of their current funding and leadership, as well as their history.

No, it's not. Having worked at the foundation for a decade: to the vast majority of folks, the difference that matters is that "one makes Firefox, the other does campaigning/advocacy/outreach". The history behind why there are two different entities is fascinating, but also doesn't change the fact that they are two completely different companies with completely different org charts and completely different focuses, u…

Honestly I didn't realize that you worked personally with the Mozilla Foundation, so I'll defer to you (and color myself surprised).

My apologies, and thanks for the information.

Post reply on HN