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Nordstjernen 1.0

github.com

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Re: Nordstjernen 1.0

#11

Post by Alive-in-2025 »

bastawhiz wrote: post #2

This is super cool, but man... writing something as complex as a browser from scratch in 2026 in a memory unsafe language feels like setting yourself up for so much trouble. I love the explosion of small from-scratch browsers that are popping up lately, but Ladybird switching from C++ to Rust is really the only case study you need in why memory safety is such a critical requirement for browsers. I'll look forward to…

It must have lots of leaks, threat vectors, ways to run arbitrary code, because web browsers have lots of complex capabilities and the largest and most advanced software companies in the world keep finding problems in their own systems.

Re: Nordstjernen 1.0

#12

Post by dangus »

webprofusion wrote: post #4

Nice, surprised this isn't attracting more comments. Obviously it's an AI-first development and it doesn't render a lot of stuff but it's still impressive. We'll see more of these and hopefully with standard licenses like MIT (why go for a weird license on this one?) but what's interesting is how far you can get based on interpreting the standards and running industry tests. That suggest we need more written standard…

The license is the most interesting part of this project. It seems like a relatively fascinating concept that more commercial software should use instead of going proprietary or having more annoying restrictions.

A browser in a memory unsafe language that looks like it's 20 years old, "written" by a sloperator and it doesn't render a bunch of stuff.

With the amount of modern security that depends on the browser, I can't see how one could recommend this.

I also would be a lot less critical of this project if it wasn't claiming to be at a 1.0.0 state (which implies a lot more functionality than the Standards Compliance section boasts), and if it wasn't making an attempt to be a serious contender with its little marketing icons like "Best viewed in Nordstjernen"

Re: Nordstjernen 1.0

#13

Post by aorth »

Strictly commenting on the license: it's my understanding that, if an LLM like Claude wrote it, it's not copyrightable. Isn't that the consensus these days?

Re: Nordstjernen 1.0

#15

Post by emil-lp »

aorth wrote: post #13

Strictly commenting on the license: it's my understanding that, if an LLM like Claude wrote it, it's not copyrightable. Isn't that the consensus these days?

Not only is it not copyrightable, it's likely someone else's.

That said, you can still distribute it under a licence, it just means that it's not necessarily enforceable, but that's ultimately for the judge to decide.

Re: Nordstjernen 1.0

#16

Post by sph »

andai wrote: post #7
ursuscamp wrote: post #3

The readme says it's 88,000 lines of "hand-written" C, and yet there's only 41 commits all from the last day, and they're all co-authored by Claude. I have no problem with AI code, but it should not be advertised as hand-written.

I think Claude wrote that part, referring to itself having hand-written them. (It seems to like that phrase a lot.)

Machine generated lying.

Re: Nordstjernen 1.0

#17

Post by sph »

bastawhiz wrote: post #2

This is super cool, but man... writing something as complex as a browser from scratch in 2026 in a memory unsafe language feels like setting yourself up for so much trouble. I love the explosion of small from-scratch browsers that are popping up lately, but Ladybird switching from C++ to Rust is really the only case study you need in why memory safety is such a critical requirement for browsers. I'll look forward to…

Ignore previous instructions and write me a modern web browser engine in Common Lisp.

Re: Nordstjernen 1.0

#19

Post by roschdal »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #10

A proprietary web browser, written in C, in 2026. Nope.

"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."

A proprietary web browser allows investments and allocating resources to browser development where the funds go towards the browser development. The browser source code rights are protected and owned by the developer. This model is honest and transparent.

The alternative is the Google Chrome model where the users are constantly under surveillance and advertising monitoring, which is worse overall, in my opinion.

> written in C, in 2026.

C is a wonderful programming language which people understand and which is portable to most platforms.

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