Gosub – An open-source browser engine • Hacker News Board

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#21

Post by rustdeveloper » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:33 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #11

johnwbyrd wrote: post #8

Yes, but I'm concerned about the number of existing browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, as the project founders have become exhausted. The scope of such a project is incredibly easy to underestimate, and it has only ever gotten larger. Some examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/124kphe/what_do_y...

Honestly, I view projects like this as more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful . The Firefox engine is great if you don't want something controlled by Google. And it's going to be much easier to develop plugins or extensions for that versus trying to write your own browser from scratch, which to be honest will probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If not more. I do imagin…

For web scraping at scale you want to get lost in the crowd. This usually means being (or pretending to be) chromium on windows. Unusual browsers are suspicious, detected or have very distinct fingerprint.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#22

Post by skyfaller » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:37 PM UTC

Why Gosub if it isn't written in Go? Should have been called Rustsub ;-)

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#23

Post by sharktheone » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

skyfaller wrote: post #22

Why Gosub if it isn't written in Go? Should have been called Rustsub ;-)

Gosub is kind of an acronym. I don't really like it, but yeah Gosub and go would be more similar than to Rust

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#24

Post by cyberax » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

chasil wrote: post #14

Would a fork of Chromium that was restricted to MISRA-C/C++ offer any real security advantages? Would parts of Chromium be fundamentally incompatible with these standards? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C

No.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#25

Post by dustedcodes » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

Why does it matter if it’s written in Rust?

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#26

Post by favorited » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:53 PM UTC

I'm always disappointed when conversations here are full of "why don't you just contribute to instead?" Have you never simply desired to do something yourself?

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#27

Post by MYEUHD » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:53 PM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #20

999900000999 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I view projects like this as more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful . The Firefox engine is great if you don't want something controlled by Google. And it's going to be much easier to develop plugins or extensions for that versus trying to write your own browser from scratch, which to be honest will probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If not more. I do imagin…

> more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful I am reminded of this: “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.” – Linus Torvalds, announcing the software that became what we now know as Linux

He ended up only writing the kernel though.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#28

Post by joshmarinacci » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:54 PM UTC

Former Mozilla employee here.

The fact that they are writing their own bytestream abstraction does not bode well.

That said, I hope they succeed at shipping something, even if it’s not competitive with Chrome.

My previous thoughts on the topic: Why you can’t build a web browser and why you should anyway.

https://joshondesign.com/2022/12/14/browser_1000_loc

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#29

Post by qzw » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:55 PM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #20

999900000999 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I view projects like this as more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful . The Firefox engine is great if you don't want something controlled by Google. And it's going to be much easier to develop plugins or extensions for that versus trying to write your own browser from scratch, which to be honest will probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If not more. I do imagin…

> more of an intellectual curiosity than anything which seeks to become useful I am reminded of this: “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.” – Linus Torvalds, announcing the software that became what we now know as Linux

One can only hope we can get a browser the same way we got Linux, but as RMS was fond of pointing out, Linux’s success had a lot to do with the existence of a full suite of GNU software that could run on top of a new kernel. If only we had something like GNU with browser engines, I’d be more optimistic about the chances for success of many new entrants.

Re: Gosub – An open-source browser engine

#30

Post by diggan » Mon, Oct 14, 2024, 7:58 PM UTC

joshmarinacci wrote: post #28

Former Mozilla employee here. The fact that they are writing their own bytestream abstraction does not bode well. That said, I hope they succeed at shipping something, even if it’s not competitive with Chrome. My previous thoughts on the topic: Why you can’t build a web browser and why you should anyway. https://joshondesign.com/2022/12/14/browser_1000_loc

> The fact that they are writing their own bytestream abstraction does not bode well.

You want to elaborate on why exactly? Seems like a kind of shallow dismissal, but then I'm no browser engine developer exactly, maybe it's obvious.