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I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

awesomekling.substack.com

31–40 of 280 posts

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#31
post #16

Damn I was worried for a second there, fearing some sort of falling out with the community. But this is awesome news! Ladybird is a far more important project to focus on imho.

Given that it dropped serenity as a target, it does seem there is something more to this story…

Wondering about that too, but to be fair, he probably doesn't use it as his primary OS (none of the developers does I think), so with Serenty mostly being a development project and the interest shifting (back to) developing web browsers it seems logical to focus on these targets.

I've been working on projects myself where the primary target switched, because I noticed it's a bit draining to keep supporting something "just" because I love it. Dropping a target usually doesn't mean it cannot be used there anymore, but simply that you don't feel comfortable guaranteeing support.

I don't know if that's the case here, only that it doesn't necessitate bad feelings.

Given that it was also stated that it won't be self-contained anymore that's also a very good technical reason. And I totally get that if you want to create a new browser with a new layout engine not wanting to re-invent every audio, video, image decoder, not wanting to reinvent all the wheels makes it already a huge project and I'd assume it's hard to guarantee all of these things will also work and compile on Serenity, which despite doing an amazing job at porting might get stuck here and there. I mean, see the OpenBSD and Rust(up) story.

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#33
post #17

Ladybird has garnered a level of mainstream attention that SerenityOS never really managed to. The browser has the potential to impact many more people, and the project is well funded by large investors. It makes sense that Andreas would shift his focus to LadyBird at this point. While Safari is busy being Safari and Firefox is busy eating glue in the corner, I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender in the br…

I agree (apart from the popular hate on Firefox). Ladybird is promising and has a much bigger chance to make an impact than SerenityOS. But it's a bit disappointing to see that it's still pretty much a one-man project. Especially to have a chance to get close to the performance of Chrome and Firefox, it will need a large investment. The amount of engineering resources poured into just making JavaScript fast is mind-n…

Have to admit the Firefox hate is mostly irrelevant. its from a place of disappointment with Mozilla more than hate really.

I agree that the amount of work and competition LadyBird is facing from Chrome alone is staggering, but at the same time, I'll always root for the little guy in tech, since imo thats where real innovation comes from.

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#34
post #17

Ladybird has garnered a level of mainstream attention that SerenityOS never really managed to. The browser has the potential to impact many more people, and the project is well funded by large investors. It makes sense that Andreas would shift his focus to LadyBird at this point. While Safari is busy being Safari and Firefox is busy eating glue in the corner, I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender in the br…

I agree (apart from the popular hate on Firefox). Ladybird is promising and has a much bigger chance to make an impact than SerenityOS. But it's a bit disappointing to see that it's still pretty much a one-man project. Especially to have a chance to get close to the performance of Chrome and Firefox, it will need a large investment. The amount of engineering resources poured into just making JavaScript fast is mind-n…

I think the Firefox hate is completely justified. At this point the only positive thing about Firefox is that "at least it's not Chrome".

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#36
post #16

Damn I was worried for a second there, fearing some sort of falling out with the community. But this is awesome news! Ladybird is a far more important project to focus on imho.

Given that it dropped serenity as a target, it does seem there is something more to this story…

Possibly that for Ladybird to move forwards more quickly, it needs access to OS API's or Graphics stuff that Serenity can't yet provide? (I'm just spitballing here, I don't know much about OS development)

To take it a step further, due to the fact that Andreas is being sponsored to work on Ladybird full time by a few companies, if it's inherently also tied to the development of Serenity (since its a primary target) that might make him concerned that there's a clash of responsibilities there - he might not want any sponsors pulling out or arguing that he's spending their money on Serenity instead of Ladybird.

This is all just assumptions however, and regardless of the reasons I think he's doing the right thing.

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#37
post #16

Damn I was worried for a second there, fearing some sort of falling out with the community. But this is awesome news! Ladybird is a far more important project to focus on imho.

Given that it dropped serenity as a target, it does seem there is something more to this story…

[deleted]

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#38
post #17

Ladybird has garnered a level of mainstream attention that SerenityOS never really managed to. The browser has the potential to impact many more people, and the project is well funded by large investors. It makes sense that Andreas would shift his focus to LadyBird at this point. While Safari is busy being Safari and Firefox is busy eating glue in the corner, I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender in the br…

> and the project is well funded by large investors.

Hmm, why is there no mention of that in the splitting announcement?

Did said large investors trigger the drop of SerenityOS because they don't want to waste their resources on a niche hobby platform?

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#39
post #17

Ladybird has garnered a level of mainstream attention that SerenityOS never really managed to. The browser has the potential to impact many more people, and the project is well funded by large investors. It makes sense that Andreas would shift his focus to LadyBird at this point. While Safari is busy being Safari and Firefox is busy eating glue in the corner, I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender in the br…

Yeah I agree. Would be nice to see a browser option that is not 20+ years old. People say it’s not doable but this here is a real opportunity.

Re: I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL

#40

> Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is dropped. Why dropping the SerenityOS target?? Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order to keep development? Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed, or there will be two diverging Ladybird proj…

SerenityOS's browser has never been named Ladybird AFAIK, it's always been just Browser.

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...

Ladybird was the name used for to the cross-platform version of the browser.

https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...

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