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Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

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Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#311

Post by JumpCrisscross »

drdaeman wrote: post #310
notrealyme123 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example: If it is open source, it will end for in LLMs and will be used in other browser variants (bigger and smaller). Any USP of the code itself will be gone.

What’s this “it” are you talking about, exactly? If LLMs hoover up removal of auto-shipped telemetry (currently the main selling point) then I’d say that’d be a reason to publish and submit this to every indexer imaginable ASAP ;-) Shame it’s a bit of absence of code so it’s nor really possible to submit anywhere. And other features are worthy because they’re implemented ideas , not because of their actual implementa…

> What’s this “it” are you talking about, exactly?

Orion's code.

LLMs facilitate the attribution-free pillaging of open-source code. This creates a prisoner's dilemma for anyone in a competitive context. Anything you build will be used by others at your cost. This was technically true in the past. But humans tried to honor open-source licenses, and open-source projects maintained license credibiilty by occasionally suing to enforce their terms. LLMs make no such attempt. And the AI companies have not been given an incentive to prevent vibe coders from violating licenses.

It's a dilemma I'm glad Kagi is taking seriously, and one the open-source community needs to start litigating around before it gets fully normalised. (It may already be too late. I could see this Congress legislating in favour of the AI companies over open source organisations.)

> Most code is just some complicated plumbing, not some valuable algorithmic novelty. And this plumbing is all about context it lives in

Sure. In this case, it's a WebKit browser running on Linux. Kagi is eating the cost to build that. It makes no sense for them to do that if, as soon as they have a stable build, (a) some rando uses Claude to copy their code and sell it as a competitor or (b) Perplexity straight up steals it and repackages it as their own.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#312

Post by drdaeman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #311
drdaeman wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s this “it” are you talking about, exactly? If LLMs hoover up removal of auto-shipped telemetry (currently the main selling point) then I’d say that’d be a reason to publish and submit this to every indexer imaginable ASAP ;-) Shame it’s a bit of absence of code so it’s nor really possible to submit anywhere. And other features are worthy because they’re implemented ideas , not because of their actual implementa…

> What’s this “it” are you talking about, exactly? Orion's code. LLMs facilitate the attribution-free pillaging of open-source code. This creates a prisoner's dilemma for anyone in a competitive context. Anything you build will be used by others at your cost. This was technically true in the past. But humans tried to honor open-source licenses, and open-source projects maintained license credibiilty by occasionally s…

You don’t need a LLM to just copy their code as a whole thing. Copying and rebranding (plus some vendor adaptations) is a valid concern that I have already agreed about, but for the third time: it’s not what they wrote. Has nothing to do with codebase management.

And taking some individual pieces may sound problematic as an abstract concern but have you ever tried to adopt code from one FLOSS codebase into another different one? Especially UI code, if it’s not some isolated purportedly reusable component? Maybe Orion developers are wizards who wrote exceptionally portable and reusable code, but usually in my experience it’s a very painful process, where you’re constantly fighting all the conceptual mismatches from different design choices. And I’ve yet to see a LLM that can do architectural refactoring without messing things up badly. So I’m generally skeptical of such statements. And that’s why I’m suggesting we pick a concrete example we can try to analyze, for doing this on highly abstract “the whole code” level is not going to succeed.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#313

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #297
freehorse wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People usually don't compile their browsers from source anyway. And of course, technically, a program can check whether monitoring tools are running and adapt its behaviour accordingly, but this is malware territory and it makes no sense for any reputable browser. Also, technically, one can do that on router level anyway and not have this issue. So yes, I would say that analyzing the network is enough.

"People usually don't compile their browsers from source anyway." But this is a forum that includes people who do compile their browser from source As such, if promoting a new browser here, it should be expected people may ask about the availability of source code I use an HTML browser that is a 2M static binary It compiles quickly and easily on all the computers I own, and these computers are underpowered This allow…

The easiest way to verify "whether there is telemetry" is to look at the source code

To avoid telemetry, interested users can remove it from the source code

Whereas, if telemetry must be found by inspecting network traffic,^1 then users' only choice to avoid telemetry is not to use the software. There is no self-help. Users can plead with the author to remove telemetry to no effect

1. This may be complicated by encryption

Moreover, if the software is subject to change, e.g., "automatic software updates", then telemetry could be added at a later time, e.g., as part of an opaque "update". This requires the user to continually monitor network traffic in order to try to discover "whether there is telemetry"

If users have a copy of the source code, and use a binary compiled from that source code, then this burden does not exist

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#314

Post by AuthAuth »

hestefisk wrote: post #290
mikae1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Webkit on Linux has essentially been relegated to embedded devices or the GNOME epiphany browser Don't forget about https://falkon.org . It's a browser I enjoy using. WebExtension support will be big if it lands in Orion though. EDIT: apparently Orion is not open source. Not particularly interested in a closed source browser, TBH. In 2022 they said they plan to open source "when there is merit"[1], whatever that me…

Also Ladybird is quite an interesting alternative. Anyone here using it day to day?

Ladybird is a long way off being viable to daily drive

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#316

Post by freediver »

tombert wrote: post #249
Terretta wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We support Kagi across products. We believe alternate browser engines keep the web standard. We give more weight to that than to whether a particular browser's value add (on top of a double digit* but non-hegemonic engine) is open. We believe software and hardware creators have a right to choose their business model and let that model compete, as Kagi's is competing right here in this thread. * Having worked at mega…

I am generally ok with things being proprietary if they want, and I'm mostly ok with Orion being proprietary, but I do understand peoples' issues here. For a lot of people (even relatively geeky people), their computers end up being "an interface to use a browser". People use their browser to file their taxes, to write their documents, to manage their websites, to create websites, to look at porn, to pirate movies, t…

> I genuinely don't think freediver is lying; I believe him when he says there's no telemetry data being sent and that it's not tracking me, but there's the sticking word: "believe". I have to trust him, which wouldn't necessarily be the case if it were FOSS.

Proving this is actually the easy part - all you have to do is install a network proxy and monitor connections. It is something literally anyone can do which is why the zero telemetry statement carries a lot of weight.

Other people have ran their own independent tests eg https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1k382gi/browser_t...

> For a lot of people (even relatively geeky people), their computers end up being "an interface to use a browser". People use their browser to file their taxes, to write their documents, to manage their websites, to create websites, to look at porn, to pirate movies, to chat with their friends, to send/receive money to their bank, and a whole bunch of other things.

I agree! Which is why it is so terrifying for me that Orion is the only browser on the market you can pay for. For the most intimate piece of software we have on our computers, you would expect that more people would want a clean transaction and 'being the customer' relationship. Yet for vast majority of users, their browsing has been paid for by advertisers and third parties (true for 100% of most popular browsers out there).

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#317

Post by freediver »

BaudouinVH wrote: post #269
freediver wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi founder here. Orion isn't open source yet primarily because we're a 5-person team that spent 6+ years building this and created significant IP doing so, and we're not in a position to defend our work against a well-funded company using it as a base (we care very much about the business model of the browser surviving). Restrictive licenses help in theory but enforcing them against a company with a larger legal bu…

we used to pay for browsers 20 years ago I've been online for about 30 years, I have never heard of paying for a browser.

The paid browser market essentially collapsed after Microsoft bundled IE with Windows for free. For example Netscape was $49. Microsoft famously attacked this with "Why waste $50 for Netscape?! IE is free!"

This doesn't make browsers today really 'free' (same like search engines aren't really 'free'). Browsers are incredibly complex to make and maintain. And the customers paying all these cost are the advertisers/third parties, not the users using them (entire reason for Kagi's existance is to create an option where user is also the customer).

Being able to pay for the most intimate piece of software you have on your computer makes a lot of sense.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#318

Post by [deleted] »

cornedor wrote: post #56
IgorPartola wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just submitted feedback as well. This is honestly what’s holding me back from buying a Kagi subscription at this point. Here is what I submitted: I’m requesting that iOS Safari allow users to set any search engine as their default, rather than limiting choices to a pre-approved list. Currently, Safari only offers Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia, preventing users from choosing legitimate alternatives like…

> This is honestly what’s holding me back from buying a Kagi subscription at this point. The extension is working really well for me. You could always try it out with the free version to see if it works for you as well.

[deleted]

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#319

Post by willis936 »

trvr wrote: post #29
IgorPartola wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just submitted feedback as well. This is honestly what’s holding me back from buying a Kagi subscription at this point. Here is what I submitted: I’m requesting that iOS Safari allow users to set any search engine as their default, rather than limiting choices to a pre-approved list. Currently, Safari only offers Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia, preventing users from choosing legitimate alternatives like…

Don't let this hold you back. Use a mobile browser that lets you use Kagi; it's worth it.

Non-safari ios browsers are heavily kneecapped by Apple. It's litigation-worthy levels of anticompetitive behavior.

I gave Orion a real college try but some bugs (particularly around autofill) are a dealbreaker. I'll come back when it's ready.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#320

Post by Mindwipe »

jwcooper wrote: post #61
Fiveplus wrote: post #35

This is a healthy thing to happen to the Linux browser ecosystem imho. We talk a lot about browser diversity, but on Linux and Windows, it is a lie. You have firefox (gecko) and fifty flavors of chromium. Webkit on Linux has essentially been relegated to embedded devices or the GNOME epiphany browser, which I'll admit while is a noble effort, lags a bit in the stability and power-user features department. Big reason…

> The sticking point like always will be media playback (read: DRM/widevine). That is the graveyard where Linux browsers go to die. If Kagi can legally and technically solve the widevine integration on a non-standard Linux webkit build, they win. If not, it will be a secondary browser for documentation reading only. I'm hopeful that some day Linux will have enough users where the media companies can't ignore them. Ho…

> I'm hopeful that some day Linux will have enough users where the media companies can't ignore them.

The entirety of personal computer viewing doesn't have enough users where the media companies can't ignore them.

Fundamentally higher resolution playback happens on platforms like Windows and MacOS because they have closed, signed driver stacks, same as anti-cheat in games. Not because of the browser. So it will only ever happen if someone forks Linux to a more restricted, closed browser stack and offers that as a product (which is basically how a cable set-top box works in practice).

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