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I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

adayinthelifeof.nl

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Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#391

Post by freedomben »

jwells89 wrote: post #188
phkahler wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness. Do you think this is why people are abandoning the GPL license in favor of MIT/BSD? Something about the fight the GPL aims to win being a hopeless fantasy? In the face of the sentiment you and OP express, I'd think GPL usage would be widespread.

I think a lot of distaste towards GPL comes from devs with corporate day jobs who feel frustrated that anything GPL licensed is functionally off-limits at work because there’s no way legal would approve of using it, and certainly would not approve of open sourcing whatever project is built with the GPL thing. I can see where such an individual might think to themselves, “I don’t want to put other devs in my position…

Absolutely. I'm personally a big fan of the GPL but I've felt that way before as well. When there's a great library that I want to use but it's GPL and the program I'm writing is IP, the request/proposal is dead on arrival. From that dev's perspective there's not much difference between an extant but GPLed library and a non-existent library.

That said, I do wish people would be a little more nuanced about it. IMHO (generally speaking) make libraries permissive, make applications GPL

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#392

Post by SanderNL »

hnarn wrote: post #119
SanderNL wrote: post #115

Is there some reason why browsers aren't split into a million pieces and worked on seperately? Most browser projects I see are tackled like giant monolithic projects. For example, CSS seems like a constraint solver that has nothing to do with parsing HTTP requests. Even parsing CSS itself has nothing to do with laying it out. Rendering is another step altogether that also has very little to do with anything. I can se…

Depends on what you mean by "browsers". Take the V8 JavaScript engine for example, it's used in Chrome but can also run stand-alone (I think node.js uses it). I'm not involved in this space at all but I would guess that the main problem with writing browsers isn't that they're all obfuscated monoliths, but that the amount of work to create an entire browser composed of solidly interconnected parts is still a huge amo…

Bellard’s QuickJS is a good example. It’s 100kb vs V8’s 40mb and for open source purposes plenty fast for a web browser.

We need more QuickJS and libcss and rendering backends, not “browsers”.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#393

Post by SanderNL »

Ono-Sendai wrote: post #308
SanderNL wrote: post #115

Is there some reason why browsers aren't split into a million pieces and worked on seperately? Most browser projects I see are tackled like giant monolithic projects. For example, CSS seems like a constraint solver that has nothing to do with parsing HTTP requests. Even parsing CSS itself has nothing to do with laying it out. Rendering is another step altogether that also has very little to do with anything. I can se…

They are split up. Take a lot at the chrome source, it pulls in dozens (hundreds maybe?) of c++ libraries.

That’s not the kind of split I mean.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#394

Post by freedomben »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #344
phkahler wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. The freedom to deny other people the freedom you are enjoying is not compatible with the notion of freedom. It's hypocrisy. That's not to say there is no place for MIT/BSD licenses, but it is not with general application software or libraries used to build such.

The fundamental problem I have with the GPL, and I think is echoed elsewhere here, is that the GPL is not about my code. It is trying to force my will on other people’s code. It is inherently less free because it is trying to exert dominance over things I do not own and have never been involved in. In theory, a 10 liner GPL Python script could infect an org with 20 millions lines of closed source code and try to dict…

IANAL but I don't think your example is accurate. Unless you expanded that 20 line python script into your 20 million line application, the GPL is not going to cross over and infect your other code. It would mean that if you are distributing that python script to users then you have to include the source for it (not usually a problem with python, but it is for other languages).

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#395

Post by askafriend »

jaytaph wrote: post #59

OP here. Thanks for the pos/neg/neutral comments everybody. Some remarks: Yes, there are a lot of browsers out there where I can contribute to which would be more efficient. But that would result in just a few browsers instead of a lot of browsers. I'm all for the last one, as this would give people options. This IS a pet project. I never told anyone otherwise. I would start writing it even when I wasn't fed up with…

Respect

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#396

Post by freedomben »

ynniv wrote: post #352
sneak wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it. What you are describing must have been written by someone who does not believe in software freedoms. Software freedom is an ideology, not a license. If you license part of your software as free software but not other parts of y…

What you are describing must have been written by someone who does not believe in software freedoms. That seems to be a common sentiment, that preferring non-GPL projects is about exploitation, and I don’t think it makes any sense. The GPL is a contact that takes away some rights of the people using it, and that makes everyone freer? I understand the goal of wanting users to have rights that they would not otherwise…

> The GPL is a contact that takes away some rights of the people using it, and that makes everyone freer?

It is not that simple. The GPL "takes away" some rights of the distributor of the software (their ability to restrict redistribution for example), but grants rights to the end user (the ability to modify and redistribute) of the software.

It's all perspective. As the developer the GPL may feel limiting, but as a user it is liberating.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#397

Post by abareplace »

93po wrote: post #253
soyasis wrote: post #53

On the political note of the article: yes, the world is fucked up and it is exhausting to only read fucked up news. I personally believe that disconnecting from reality and becoming 'apolitical' implies giving up on humanity; that is giving up on your kids, nephews and the children of your best friends. No need to change the world, a small change in your community is more than enough. Specially as coders, what we bui…

I don’t follow the news at all because it’s 99% biased garbage and frequently not true and pollutes the mind. My life and mental health is significantly better for this. Nothing I read in the news would change how I vote, which is basically the best reason anyone could give for watching it.

You can afford not reading news only if you live in a democratic country with a stable economy, far from any conflict zones. In other parts of the world, you would miss information that you need for your survival.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#398

Post by spc476 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #340
astrobe_ wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the logical conclusion of what you write is not to write yet-another-web-browser, because browsers are rotten to the core by terrible protocol designs, terrible specifications, politics, greed etc. Browsers did not spontaneously start to degrade, it's what the key actors at different times did that made it happen. The only hope, IMO, is to build something much more sane that cannot be abused. Something like Gop…

Gemini is an interesting educational project but the lack of ability to serve even static pictures or video is an absolutely crippling mistake.

Gemini can, in fact, serve up images, audio and even video. The specification disallows inline display of such types, but it can serve them fine.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#399

Post by rambambram »

tredre3 wrote: post #370
rambambram wrote: post #49

I'm not used to this kind of negativity on HN about browsers and the open web. I think it's a very worthwhile endeavor, whether he succeeds or not. If the result is only half a browser that is not incentivized by big tech, than it can be useful for the moment my reliance on Firefox has to stop. I hope it doesn't get there because I like my Firefox very much, but I came to realize that my browser is a sort of bottlene…

> I'm not used to this kind of negativity on HN about browsers and the open web. Really? It's a given that any thread about browsers on HN will have a dozen highly upvoted replies that claim it's impossible to make a new browser. Even though we have evidence that it is indeed possible. Ladybird is made from scratch (originally all the way down to the C++ stdlib!) and can now run Discord (poorly) after 3-4 years of pa…

Thanks for this information and good to see other alternatives explained.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#400

Post by handity »

wild_egg wrote: post #389
handity wrote: post #283

I really want to experience a happy medium between the barebones minimalism of Gemini and the insane free-for-all of the mainstream web. In my mind, there is no reason for every website to dictate its own layout and appearance when 99% of sites could be broken down into procedural elements that could be rendered however the client preferred. I recently bought a Kobo ereader, and the gorgeous, text-focused, crisp desi…

As yet another would-be browser developer, thanks for this take. The thing that always puts me off is the insanity that comes with supporting all the ways to style content. So throw that all away A Reader Mode Browser with some small quality of life features seems like the perfect project. Thanks stranger

Thank you, you've encouraged to make some mockups to try to bring this idea a little closer to reality.
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