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Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

lunduke.locals.com

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Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#421

Post by xmprt »

mattstir wrote: post #391
tamimio wrote: post #385

> No "default search deals", crypto tokens, or other forms of user monetization, ever. Sounds good, but how would you make sure the sponsors won’t influence you in the future once it’s popular enough? After all, they are still corporations and are after profits, as opposed to crowdfunding.

I'm not an expert in this stuff, but I did notice that the Ladybird website mentions only accepting unrestricted donations. That doesn't prevent power dynamics from evolving between sponsors and the project, of course, but it at least means that no sponsors get to explicitly demand specific things.

I think it's a valiant cause but even if that's what they claim right now, eventually they will have to weigh whether it's worth taking the $100k donation from sponsor A who doesn't demand working on feature X but just suggests it or risk the future runway of the project.

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#422

Post by binary132 »

mrighele wrote: post #220
enriquto wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) switch to a less permissive license. License "permissiveness" is a relative concept. From the point of view of the users of your software, the GPL is more permissive than MIT, since they have permission to see the source code. If you release software under MIT or BSD licenses, you allow middlemen to strip this right to users of your software.

> you allow middlemen to strip this right to users of your software. That's not true. Somebody can take the source code and build something closed on top of it, but the original code will be already free, and you will always have the right to see it. For example, PlayStation OS is based on FreeBSD (AFAIK). They took it, adapted it and added a lot of stuff. Did you lose the right to see the source code of FreeBSD ? No…

Is a PlayStation user a FreeBSD user? Yes, clearly. Can he see the source code of the FreeBSD derivative he is using? No, obviously not. Did FreeBSD make this possible? Yes, obviously.

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#424

Post by hamandcheese »

guappa wrote: post #216
awesomekling wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are aware of how permissive licenses work. If someone forks our code and does a better job with it than we do, fair game. :)

Just so you know, chromium exists now as an open source project because KDE developers used GPL.

Its a good thing the GPL stopped google from taking it and running with it!

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#425

Post by riwsky »

guappa wrote: post #225
flykespice wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a complete nonsensical claim & willful attempt at spreading misinformation: Permissive licenses doesn't grants you less freedom than GPL, infact it grants you more because the user also has the freedom to modify source code without being enforced to make it public. Companies copying the codebase to their propietary ones won't automatically strip right of users, licenses don't work like that, the original code…

[flagged]

I don’t think you’re pro-slavery, but I do think you picked a metaphor not for the light it sheds on the issue, but the heat—and then preemptively dismissed a strawman objection to it instead of, say, improving your own communication.

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#426

Post by selykg »

awesomekling wrote: post #5

Hello friends, Ladybird founder here! Here's a short video from Chris Wanstrath announcing our non-profit yesterday, and kicking things off with a $1M donation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9edTqPMX_k Happy to answer questions :)

As someone who has very little experience working on a browser, but is interested in helping, could you possibly recommend where a dumb dude that wants to help could get started?

There's probably a huge influx of people trying to get involved now, which probably really complicates and muddies the waters right now as well.

Either way, congrats!

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#427

Post by riwsky »

dataflow wrote: post #397
guappa wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, chromium exists now as an open source project because KDE developers used GPL.

Would you mind elaborating? How did KDE's use of GPL prevent Chromium from being closed-source? What about Google Chrome?

It didn’t: that’s the joke.

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#428

Post by noduerme »

Tade0 wrote: post #101
noduerme wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only exception is if you have 500k LOC in a language whose runtime is going to be deprecated on all platforms overnight. I'm referring to the uh, retrospectively unfortunate decision I made in 2007 to start building large scale business app frontends in AS3. I guess I should be thankful for the work, having to rewrite everything in TS from scratch a decade later. (At least the backends didn't have to be torn down…

I wonder how many businesses suffered the same? I remember Flash as a complete, straight-to-business platform that allowed me to just focus on getting stuff done. It was a sound decision back then.

I think it was a very sound decision back in 2007 if you wanted to write once and deploy everywhere. In browser, and on the desktop for Windows and Mac. JS wasn't up to the task of complex SPAs or graphic visualizations yet ( didn't even exist), and the alternative would have been Java apps which relied on whatever runtime the user had installed. The fact that Flash/AIR could deploy with its own runtime or a browser plugin was huge. It allowed an independent coder like me to maintain multiple large pieces of software across multiple platforms at a time when it was almost unheard of to do that without a team.

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#429

Post by scubbo »

account42 wrote: post #287
satyanash wrote: post #127

No talk of the license on the frontpage. Visiting the GitHub repo tells me it is 2-clause BSD license. It's high time we had a GPLv3 web browser, otherwise, this risks the same fate as the rest of the browsers with proprietary forks. This of course comes at the cost of not being able to support non-free parts of the web standard such as DRM.

> This of course comes at the cost of not being able to support non-free parts of the web standard such as DRM. That would be a benefit, not a cost.

Absolutism like this hurts adoption of otherwise-useful tools. Given the choice between a tool which simply cannot play DRM-protected content, and a tool which can, _ceteris paribus_ most consumers will prefer the former. If you believe there are other properties of a proposed tool that mean it is a public good for it to be adopted, it behooves you to make it attractive to adopt.

Re: Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

#430

Post by riwsky »

zarzavat wrote: post #403
cabalamat wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine Ladybird is developed and is successful. Lots of people use it to read websites. But then Badcorp takes the code and builds their own varient with extensions. Badcorp is big and has lots of market share. Lots of people use Badcorps's browser, and because lots of people are using it, lots of web developers code for it, including coding for its extensions. Soon, lots of websites -- including Badcorp's own websi…

What if BadApple takes BSD and forks it. Then they make their own BSD with extensions that only works on their own shiny fruit hardware. What have the original BSD users lost? Absolutely nothing. BSD still exists, it’s still maintained, and people can still use it. They can also use fruit BSD if they want.

Darwinism, one might say.
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