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

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

#451

Post by ploxiln »

alkonaut wrote: post #236
fregonics wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not wrong Firefox is already Rust. The language was even created inside Mozilla.

It is. They realized that writing a modern browser (i.e. one that for example uses multiple cores efficiently by doing layout/rendering/etc in parallel) is almost impossible in C++. To the point where creating a whole new language just to solve the problem would be a smaller undertaking. Which says something about the scope of this problem. And I really do think they are right.

> writing a modern browser (i.e. one that for example uses multiple cores efficiently by doing layout/rendering/etc in parallel) is almost impossible in C++

C++ also happens to be the only language in which that has been accomplished, so far. (The Rust components are relatively smaller, about 11% according to sibling comments.)

See also: AAA video games

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

#452

Post by xcv123 »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #126
xcv123 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox and Chromium have 30+ million lines of code (excluding comments and blank lines). You underestimate the complexity of a web browser.

Oh for sure, browsers are complex beasts, but Ladybird already supports quite a decent chunk of the web. For an initial alpha (which they explicitly point out to be for developers and early adopters) to still be 2 years away feels a bit far out to me.

The alpha release is intended to be fully functional, in the usual sense of alpha testing. That is ambitious. It's not like a shitty game on Steam (or Star Citizen) where "alpha" means 10% of features completed. That is 30 million lines of complexity due within 2 years. Ignoring lines of code, some of these problems within a browser are time consuming and difficult to solve from scratch.

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

#453

Post by robryan »

FireInsight wrote: post #114

I think people in this comment section are too harsh on the website. I think the design is pleasing and functional, and the project is communicated about clearly. The AI laptop is a bit of a shame, and the logo being bland instead of clever is a bummer, though. But plenty of products have a similar front page style, and it doesnt make me feel like it's a soulless startup.

I think this is more for the end user. If the eventual goal is to convince people to use this instead of Chrome or Safari it is probably going to be a hard sell if it looks like a hobby project.

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

#455

Post by dxxvi »

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 :)

What can you do with $1M? Writing a web browser is difficult, so the salary for 1 developer is about $300k/year. Then you can have 3 developers. Can 3 developers create a web browser in a year? I don't think so. If those 3 developers can do that, then they'll ask for more than $400k/yr/person. That means, IMO, this project will go nowhere. However, any project that can create jobs is good, in fact very good.

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

#456

Post by karmajunkie »

freedomben wrote: post #241
mrighele wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

GP is clearly talking about this is the same context that the GPL does. This is a decades-long running debate and it isn't as simple as you and the sibling commenters are trying to make it. Of course it doesn't change the original project. But when people take the codebase and build a new product on it, what GP says is absolutely the case. The devs can withhold all code and rights to it from the next user. This is mo…

as you said, this is a decades-long running debate, and pretty much every argument has been heard, ad nauseum. That makes this "valid concern" a pretty low-quality reply.

The first freedom that GPL-lovers have is whether or not to use the project.

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

#457

Post by i_read_news »

fsflover wrote: post #278
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. LGPLv3 would solve that, wouldn't it?

Or GPLv2 with binaries loaded at runtime, like Linux does. This is a definitive good candidate for v2 as not having DRM is simply just not going to work.

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

#458

Post by [deleted] »

alkonaut wrote: post #236
fregonics wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not wrong Firefox is already Rust. The language was even created inside Mozilla.

It is. They realized that writing a modern browser (i.e. one that for example uses multiple cores efficiently by doing layout/rendering/etc in parallel) is almost impossible in C++. To the point where creating a whole new language just to solve the problem would be a smaller undertaking. Which says something about the scope of this problem. And I really do think they are right.

[deleted]

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

#459

Post by hipinspire »

starik36 wrote: post #408
hipinspire wrote: post #85

It is a great honor to see a website I designed and coded at the top of the Hacker News front page! A big thank you to Chris Wanstrath for allowing me to work on it. I hope Ladybird becomes a mainstream browser, and I feel this is a moment similar to when Firefox rebranded from Phoenix. P.S. Check out my UI/UX portfolio at https://hipfolio.co

Double checking my memory here. Didn't it go from Phoenix to Firebird to Firefox?

Great memory indeed!

https://hicks.design/journal/firefox-logo?trk=feed-detail_co...

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

#460

Post by [deleted] »

alkonaut wrote: post #236
fregonics wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not wrong Firefox is already Rust. The language was even created inside Mozilla.

It is. They realized that writing a modern browser (i.e. one that for example uses multiple cores efficiently by doing layout/rendering/etc in parallel) is almost impossible in C++. To the point where creating a whole new language just to solve the problem would be a smaller undertaking. Which says something about the scope of this problem. And I really do think they are right.

[deleted]
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