Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by Dalewyn » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 12:49 AM UTC

jchw wrote: post #516

tracker1 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be possible to have some sort of open extension to allow side band canvas rendering to allow for such extensions as optionally provided by the OS. Possibly with an API for custom engines in WASM. I don't think it should have to be in the browser. I would like the option to watch the content. I know the while process of DRM is stupid and will be side stepped somewhere.

Personally, I think life would be better if browsers just didn't play the game at all. If the web was not controlled by corporations, DRM as part of the platform 100% would have simply never happened. From my point of view, putting DRM into web browsers is actively bad for a couple of reasons beyond the usual arguments against DRM. The greatest asset the web platform has is that it's a unified, open platform that any…

>Personally, I think life would be better if browsers just didn't play the game at all.

A web browser is a user agent. Why is the browser deciding anything one way or another? Let the user decide by providing options one way or another. If the user wants DRM access, let them; why is it the browser's business?

Again, the two important words: User agent.

The freedom to decide and choose is what helped Firefox take out IE6 and led to most subsequent browsers featuring some form or another of extensibility (which incidentally is now regressing because web browsers are increasingly developer and publisher agents).

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

#522

Post by thro1 » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 12:51 AM UTC

mirsadm wrote: post #358

alkonaut wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh that is a huge stretch. Besides Firefox is still significantly less performant than Chromium.

Performance is overrated and irrevelant. It's simple force - not a skill. I can't do in more performat Firefox, neither it doesn't matter how performant Chromium, things that was possible in Firefox with old extensions. Not having such abilities, the only thing left to Google to talk about was.. performace - and crippling powers of Firefox. Rust is a new skill, not more of force.

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

#523

Post by westurner » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 12:51 AM UTC

OTOH feature ideas: Formal Verification, Process Isolation, secure coding in Rust,

- Quark is written in Coq and is formally verified. What can be learned from the design of Quark and other larger formally-verified apps.

From "Why Don't People Use Formal Methods?" (2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18965964 :

> - "Quark : A Web Browser with a Formally Verified Kernel" (2012) (Coq, Haskell) http://goto.ucsd.edu/quark/

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37451147 :

> - "How to Discover and Prevent Linux Kernel Zero-day Exploit using Formal Verification" (2021) [w/ Coq] http://digamma.ai/blog/discover-prevent-linux-kernel-zero-da... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31617335

- Rootless containers require /etc/subuids to remap uids. Browsers could run subprocesses like rootless containers in addition to namespaces and application-level sandboxing.

- Chrome and Firefox use the same pwn2own'd sandbox.

- Container-selinux and rootless containers and browser tab processes

- "Memory Sealing "Mseal" System Call Merged for Linux 6.10" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40474551

- Endokernel process isolation: From "The Docker+WASM Technical Preview" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33324934

- QubesOS isolates processes with VMs.

- Gvisor and Kata containers further isolate container processes

- W3C Web Worker API and W3C Service Worker API and process isolation, and resource utilization

- From "WebGPU is now available on Android" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39046787 :

>> What are some ideas for UI Visual Affordances to solve for bad UX due to slow browser tabs and extensions?

>> - [ ] UBY: Browsers: Strobe the tab or extension button when it's beyond (configurable) resource usage thresholds

>> - [ ] UBY: Browsers: Vary the {color, size, fill} of the tabs according to their relative resource utilization

>> - [ ] ENH,SEC: Browsers: specify per-tab/per-domain resource quotas: CPU

- What can be learned from few methods and patterns from rust rewrites, again of larger applications

"MotorOS: a Rust-first operating system for x64 VMs" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38907876 :

> "Maestro: A Linux-compatible kernel in Rust" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38852360#38857185 ; redox-os, cosmic-de , Motūrus OS; MotorOS

From "Industry forms consortium to drive adoption of Rust in safety-critical systems" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34743393 :

> - "The Rust Implementation of GNU Coreutils Is Becoming Remarkably Robust" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34743393

> [Rust Secure Coding Guidelines, awesome-safety-critical,]

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

#524

Post by fastball » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:00 AM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #412

This is wonderful news and I'm all for more diversity and user choice in the world of browsers, but this text... > preparing to become the only major web browser which does not treat the user like the product being sold. ...is either ignorant or a deliberate slam on Mozilla. Whatever else you might say about Firefox, it has never tried to "sell" me to anyone. The fact of the matter is that Mozilla has done the imposs…

To me, it seems neither ignorant or a deliberate slam on Mozilla.

Clearly, they are referring to paid search engine placement. But that doesn't just apply to Mozilla, it also applies to Apple/Safari.

And given that both Mozilla and Apple are being payed by Google somewhat proportionally to how many users they have, clearly users are indeed being treated like a product being sold.

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

#525

Post by alberth » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:00 AM UTC

zadokshi wrote: post #511

alberth wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q1: given that all browsers support non-standard functionality (e.g., CSS attributes not ratified yet, etc) - how will you decide which non standard specs you’ll implement and which you won’t? (or will you just use Chrome as a reference spec and implement anything it implements?) Q2: what is your “guiding principle/mission”? Is it to be the fastest browser? The most privacy centric browser? The only 100% standards co…

I am a bit confused by the question. Why wouldn’t all commonly used defacto standards be supported? Or are you talking about obscure standards which no one uses? Any browser that doesn’t display normal websites normally will never achieve mainstream usage. Who willingly handicaps their software?

There’s websites decided to pointing out which standards various browsers do & don’t support.

https://caniuse.com/

(An older not as relevant one is http://acid3.acidtests.org/ )

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

#526

Post by dataflow » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:13 AM UTC

elviejo79 wrote: post #512

dataflow wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part I know, but how are you saying that prevented Chromium from being closed-source, and why didn't the same apply to Google Chrome?

The rendering engine: Chromium had to be kept "libre", because khtml/Webkit was LGPL. The browser: Chrome. could be kept closed because the LGPL allow the integration of libre libraries in closed products as long as the library itself remains "libre". In this case the library is the renering engine: Chromium. As a counter example MacOS was built on top of decades of work on the BSD operating system and Apple is under…

The parent said GPL, which is what got me confused. LGPL makes more sense.

Although... this still doesn't explain why the other parts of the browser besides the rendering engine are open source? i.e. if the license was the reason, then presumably Google would've made the rest of the browser closed source, but that wasn't the case for most parts.

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

#527

Post by intelVISA » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:31 AM UTC

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 :)

This is awesome news, congrats and keep up the great work :)

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

#528

Post by shiroiushi » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:35 AM UTC

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.

The big difference is: how important is the software for interoperability?

With an OS core, interoperability isn't really important. Existing BSD users presumably weren't too interested in buying shiny new Macs to run their BSD OS on, so Apple using BSD as the core of their OS really didn't affect them. Moreover, existing BSD users didn't need to interoperate with the new MacOS users. An OS isn't some kind of network protocol. BSD users could work with MacOS users just like users of any other OS, using existing network protocols and other standards.

The poster child for the BSD/GPL argument on the GPL side is usually Microsoft's "embracing and extending" of Kerberos. It's a network authentication protocol, licensed with a BSD-like permissive license, and Microsoft infamously forked it, creating their own proprietary extensions. This resulted in only non-MS users not being able to fully interoperate with MS users.

We do already see cases now where web developers write websites targeting Chrome-only browser extensions instead of sticking with standards. In theory, if this happened with Ladybird, it should be possible for the original devs to simply add their own versions of these extensions, but how feasible that it I'm not sure. Currently, there's Chrome-only extensions which apparently haven't been implemented by Firefox for some reason, so maybe it's not as easy as it sounds.

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

#529

Post by dotcoma » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:36 AM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #490

gigatexal wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I need 1Password and a vim mode plugin for me to be productive on the web.

Same, bitwarden is essential, as are ublock origin and privacy guard.

I second Bitwarden, ublock origin and privacy guard.

Also: how will you handle bookmarks? IMHO only Chrome does a good job with bookmarks — please copy them instead of reinventing the wheel.

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

#530

Post by shiroiushi » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:38 AM UTC

talldayo wrote: post #400

eitland wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Mac OS. I am aware that it builds on BSD. Yet BSD is very alive and nobody who wants BSD is lost to Mac. At least I personally have never heard anyone deliberating over a free BSD vs Mac. Edit: and of course upvote. Apple ran with it. But they didn't run away with it. We still have it. Actually we have some patches thanks to them. As I mentioned in my other reply: Open source is not a zero sum game.

> Actually we have some patches thanks to them. In a relative sense, I would argue that Apple has pilfered an order of magnitude higher value from the community than they have given back. The only example of Apple's net-positive contributions seem to be CUPS and LLVM, both of which were cross-platform before Apple took control. Compared with how much networking and userland code they've taken it feels like a trillion…

>Even Microsoft chips in more.

They do? With what? (Besides Linux kernel drivers that are only useful for running Linux on their own VM solution.) I guess VScode, for people that use it?

CUPS is fantastic, though you're right, it was cross-platform before Apple took control.