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

#531

Post by nwienert » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:40 AM UTC

talldayo wrote: post #510

fouc wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that when Chrome came out it was heavily marketed/targeted towards developers. Developers took it up and then built websites in & for Chrome. The end result is many websites work better in Chrome than Firefox or Safari. It's a vicious cycle of continuing dependency. I'm doing my part to break the cycle by supporting the underdog by using Safari as my daily driver & developing primarily for Safari & Fir…

> It's a vicious cycle of continuing dependency. Or a viscous cycle of continued development. There are definitely things that Chrome does that nobody else should copy, but there's also a lot of stuff like WebGPU and WebRTC that should be standard. Firefox doesn't drag their feet in the same way Apple does, and they certainly don't resist standardization by trying to limit what a user can do on their device. I have n…

The data doesn’t show they drag their feet though. If anything FF is behind.

I genuinely enjoy Safari as a user more than Chrome. As a developer the dev tools suck. But as a user - the UI is far more minimal and nice. Every single action feels 2-3x faster, from opening and closing, tab opening or movement, etc. Battery lasts significantly longer. And I never really run into anything that doesn’t work, ever. Plus never worry about the latest hidden checkbox I have to find to not have my data soaked up. Hide my email is also dope.

The more responsive and thoughtful UI and battery/performance alone would have sold me. But the privacy and modern features it’s gotten over the last years make it better imo.

Just want to give a perspective as I feel people should update priors from 2021 “Safari is the new IE”

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

#532

Post by jeanlucas » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:46 AM UTC

> Notice to users in Brazil

> Because of Brazilian government demands to remove creators from our platform, Locals is currently unavailable in Brazil

> We are challenging these government demands and hope to restore access soon

Does anyone have access to it?

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

#533

Post by guywithahat » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:48 AM UTC

dbcooper wrote: post #4

>Why build a new browser in C++ when safer and more modern languages are available? >Ladybird started as a component of the SerenityOS hobby project, which only allows C++. The choice of language was not so much a technical decision, but more one of personal convenience. Andreas was most comfortable with C++ when creating SerenityOS, and now we have almost half a million lines of modern C++ to maintain. >However, now…

I kind of hope it stays with C++. C++ has been around for decades and is the gold standard for large performance applications, if they used python like many open source projects I worry it would be too slow, and rust feels like a fad

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

#534

Post by modeless » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

nox101 wrote: post #520

Do you have a roadmap? WebGL, WebGL2, WebGPU, WebNN, WebXR, WebAudio, WebRTC, WebAssembly? Etc....? Each of those seem like a multi-year project for a team on their own if you're not going to take code from any other browser

Part of the reason for forking from SerenityOS was to allow adopting third party libraries. They've already added Skia and FFmpeg and a bunch of other stuff. WebGL will almost certainly be supported by ANGLE, WebGPU by Dawn or wgpu, WebRTC by the WebRTC library. WASM on the other hand is usually tied to the JS engine which is custom. I believe it's already partially implemented.

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

#535

Post by stephen_g » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:52 AM UTC

wwwwwwwweb wrote: post #52

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 :)

> we have almost half a million lines of modern C++ to maintain. ...We are actively evaluating a number of alternatives and will be adding a mature successor language to the project in the near future. This process is already quite far along, and prototypes exist in multiple languages. What languages have prototypes and where can I learn more?

I wonder if they are thinking Swift - their C++ interop is still pretty new and has a way to mature, but it’s designed for exactly this [1] (we should expect Apple to start doing it with WebKit and other big C++ projects, even perhaps LLVM).

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgivCGdmFrw

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

#536

Post by rafaelgoncalves » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:54 AM UTC

jeanlucas wrote: post #532

> Notice to users in Brazil > Because of Brazilian government demands to remove creators from our platform, Locals is currently unavailable in Brazil > We are challenging these government demands and hope to restore access soon Does anyone have access to it?

same problem here (so many paywalls and blocks to brazilians ip's ), i used a proxy: https://12ft.io/https%3A%2F%2Flunduke.locals.com%2Fpost%2F58...

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

#537

Post by fuzztester » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 1:55 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…

Your logic seems faulty.

Let me see if I have this right:

>For some of us that is unacceptabme.

1. So, Apple, creator of macOS, "the most valuable company on the planet", followed the rules of the BSD licence,and that is unacceptable?

But, Google, a company that is also highly valuable, and the creator of Chrome, also followed the rules of the LGPL licence, but that is acceptable?

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

#538

Post by fastball » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:05 AM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #16

I wonder what would happen if Ladybird matures well to compete with Firefox and Chrome (hope so), and it's just forked away by some company and completely closed down in a whim, because BSD-2 allows that.

To some extent I think Andreas Kling et al might still find that a win, given that the browser market would still have more choice than it does today.

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

#539

Post by MathMonkeyMan » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:06 AM UTC

> What's more, they are confident [building a new browser from scratch] can be done without taking any funding from corporate deals or advertising revenue.

And what if you succeed? Best of luck on this bold endeavor, and try not to break our hearts.

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

#540

Post by jchw » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:12 AM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #521

jchw wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Firstly, I object to DRM being added to the web platform in the first place. It is antithetical to the platform. This goes above the definition of what a user agent is and goes into what the web even is in the first place.

Secondly, users don't really get a choice. Users are fucked because browsers implement features like DRM and websites hard-depend on them. So the user is no longer choosing whether or not to enable DRM, but whether or not they can watch Netflix on their laptop. User agents should not put users in predicaments like this where they are forced to make choices against their own interests. This is one of those situations where nuance is necessary.