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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

#561
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey, just a reality check: It's rather condescending of you to assume that the developers of Ladybird aren't fully aware of the consequences that their choice of license entails.

That certainly wasn't the intention. Was there really a need to turn this into a personal swipe? This is a common outcome many smart and talented developers have historically come to regret. You can find their stories all over the web, including right here on HN. I didn't want to see the same thing happen here, is all.

There are very simple game theoretic-esque arguments that many fans of BSD/MIT dogmatically refuse to acknowledge, I've never gotten a straight answer from them, zero actual data when asked for any against my argument and just try to weasel out of the debate somehow.

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

#562

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 :)

Can you share the story of how the funding/patronage materialized? Were you already connected or was a more formal introduction & pitch needed?

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

#563
post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KHTML was the basis for Chrome and Safari. A valid concern

Was KHTML not GPL? How is MIT any worse at preventing this, when GPL didn't?

A: "Hey the measures we took weren't enough to prevent the abuse?"

B: "Ah I see that means we should just give up all measures, instead of you know advocating for stronger measures or anything else obvious and logical like that."

This only means we must start any projects today with stronger GPL or similar variants such as AGPL.

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

#564
post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KHTML was the basis for Chrome and Safari. A valid concern

Was KHTML not GPL? How is MIT any worse at preventing this, when GPL didn't?

Better analogy.

You had a security breach, despite using a better set of technologies and techniques.

During the postmortem, you suggest this means we should give up all security or just use the weaker solution, since its all the same, the server would have gotten breached in either case.

Instead of advocating for building a stronger security.

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

#565
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…

There should be a great diversity in user agents because there is great diversity in personal tastes.

One person's user agent might be another person's "software I would never use".

As a text-only web user I am continually amazed, thirty years in, that web developers and now their CDN service providers are _still_ making incorrect assumptions about what user agent I am using. They are wrong every single time. There is almost zero focus on rate limits but hyperfocus on user agent string or other headers. For most sites I send no user-agent header and this works fine. But when sites want certain headers this tells me the purpose is not "protecting" servers from being overloaded, it is "protecting" servers from web users who will not involuntarily provide commercially useful data/information so that access to them as ad targets can be sold for profit.

Choice of user agent should make no difference. The JSON I'm getting is the same regardless of what device or software I am using. I decide what I want to do with the JSON after I retrieve it.

Imagining how things could be different, there could be "commercial" user agents that people use for accessing their bank acconts online and for other commercial transactions. There could also be "non-commercial" user agents that people use to read HN. Unfortunately, the way things are now people are using commercial browsers for non-commercial web use and exposing themselves 24/7 to unecessary tracking and advertising.

Personally, I only use a commercial user agent infrequently. I'm not doing many commercial tranasctions over the web. Most times, I am using non-commercial user agents. I see no ads and can focus on the text.

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

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What is unacceptable for "some of us" is that rich corporations are parasites of the commons.

ANd give very little back. Like Apple on top of BSD or AWS on top Riak.

For people like me that find that unacceptable exist the GPL licenses.

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

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Both companies did the bare minimum demanded by the respective license, its just that one license forces a bit more as bare minimum. Think. What does this mean? If you use a license that demands even more, you could have pressurized the companies to behave even nicer.

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

#568
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

If Netflix doesn't work in the browser users aren't going to lean back in their chairs and think fondly of the freedom fighter jchw that protected them from working against their own interests, they are going to open Edge and watch Netflix.

No matter how much you opine the outcome is not going to change, the end users have spoken in what they want in their user agent.

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

#570

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 :)

When Ladybird first came a long the highest hope I had for it would be something like Konquer browser or the odd ball ones you see that haven't been maintained for years on various Linux Distros/old Mac Os releases. But with the updates, it wild to see progress moving steady but impressively. And the last year - wow! With all the donations, there is now a path towards a real viable alternative rather than something t…

Fun fact: Andreas has also worked on Konqueror/KHTML back in the day, or so I remember him saying in one of his videos.
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