Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Its hard. 2. No one will pay for a browser.
The existence of open source software suggests there are other factors.
Such as?
I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
61–70 of 194 posts
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#62Wait, what is this person trying to do? They're not happy that Google open-sourced Chrome, so they also demand that Google open-source some DRM system so that they can make a media player for Netflix or something? Forgive me for not feeling sorry for someone who wants to make a browser polluted with DRM who complains that someone else is enforcing their copyright.
If your goal is that new browsers should only be able to be made without DRM, then you're effectively saying that we can't have any new mainstream browsers unless they're built by already established companies and commit to not doing anything creative or new that Google doesn't like.
I run Firefox without DRM support on my computers, and I believe that the web would be better today if DRM had never been forced into the standards process. However, ideology aside, if you want to make a browser that ordinary people can use, then it is unacceptable for that browser to not to play Netflix. DRM on its own is a threat to the Open web, but DRM that is only usable by a few big players is an even bigger threat to the Open web.
I would argue that we should be concerned when the largest browser on the market effectively has the power to decide whether or not websites will work on competing browsers. To me, that undermines the entire point of having web standards in the first place.
A bit of rant, but this is something that advocates warned about when DRM was in the process of being added as a web standard. It would be better if we didn't have DRM on the web at all. But at the very least, if we are going to have DRM, then there needs to be a consistent, accessible licensing model that allows any browser to interface with that DRM component. I'm sorry if Netflix has problems with that, but Netflix's current business model is not more important than the platform that literally created and enabled Netflix's currently business model. And companies like Google should not be allowed to decide who can and can't compete with them, it's anticompetitive through and through.
If you want a diverse browser ecosystem, then anyone building a browser should be able to interface with Widevine to play protected content.
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#63Regardless of the discussion, Electron browsers are very insecure and is not a stable foundation to build a browser on. Electron even recommend that you do not try and build a browser using it.
This. Brave famously migrated away from Electron because of the security implications of that approach.
Also, it kind of makes sense: You'd effectively be implementing a browser (or the GUI thereof) in a browser.
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#64Regardless of the discussion, Electron browsers are very insecure and is not a stable foundation to build a browser on. Electron even recommend that you do not try and build a browser using it.
This. Brave famously migrated away from Electron because of the security implications of that approach. Also, it kind of makes sense: You'd effectively be implementing a browser (or the GUI thereof) in a browser.
if the underlying language were Lisp or Smalltalk then implementing it thus might be a rational shoo-in.
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but it's not a browser, it's a glorified media player. Basically the dev wanted to take Electron (a wrapper of Chromium/v8, the Google maintained FOSS browser engine) + Google's Widevine, smash them together with some glue code and a special-purpose UI, and call it a "broswer".
Brave also started out this way—building a browser on top of Electron. [0] Building something on top of the Chromium project is still building a browser. You're right that it's not building a rendering engine and JavaScript interpreter though. [0] https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop
... and Brave famously migrated away from building a browser using Electron, because of the security-implications (not to mention that Electron actively discourages it).
Building something on top of the Chromium project is pretty different than using and embedded version of its web engine.
In the case of a high-impact vulnerability, for instance, the time between committing a fix in Chromium and the user having an updated browser is obviously shorter than committing a fix in Chromium and making a release, waiting for the framework embedding Blink to update it's embedded engine and make a release, waiting for a "browser" built using an embedded framework to update its dependencies (including the new version of embedded framework) and pushing a new release to end users.
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#66If you are a business I'd check if in your country there is a body that deals with anti-competitive behaviour and make a complaint.
I'm not the creator of this web browser, probably should clarify that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553941 Edit: Title changed from "I tried creating..." to "Someone tried creating..."
"I" in the title refers to the article author, not the HN submitter, so there's no need.
If you really want to differentiate that, you can put the entire title in quotes, but I think that's overkill here.
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#67Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553941
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's trivial to create a browser that's just a Chromium fork. It's nearly impossible to create one that isn't. Firefox (and Tor) is basically the only one. https://alternativeto.net/software/google-chrome/
Opera was originally based on the Presto layout engine from 1995-2013. Then it switched to being a Chromium based browser in 2013 so they could utilize the Chromium plug-in ecosystem. The ecosystem is the big issue for a lot of these products. It why Microsoft's Windows phone failed so badly - they didn't have the app store to compete with or allow users to migrate to their platform without losing a lot of apps they…
> Then it switched to being a Chromium based browser in 2013 so they could utilize the Chromium plug-in ecosystem.
Opera switched to Chromium because they didn't consider it profitable enough to keep developing their own engine, and laid off a large portion of their browser developers. It was entirely about money and nothing to do with using Chrome extensions.
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Brave famously migrated away from Electron because of the security implications of that approach. Also, it kind of makes sense: You'd effectively be implementing a browser (or the GUI thereof) in a browser.
if the underlying language were Lisp or Smalltalk then implementing it thus might be a rational shoo-in.
I don't know. Implementing a browser in a browser can make XSS potentially bad, and I think it even lead to full on RCE in the earlier days of Brave/Electron. Still happens, I think (though to a lesser extent these days).
There's also the difference in time between committed patch and end user having a new release in the case of a critical vulnerability, for instance.
Using an embedded browser framework introduces many intermediate parties, some (many?) of which might not have being up to date with the upstream as a priority – which leads to a weakened state of security in the "browsers" downstream.
Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)
#70I'm no an expert on DRM, but maybe someone here is. What would open source programs using DRM look like? My understanding is that the whole point of DRM is to prevent the software and the user from having arbitrary control over the data, which is fundamentally opposite of open source. Say that Google desperately wanted to support any reasonable method to accomplish allowing open source tools access to DRM-protected m…
Binary blobs (i.e. not open source) ?