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

lunduke.locals.com

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

#701

Post by rice7th »

bayindirh wrote: post #592
rice7th wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because apple themselves forked it. Only a handful of companies have the power to basically change the web browser market, and apple sure was one. Nowadays every company copies from chrome, so why would anyone bother forking ladybird?

Doesn't this contradict with what you said? According to your previous comment, even if Apple has forked KHTML, it shouldn't harm Konqueror, and it shall prevail as the most popular of its family. However, Konqueror/KHTML is now dead and we only have a closed source Safari. I can't fathom your comments back to back.

Apple didn't kill KHTML, the web did.

As I've already stated, any company that may fork a similar project would actually cause more benefit than harm. KHTML died because the web started to get very complex very fast and KDE volounteers couldn't keep up with that pace, unlike Apple employees. Now that the web is a bit more stable, with less standards that are more thought-out (webassembly), it's a lot easier to maintain a web browser. So if tomorrow Microsoft hops in and announces it's intent to fork ladybird, then the latter would not only be fine, but it would probably recieve a new wave of contributors.

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

#702

Post by injidup »

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…

> You should be forced

I think you answered this yourself.

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

#703

Post by lukan »

pferde wrote: post #699
lukan wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As for random volunteers disappearing, the protection against that is easy - increase the bus factor, by multiple people having necessary access" That is not easy. It works till the first drama and then some angry person deletes it all, or changes and takes the keys with them. So you have to really take care who to trust. "If the project leadership does not see a value in using open infrastructure" And I do not thin…

Sure, nightmare scenarios can happen, but how often do they, really? There are many successful FOSS projects who have teams of volunteers taking care of infrastructure in this way for years, if not decades, and how many bad situations have we had overall? Simply put, this approach is proven to work. We can always "butwhatif?" ourselves into a corner and get paralyzed because of that, but it's senseless.

It is not a nightmare scenario, but a pretty common human thing to make drama.

So I totally agree, that there are tons of examples where it worked and in the long term I also think they should switch to something better, but for the moment I see why they don't, as it is working for them as it is.

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

#704

Post by naught0 »

flumpcakes wrote: post #472
healsdata wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is absolutely ridiculous take. If true, I'm not sure how any work gets done in America.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Meanwhile the "flagged" comment is thoughtful, engaged, and not remotely insulting. Interesting.

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

#705

Post by tombert »

nicebyte wrote: post #443
tombert wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it almost impossible? I'm a little out of practice with C++ but I thought the modern C++ features were considered pretty solid in regards to memory safety and the like?

c++ isn't memory safe and will probably never be. that being said, it's not more or less possible to create an efficient browser engine for multicore systems with c++ than any other language. programming language is not the thing that makes the task difficult.

As I said, I'm pretty out of practice, but doesn't stuff like unique_ptr give you a lot of memory-safe features out of the box?

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

#706

Post by jchw »

Dalewyn wrote: post #671
squigz wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last paragraph is unnecessarily aggressive, and seems to me an uncharitable reading of their position and how they've presented it.

The HN Guidelines state to "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says", which is what I did. And yes, I was aggressive, but I don't think it was unwarranted given how strongly he feels about making people "do the right thing" as far as he is concerned. It would be nice if we could go back(?) to a world where the user operates their computer, not the computer operating their user.

Yes, but as I stated no less than three times, I am talking about what goes into web standards and the web platform. That is before the term "user agent" comes into things, because web standards are about what the web is, not about the programs that serve and access it. It really side-steps the semantics debate quite elegantly, but it's inconvenient for your argument which is shallow and depends on a pretty lame interpretation of the words "user agent".

A user agent should chiefly do what the user tells it to do, but if you pay more attention, you'll see how bad web standards can actually still screw over the user. Because if you make particularly bad web standards, the user agent can still do what the user is telling it to do, but the website can then start behaving in a manner which goes against what the user is telling their computer to do.

If browsers had implemented WEI, a chief use case was to allow websites to control whether extensions and adblocking could be used while browsing their pages. And the clever part is, sure, your user agent could implement WEI "wrong" and let the user do whatever they want, but the attestation would allow the website to decide which user agents pass attestation, so you can't just make a user agent that does what the user wants.

DRM and WEI are pretty similar as they're both technologies that require computer programs to restrict what you can do on your own computer (and DRM does what WEI does with browser choice but in a litigation way instead of cryptographically-attested way), but I will repeat this again for hopefully the last time:

Not wanting DRM in web standards has nothing to do with the definition of a user agent.

One more time:

Not wanting DRM in web standards has nothing to do with the definition of a user agent.

Seriously, stop ignoring this. It's not like I didn't already aggressively state it previously.

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

#707

Post by thro1 »

ArtixFox wrote: post #698
llama_drama wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40862781 . While it's certainly possible to write the same parallel algorithm in C++, it wasn't done in Firefox before Rust, nor has it been done in Chrome.

thats nice! in my first comment I did say that both are good for performance. I just find the idea of performance being irrelevant to be...ridiculous.

If you can not do something it's performance of what exactly ? (of nothing, or ads)

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

#708

Post by ArtixFox »

thro1 wrote: post #707
ArtixFox wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats nice! in my first comment I did say that both are good for performance. I just find the idea of performance being irrelevant to be...ridiculous.

If you can not do something it's performance of what exactly ? (of nothing, or ads)

But you can implement the same algorithm in c++, you can even implement it in assembly, or brainfuck! I do not care about c++ or rust or any of the language wars stuff. All I wanted to do was point out that the initial statement about disregarding performance was ridiculous and also point out that majority of the performance critical libraries are written in C++.When it comes to numerics its a mix of C++, C, asm, and fortran.

These things are still true.

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

#709

Post by ArtixFox »

thro1 wrote: post #637
ArtixFox wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance is overrated? What? I'm sorry but not all people are rich enough to own multiple threadrippers. Performance is a skill, probably one of the most important skills. Rust is a darn language, not a skill. You can have performant code in rust and in c++ and damnit even in brainfuck if you care enough. But the reality is that there is more performance oriented code written in C++ than in rust, and that matters.

Another skill, inconvinient, forbidden and forgotten ( * * * that I wish Ladybird will have * * * ): plugins - so I have A Browser For All Documents that can play every video format regardless of web video codec support or licencing etc. (with vlc, mplayer, whatever). Neither Javascript shall be needed to see anything on the Web - if not being essential for tracking and ads - but it's you who have to pay for it with…

The discussion has nothing to do with the importance of a specific skill.

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

#710

Post by thro1 »

ArtixFox wrote: post #708
thro1 wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can not do something it's performance of what exactly ? (of nothing, or ads)

But you can implement the same algorithm in c++, you can even implement it in assembly, or brainfuck! I do not care about c++ or rust or any of the language wars stuff. All I wanted to do was point out that the initial statement about disregarding performance was ridiculous and also point out that majority of the performance critical libraries are written in C++.When it comes to numerics its a mix of C++, C, asm, and…

Use your brain not mine, read and repeat. You can't measure performace of something if it's not possible to do that at all first. Like.. of your understanding till you do - then you can work on it (to make it less noisy and that, not how fast, is what for others matter).
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