Gosub – An open-source browser engine

Last year I wrote a post about trying to make a change in the world by writing a browser.

Today, we're excited to introduce Gosub, a new open-source browser engine that we are building from the ground up in Rust!

Gosub aims to be a modern, modular, and highly flexible browser engine. While still in the early development and experimentation phase, Gosub is shaping up nicely, and we’re looking to onboard more contributors to help us bring this project to life.

Some of the key highlights:

  * Written in Rust: We're leveraging Rust's safety and performance features to create a robust and efficient engine.
  * Modular Design: The project is organized around modules, allowing for clean separation of concerns and easier collaboration. It also allows us to easily swap components based on needs and allows more freedom for engine implementers in the future.
  * Collaborative and open source: We’re building Gosub with the intention of making it approachable and open to contributions, aiming to create a project that's easier to understand and collaborate on compared to existing browsers.

Instead of writing another shell around Chromium or WebKit, we decided to write a browser engine from scratch. We believe that having a diverse landscape of engines is the only way to defeat a monoculture that is currently threatening current browsers and by extension the internet itself. We cannot and should not let a very small number of large companies dictate the future of the web and its usage.

With Gosub, we're aiming to build something more approachable that can evolve with the latest web technologies, all while being open to contributors from day one.

We’re looking for developers with or without experience in Rust. You just need to be interested in browser technologies. There are plenty of opportunities to work on core modules, document our progress, and help shape the project's direction.

We can already render simple pages, including the hackernews front page. However, to render most sites correctly, it is still a long journey, so come and join us!

Gosub – An open-source browser engine
github.com

For those wondering which blogpost i referred to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41835040

I applaud the project espoused spirit, because, similarly to the author(s)' webpage, i don't think we should have a monopoly in this space ( especially given recent moves by Google ).

Small things to be noted ( in the small, but noticeable category):

- repeated paragraph ( https://gosub.io/learn-more/ )from 'Gosub started' to 'open and free' - that is it for now:D.. I will be personally watching it with some interest

edit: some grammar

Needs an FAQ

Why isn't contributing to existing projects like Servo feasible? Do they reject the benefits of modularity?

What existing code is being leveraged, or is this entirely from scratch? Why was lifting code from Servo or elsewhere not sufficient?

Is this project intending to remain fully non-profit or is there some kind of vision for monetization to support the gargantuan amount of effort it would take?

It says writing a javascript engine is out of scope, but it still isn't clear definitively what is in-scope or out of scope.

The various web specifications are insanely complex (e.g. navigables) so I can see how people burn out from it. To add onto that, a browser operates in an extremely hostile space security wise; to be a serious competitor, you'll need to be on top of your game in that regard which maybe Rust will help with.