I use Firefox.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Good luck!
It's hard to understand the purpose of this. The difficulty of the project (i.e. complexity of the web) is the real problem that needs solving. We don't need another fork of the browser-verse. We need a fork of the web itself.
They have a fork of the web. Its called the dark web. They use it to sell hookers and drugs.
We also have a fork of money, it's called crypto and it's used to sell and buy hookers and drugs. Every fork of something end up used to buy hookers and drugs. Truly marvelous!
I mean........yes?
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Considering how much Google has entrenched itself into the Internet (see manifest v3 fiasco), I would argue that creating a new browser is a fork of the web
I want to follow updates from this project. They have a Twitter account but not Mastodon sigh
RSS is not even enabled on the Newz page on the website.
I share the disappointment.
I found they have a newsletter, that sounds like an acceptable middle ground, not good, not terrible.
Im glad to see this. Discord is a nightmare. It's the same as a Facebook only group to me.
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Best of luck, I guess, but seems like a doomed project to me. Forking WebKit, Gecko, or even Servo would seem much more reasonable, and even that is a huge undertaking.
Contributing directly to Firefox and reducing the dependence on Google should be three best bet
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Funny how in the video the guy say that all other browsers are based on Google's code. But Firefox is also independent right?
He says "powered by or funded by Google". Firefox depends on Google financially, most of the income of Mozilla comes from Google paying for being the default search engine.
They try to diversify their income (Firefox VPN, email alias service, etc.), but anything they try gets a huge backlash from the community, and still small compared to the the money from google.
Google is Mozilla's biggest source of income, and google developers have actively contributed code to the Firefox engine.
So you decide for yourself what level of independence you assign to it.
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Kudos to them. Opera gave up on this dream being unable to accommodate all the nuances of web standards and accounting for out of conformance behaviours that many websites rely on the daily.
I reckon this browser will need to be at least on par with reasonably recent version of Firefox to see significant adoption.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I've had more than a handful of people bitching at me that it's impossible to make a new, open web browser in this day.
I think it's less that it's "impossible" but rather that it's expensive.
Honestly we've in general shoved too much shit into the browser that's not strictly related to just browsing web sites.
And you "have to" support all the layers and layers and layers of added stuff, or you can't "compete".
But, at the same time, the goals of making a good-enough browser that mostly works and isn't completely enshittified and captured by corpo big tech interests is a very worthy project and 100% support what they're doing.
or you can't compete
Nah nah fuck that noise. 'Jack of all trades but ace of none' or however the saying goes, is a shitty way to go about things. I don't have the biggest dick but I know my way around around the block, and I know I'm good at it. More specialized > the catch-all bitches.
Let the fucks with their special engine requirements eat shit. Standardize or write a fucking proper program (miss me with that "app" bullshit) or fuck right off. "everyone is special... exactly like you" now fuck off web dev. Your shit doesn't get a permit.
.....
I may have some... disputes with the way the web is done nowadays.
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JavaScript was a mistake.
And it went downhill from there.
It was fine when it was contained to an actual web site instead of infecting desktop software too. To me, using JS for that purpose feels like using PHP to write a 3D video game.
using PHP to write a 3D video game.
Somewhere, someone just had a really bad idea.
It’s a general language (though primarily adopted by web as backend engine), so you can basically expect people already have had this idea.
Eh, scriptable content was probably fine.
Techbros going 'holy shit, we should make EVERYTHING a website!' was the curse that doomed us.
Pushing for bloated web apps instead of having optimized and perfectly functional websites was what killed it for me.
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Their rendering engine is already pretty solide (see penultimate video in their channel). Now that their "no third party" restriction is lifted, they can actually focus on building a browser engine instead of recreating 30 years worth of technologies from scratch.
They’re making a new browser engine from scratch in an open way, absolutely amazing!
I do have several questions:
Why would they use BSD instead of GPL? If you care about open-source so much, why would you make it possible for a company to run away with your fancy new engine?
Why are they creating a new browser, when even firefox has to struggle to keep some semblance of market share? I get that not every project needs to aim to be “the biggest”, and that even a smaller project (in terms of users), can be fun. It’s just that writing a browser engine that can handle the modern web seems like an almost Sisyphean task; which makes me wonder what their motivation(?) is.
Why the FLOSS are they using closed-source proprietary discord as their main communication channel?
- (BSD vs GPL) Andreas stated on twitter that he wanted to give devs total freedom to use his work because when he worked at Apple he felt frustrated he couldn't incorporate some code/software into his work because of GPL.
- (Why?) The aim is not to create a chrome competitor, but to make a good enough, truly free browser that isn't either chrome or funded by chrome. A browser made for and by its user's.
- (Discord) Because of gen-z.
As someone who uses BSD licensed modified code at work and relies on it quite a lot, it's crucial to me choosing which projects I'm able to use in the first place.
Personally, I prefer a license that allows for commercial use in the way that companies need them to, and if my own work ever can provide a patch back upstream I'd be happy to do so, but most of what I do is just tweaking things that exist to suit my purposes which doesn't really help anyone but my business rivals which I personally am not interested in doing if I don't have to.
I prefer to have the freedom to do as I wish with the code, as compared to being bound to do as the author wishes and essentially just not using that code in the first place because I can't. I'm not in a position to change what I can and can't do because of the requirements of the business I work for, and I'm grateful to those that choose licenses that allow me to use their work.
They're creating a new browser because they want to. It started as an OS building project that the lead dev did to help stay sober.
They use discord because it's popular. Insert Ouroborus argument here, and at the end of the day it's still the most popular app.
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Laaaaaaaaa^dybird.^
The comment I came here for 🐶
We're gonna have to put laaaaaaaadybird down... Mr Hill?
I hope this pans out, because I've long ago lost hope on Firefox being a worthy alternative to Chromium.
Firefox has been perfectly capable for the entire time it has existed. What are you talking about?
Have you used Firefox recently? There are a few chrome only sites but I've been daily driving it for a few months and it's mostly upside
I can no longer play any podcast hosted on Apple podcasts, which is a distressing amount of them.
They work just fine in Chromium.
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The website makes it sound like all of the code being bespoke and "based on standards" is some kind of huge advantage but all I see is a Herculean undertaking with too few engineers and too many standards.
W3C lists 1138 separate standards currently, so if each of their three engineers implements one discrete standard every day, with no breaks/weekends/holidays, then having an alpha available that adheres to all 2024 web standards should be possible by 2026?
This is obviously also without testing but these guys are serious, senior engineers, so their code will be perfect on the first try, right?
Love the passion though, can't wait to see how this project plays out.
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C++
If they're starting a browser from scratch, why would they not have chosen Rust? Seems very short sighted to not have learned from Firefox.
They used c++ initially since it was spawned from SerenityOS, which was designed to be a mashup of win2000 and unix.
now that Ladybird is its own project, it's not constrained to that goal, and they have said they will incorporate modern languages.
Glad to hear that!
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