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.
Im glad to see this. Discord is a nightmare. It’s the same as a Facebook only group to me.
I agree, but (hot take) I think that Discord is even worse than Facebook.
I share the disappointment.
is it open source?
builds a new browser from scratch without borrowing existing code
still chooses to do it in C++
Epic fail
The language choice was because Ladybird started as a component of SerenityOS, which is also written in C++. With this separation, they are free to gradually introduce other language(s) into the codebase, and maybe eventually replace C++ entirely, piece by piece.
In Hackernews thread about this, the head maintainer mentioned that they have been evaluating several languages already, so we’ll see what the future brings.
In the meantime, let’s try to be mature about it, what do you say?
Rust or bust
Then build a browser in rust…
Not sure if you are trying to be funny, but if not: enlighten us?
Sure :)
There are a lot of downsides of C++ compared to more modern languages that make it not a great choice if you’re starting a web browser from scratch
- Complexity of the language leading to increased bugs and slower development
- Manual memory management is error-prone and leads to issues like memory leaks or segmentation faults. Modern browsers need to handle large amounts of dynamic content, making memory management complicated
- C++ lacks some of the built-in safety features of more modern languages, which has led to the majority of security vulnerabilities found in major browsers. It’s so bad that Mozilla invented an entirely new programming language just to deal with this
- Compared to higher-level languages, C++ can be slower to develop in, which may impact the ability to quickly implement new web standards or features unless you have a massive team
- While C++ is cross-platform, ensuring consistent behavior across different operating systems can be more challenging than with some other languages.
- Newer languages often provide built-in support for concurrent programming, garbage collection, and other features useful for browser development, which C++ lacks.
So tl;dr: a browser but in C++ will take much longer to develop, have fewer features, more bugs, less concurrency and and more security vulnerabilities
Thanks for laying out your concerns. As a C++ developer who does not know the other languages you speak of (I assume Rust, Go), I can agree to some of your points, but also some of them I see differently:
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C++ can be complex, because it has a lot of features and especially the newer standards have brought some syntax that is hard to understand or read at times. However, those elements are not frequently used, or if they are, the developer will get used to them quickly & they won’t make development slow. As a matter of fact, most development time should be spent on thinking about algorithms, and thinking very well before implementing them - and until implementation, the language does not matter. I do not think that language complexity leads to increased bugs per se. My biggest project is just short of 40k lines of code, and most of the bugs I produced were the classical “off by one” or missing range checks, bugs that you can just as well produce in other languages.
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C++ no longer requires you to do manual memory management - that is what smart pointers are for, and RAII-programming.
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I can’t make a qualified comment on that, due to lack of expertise - you might be right.
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You’re somewhat repeating point 1) here with slow development. But you raise a good point: web standards have become insane in terms of quantity and interface sizes. Everyone and their dog wants to reinvent the wheel. That in itself requires a very large team to support I would say. As stated for point 1), I do not agree development in C++ has to be slower
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True, as someone who just suffered from problems introduced on windows (cygwin POSIX message queues implementation got broken by Win10, and inotify does not work on Windows Subsystem for Linux) I can confirm that while the C++ standard library is not much of a problem, the moment you interface with the host OS, you leave the standard realm and it becomes “zombieland”. Also, for some reason, the realtime library implementation on MacOS is different, breaking some very simple time-based functions. So yeah, that’s annoying to circumvent, but can be done by creating platform specific wrapper libraries that create a uniform API. For other languages, it appears this is done by the compilers, which is probably better - meaning the I/O operations got taken into those language’s core features
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I am highly doubtful of people relying on garbage collection - a programmer that doesn’t know exactly when his objects come into existence, and when they cease to exist is likely to make much bigger mistakes and produce very inefficient code. The aforementioned smart pointers in C++ solve this issue: object lifetime is the scope of the smart pointer declaration, and for shared pointers, object lifetime expires when the last process using it leaves the scope in which it is declared. For concurrent programming, I do not know if you mean concurrency (threads) or multiple people working on the same project. While multi-threading can be a bit “weird” at first, you have a lot of control over shared variables and memory barriers in C++ that might enable a team to produce a browser that is much faster, which I believe is a core requirement towards modern browsers
As for your tl;dr: definitely not “less concurrency”, that makes no sense. The other points may or may not be true, keeping in mind the answers I gave above.
Appreciate you taking the time to reply in such detail! Some good insights thank you
You had some valid points as well - I enjoy a good constructive exchange, thank you! :)
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C++ is a very old, extremely complex language. There are arguably objectively better modern alternatives, such as Rust.
Rust is great, but anybody developing something should have the ability to choose whatever programming language they prefer. If you want it made with rust, make it yourself.
Of course, but it still makes sense to think carefully about the advantages of disadvantages of the tools you use when starting any project.
I agree that Rust is the way to go, but calling something “arguably” & “objectively” in the same breath is a bit of a paradox innit?
I’m not sure 10 years old are allowed on the internet. Isn’t it time for Coco and bed?
I agree that Rust would be an interesting choice for this project but there’s a reason why this particular project is done in C++
I wouldn’t go around accusing people of being 10 years old when your English skills are worse than a 10 year old’s. Glass houses and all that.
English is not my first language. I saw the mistake and left it here. You fixated on that simple mistake instead of answering the main point
Your main (or at least first) point was to throw childish insults around, so you got the same in return
I do not understand the urge to start from scratch instead of forking an existing, mature codebase. This is typically a rookie instinct, but they aren’t rookie so there’s perhaps an alternative motive of some sort.
I can’t understand how people can continue relying on chrome and derivatives like electron, CEF etc. and not see it as a problem.
There is currently no implementation of web standards that is under a more permissive license than LGPL or MPL. I think that is a gap worth filling and if I recall that is what Ladybird is doing.
I guess Chromium isn’t fully BSD. This could be the reason. Although I’d think reimplementing the non-BSD bits in Chromium would be less work than reimplementing all the bits, including the BSD ones.
Chromium and WebKit both still have bits from KHTML in them which is LGPL
Why is that a gap worth filling? There is no benefit to users as long as its free of a EULA they don’t have to care either way. For those wanting to produce open source software based on same they already have all the rights they could need. The only party clamoring for permissively licensed software are companies intending to close off the source and sell other people’s work.
I understand why they would want to do that I don’t understand why anyone would feel the need to work for free for something someone else closes off.
There are some cases where it’s just not possible to release the source code, even if you wanted to.
For example, if you’re developing a Nintendo switch game, you aren’t allowed to release any code that uses Nintendo’s sdk, so that means you also can’t use any copyleft libraries.
Maybe MPL-licensed libraries would be ok though. Idk, I’m not a lawyer.
Why would open source code be released with the intention of helping people who wont or can’t give back?
Why not?
I’ve been in situations where I couldn’t release the code to a project, but I was able to use some decent libraries because they were MIT licensed.
So I’m happy to do the same for libraries I write so that others in similar situations could also receive the same benefit I did.
I see it as an act of public goodwill, like paying it forward for the times you can’t directly contribute to another project.Just my personal view on it, anyway.
I’m not claiming it’s a bulletproof solution or that it isn’t open to being ‘abused’.It’s an act of public goodwill to rich corporations who could get the same privilege by paying for a separate license.
i’d argue its better for software to max foss license like AGPL, not bsd that can be taken out by companies
Because there are only like 3 browser engines: Chrome’s Blink, Firefox’s Gecko and Apple‘s WebKit. And while they are all open source, KHTML, the last independent browser engine got discontinued last year and hasn’t been actively developed since 2016.
There’s need in the space for an unaffiliated engine. Google’s share is far too high for a healthy market (roughly 75%), WebKit never got big outside of Safari (although there are a few like Gnome Web, there’s no up to date WebKit based browser on Windows) and Gecko has its own problems (like lack of HEVC support).
So, in my book, this is exciting news. Sure it‘ll take a while to mature and it is up against software giants but it‘s something because Mozilla doesn’t seem to have a working strategy to fight against Google‘s monopoly and Apple doesn’t have to.
Also Gecko’s development is led by people thinking that it being usable outside of Firefox\Thunderbird is a bad thing. There was a time when Gnome’s browser was based on Gecko, not WebKit. And in general it’s influenced by bad practices.
SerenityOS is an amazing project, of course. To do so much work for something completely disconnected from the wider FOSS ecosystem, and with such results.
So it’s cool that they’ve decided to split off the browser as its own project.
That’s always struck me as odd, but I’m also very much an outsider looking in. A “gecko electron” does sound intriguing though.
I wonder why Microsoft decided to switch from their own engine to Blink, they could’ve switched to Gecko and keep the web a little bit more free
Why would Microsoft care?
I meant alternative browsers, like vimb or surf, but on Gecko and not WebKit.
Servo is going to fill that void
WDYM “independent” ?
Isn’t mozilla / gecko more or less independent?
They get most of their money from google for the “default search engine deal” make of that what you want. For me personally it doesn’t sound fully independent.
Seems a little idealistic.
If ladybird actually achieves any sort of userbase they would take the same deal in an instant.
Based on the community being quite succsessful so far despite being made by volunteers, I don’t think they will.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Webkit and blink have the same base
Could they not add HEVC support? Or is there some technical limitation that meant starting from zero was a good idea?
They could, probably. My guess is, that it’s either a limitation of resources, the issue of licensing fees or Google‘s significant financial influence on Mozilla forcing them to make a worse browser than they potentially could. Similar to how Firefox does not support HDR (although, to my knowledge, there’s no licensing involved there).
The biggest problem most people have with Mozilla is said influence by Google, making them not truly independent.
If 50% of firefox users donated 2 dollars per year mozilla could work for people instead of Google or at least people AND google
The problem is, most user don’t want to pay. And every time mozilla tries to monetise differently they get community backlash…
HEVC is almost entirely down the the licensing. This section of the wikipedia page details it pretty well.
The tl;dr is that the LA group wanted to hike the fees significantly, and that combined with a fear of locking in led to the mozilla group not to support HEVC.
And it’s annoying at times. Some of my security cameras are HEVC only at full resolution, which means I cannot view them in Firefox.
Because software monocultures are bad. The vast majority of browsers are Chromium based. Since Google de-facto decides what gets in Chromium, sooner or later the downstream forks are forced to adopt their changes. Manifest V3 is a great example of this. You can only backport for so long, especially when upstream is being adversarial to your changes. We need an unaffiliated engine that corrects the mistakes we made with KHTML/Webkit.
Why are open source software monocultures bad? The vast majority of non-Windows OSes are Linux based. Teams who don’t like certain decisions of the mainline Linux team maintain their forks with the needed changes.
Manifest V3 is a great example of this. You can only backport for so long, especially when upstream is being adversarial to your changes. We need an unaffiliated engine that corrects the mistakes we made with KHTML/Webkit.
And we could get a functional one today by forking Chromium and never accepting a single upstream patch thereafter. I find it really hard to believe that starting a browser engine from scratch would require less labor. This is why I’m looking for an alternative motive. Someone mentioned licensing.
Perhaps some folks just want to do more work to write a new browser engine. After all Linus did just that, instead of forking the BSD kernel.
Love the idea! Shopify as the highest tier sponsor? Not so much.
I mean if they’re gonna give money without demanding anything I’m sure no complaints from the devs.
Shopify or an exec there might find some value in avoiding Google owning the web, could maybe bring goodwill for the company, or they could just be looking for a write off.
I’m curious what issue you see with that? It seems like the project is only accepting unrestricted donations, but is there something suspicious about shopify that makes it’s involvement concerning (I don’t know much about them)?
My best guess would be that Shopify either care about the open Web or had some disagreements with Google.
I can’t find anything shady on them, but maybe I’m looking the wrong places.
As Firefox will introduce Manifest V3 which will make ad-blockers unusable, I hope they will not implement that as well … But since this is so new, this will not have any add-ons at all for the foreseeable future
Stop spreading lies. Firefox will not deprecate the APIs that enable adblocking..
Remind me in 2 years when this project becomes discontinued…
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.
I hope this pans out, because I’ve long ago lost hope on Firefox being a worthy alternative to Chromium.
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.
Firefox has been perfectly capable for the entire time it has existed. What are you talking about?
Wasn’t this the transphobic one?
Changing to gender neutral seems like a no brainer to me but how is this transphobia?
i like how they’re like this isnt the place for personal politics while ignoring the fact that gendered readme files are patently stupid in the first place.
Shoutout to the user pointing out that forcing “he” is just as, if not more, political ❤️
Brave?
Don’t believe they’re related
“Ladybird uses a brand new engine based on web standards, without borrowing any code from other browsers.” has the same energy as
Not really. They aren’t inventing new standards. They are implementing an engine that confirms to existing standards.
you shouldn’t use this browser the devs are transphobic sexist chuds
Why don’t ya’ll contribute some meaningful code instead of finding ways to deny those who do
Please describe to me how someone who offered up changes to change “he” to “they” for them, and then the contributor getting pissy about “politics” is denying work.
Yeah, I saw this, and all my excitement for the project died. If it becomes successful, I might use it anyway though.
… What
Hmm. I just read the github thread that this is about. The devs made a mistake on this; but it seems to me that there is a bit of an over-reaction here. The people in the thread seem to be discussing it calmly and politely; and the issue (i.e. use of pronouns in the build instructions) ends up being resolved. By contrast, the reaction outside of the actual thread… is extreme.
Like I said, this seems like an overreaction to someone making a mistake of ignorance & indifference. It wasn’t an act of malice.
they must be trying to go after the brave marketshare
Appears to be fixed now: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/24648
All this because they won’t change a “he” into “they” ? Who gives a fuck about such rampant whiteknightism ? Why does a browser even need to know your gender ? In what context even is there a pronoun in the user interface ?
You could find out the context by reading the title of the thread, but then you’d have less to bitch about, so I can understand why you chose ignorance.
I use Firefox.
Ok
The project management may have some obvious problems (jOin dIsc0Rd sErVEr; w0rD “thEy” t0o p0liTicAl). But we really need an alternative to browsers funded by Google (Chrome and Firefox).
So I’ll do my best to actually build from sources and see what can I help with. Attacking the author is helping nobody.
And for the folks who are saying “wHy n0t rUst”, you can always show me the (rust) code.
And for the folks who are saying “wHy n0t rUst”, you can always show me the (rust) code.
https://github.com/servo/servo
I really wish they would publish flatpaks because I can’t be arsed to either build the thing or get a non-standard precompiled binary to run on nixos.
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!
