I used to follow Ladybird/SerenityOS stuff but their takes on "political stuff" is just... too bad.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Neat. But it’s kind of concerning to see yet another OSS project hitch it’s community resourcing to Discord.
Yeah, it's a bit at odds with their "free from corporate influence" angle. Absolutely no reason to not use Matrix.
I actually do not like Discord and wish they did not use it. That said “absolutely no reason not to use Matrix” is clearly an objectively untrue statement.
Andreas has always been very pragmatic. He will choose the tools he likes best.
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We need more browser engines, especially those that are under NFP ownership. WebKit and Chromium have become too dominant.
It’s great to build a completely open browser from scratch and I want to follow updates from the project. They have a Twitter account but not Mastodon sigh
And Discord for communication
The other day I was reading some GitHub issues involving an issue I was also having and the maintainer of the project was directing people to their discord server to talk about and hopefully resolve the issue. On top of that, they came back to the GitHub issue and just posted that after some discussion (on Discord) the issue had been resolved. Totally useless to me and anybody else who might be searching for that thing.
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TL;DR: The Ladybird browser, which was written from scratch and aims to be an alternative to corporate-backed browser, now has a non-profit organisation behind it. Also, it got additional funding of 1 million dollars. The end.
Ah, now I can be excited for them and move on with my day. I get that video presentations can be great for feature releases that need visual aids, but I don't want to sit through a video for details that can be summed up in two sentences.
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I was wondering why it was written in C++, but the FAQ already beat me to it.
Why build a new browser in C++ when safer and more modern languages are available?
Ladybird started as a component of the SerenityOS hobby project, which only allows C++. The choice of language was not so much a technical decision, but more one of personal convenience. Andreas was most comfortable with C++ when creating SerenityOS, and now we have almost half a million lines of modern C++ to maintain.
However, now that Ladybird has forked and become its own independent project, all constraints previously imposed by SerenityOS are no longer in effect. We are actively evaluating a number of alternatives and will be adding a mature successor language to the project in the near future. This process is already quite far along, and prototypes exist in multiple languages.
Glad to see they are open to using safer languages. C/C++ was great for its time, but we really need to move on from them.
As someone who has done no programming since taking C++ in high school more than 20 years ago, what do you mean by safer language?
C and C++ require more manual management of memory, and their compilers are unable to let you know about a lot of cases where you're managing memory improperly. This often causes bugs, memory leaks, and security issues.
Safer languages manage the memory for you, or at least are able to track memory usage to ensure you don't run into problems. Rust is the poster boy for this lately; if you're writing code that has potential issues with memory management, the compiler will consider that an error unless you specifically mark that section of code as unsafe.
I'm not sure why people keep pushing that myth on C++. It's been a decade we have smart pointers. There's no memory management to be done ever.
Using the old 'new' is like typing 'unsafe' in rust. Even arrays/vectors have safe accessor.
Am I missing something?
It's been almost a decade since I used C++ and had to verify, but after some quick searching around it looks like it hasn't changed a ton since I last looked at it.
You can use smart pointers, and certainly you should, but it's a whole extra thing tacked on to the language and the compiler doesn't consider it an issue if you don't use them. Using new in C++ isn't like using unsafe in rust; in rust your code is almost certainly safe unless marked otherwise, whereas in C++ it may or may not be managed properly unless you explicitly mark a pointer as smart.
For your own code in new codebases this is probably fine. You can just always make your pointers smart. When you're relying on code from other people, some of which has been around for many years and has been written by people you've never heard of, it becomes harder to be sure everything is being done properly at every point, and that's where many of these issues come into play.
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Go and Rust mostly
google rust language
Holy borrow checker
new 'a just dropped
For memory of a lifetime
I wish it was not C++ but their implementation is quite interesting. Not only is it modern but they wrote their own standard library including error handling right down to the main function. It is quite nice for C++.
All that came from SerenityOS. I hope they do not lose too much of it with the split. I mean, the Ladybird Project Leader authored most of it ( their C++ framework ) so it will probably stick. Harder to do when you start using other libraries though.
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We are targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026.
I will watch this from afar with great interest.
A reminder that the Servo project has resumed active development since the start of 2023, and is making good progress every month.
If you're looking for a serious in-progress effort to create a new open, safe, performant, independent, and fully-featured web engine, that's the one you should be keeping an eye on.
It won't be easy trying to catch up to continuously evolving and changing web standards, but that's the only effort with a chance.
Though I am a big Rust fan, I think Ladybird is evolving fast enough that my money is on Ladybird to become a true daily driver first. The biggest obstacle to that is JavaScript as Ladybird still uses its homegrown engine ( very slow ) and Servo is integrating SpiderMonkey.
Ladybird just got a million dollar shot in the arm. We will see what becomes of that.
Despite the Mozilla origins, I do not think you can say Servo is backed by Google. The claim from Ladybird is that it is the only browser not financially supported by Google.
I would say that Servo is corporate backed at this point and Ladybird still is not ( backed by donations only ) but with large donations by a single donor, we will see if Ladybird is able to stay completely independent over time.
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I wonder what's in it for Shopify. This seems like an odd thing for them to sponsor, or a very expensive FU to Google.
Well, it could be genuine altruism. But I doubt a web totally controlled by Google sounds good to a company that relies on the semi-open web for its business.
This is a bit like Valve liking Linux I imagine.
Not to mention they have been burned by Google. They were one of the ones pushing for JPEG XL.
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Ladybird is extremely amazing project. Andreas is a good person, with great community around him. The only thing I didn't like is the new logo - it is very meta-ish. Looks very corporative, and doesn't really resemble browser :(
This is the first I'm hearing of Ladybird. Looks really interesting and glad to see there are more options for browsers coming
Very interesting. Not what I was expecting on a Monday morning.
I am still trying to decide what I think about the Ladybird / SerenityOS split.
Short-term, this is going to make it a lot easier for Ladybird to make progress. So good.
Long-term, I feel like a lot of the values that Andreas used to express about SerenityOS have been compromised.
I very much liked the, everything from scratch and complete harmony within and complete control over our whole stack idea that came with the mono-repo.
I also thought that the energy from Ladybird was greatly contributing to SerenityOS. That is lost now, as is their chief architect, technical steward, and community organizer.
Much of the low-level performance work that went into Ladybird benefited the whole OS. Did SerenityOS even post a monthly update on YouTube this month? The community engagement has already been dampened.
SerenityOS was certainly benefiting from the networking, codec, and image format work. The biggest impact will obviously be the loss of what was emerging as an amazing native web browser. They cannot even use Ladybird now due to the reliance on so many third-party components. I guess it forks from where it was?
How is error handling done in Ladybird now? It was beautifully consistent before. What now?
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#1 sponsor is Shopify, how does that affect the indepentness?
How can you be "independent" if you have sponsors? All sponsorships are in the form of unrestricted donations. Board seats and other forms of influence are not for sale.
..per the FAQ.
influence exists whether they want it to or not.
Exactly. When the person who holds your purse strings decides they don't like something, they can influence you by simply... taking away your financial backing.
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Why are we shouting?
As long as it doesn't become a way for Shopify to shovel ads and collect data it isn't a problem. We will watch with great interest
Your client is interpreting "#1..." as "# 1..." and making it a title
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