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.
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.
Then don’t watch it. I have spent more time now reading this complaint on Lemmy than I have watching videos that were not worth my time.
The guy that made this video had a few minutes to make a high-engagement video I guess and no time to write a low-engagement press release. That was his choice.
Your choice is to watch it or not. He does not your views. Videos do better regardless of your opinion.
I actually agree with you but I am just sick of reading this comment on every video posted. Use tech to transcribe it yourself or just don’t watch. Stop making me read this complaint. Unlike video, I have to waste time reading before I realize what you are saying.
This is very exciting
Thanks, this was hugely helpful. For some reason half the comments here made it about politics.
Interested to see where this new software actually goes.
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.
sorta understandable though
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.
Go and Rust mostly
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like Tobi's on another side-quest.
This does seem like a Tobi ideological thing, doesn't it? Ugh.
I used to follow Ladybird/SerenityOS stuff but their takes on "political stuff" is just... too bad.
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.
#1 sponsor is Shopify, how does that affect the indepentness?
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
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 :(
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?
I don't think there really is a need or use case for Serenity OS outside of a hobby project. However, having a new web engine would be great for the open web. I just hope they take privacy seriously.
Don’t get me wrong, I am very excited by the possibility of having an independent browser engine. Firefox was that. Mozilla as an organization has compromised that. I hope Ladybird can avoid the same issues.
The rationale for SerenityOS beyond therapy and fun was precisely the “being responsible for everything ourselves” aspect of the project. Andreas has previously described it as a form of accountability. He has also described it as a kind of freedom in contrast to the Linux model with its inevitable politics, bike-shedding, and inefficiency as you try to get dozens of projects to agree on direction and merge code. Ultimately, the mono repo allowed the project to do things right in the right place in the stack ( in the code ). It allowed the project to move quickly, to avoid legacy, and to continuously improve and modernize. It allows harmony across the entire developer AND user experience.
Linux is famously fragmented. There is no open source desktop OS that provides “whole system” design and user experience harmony. Haiku comes close but it has never gotten much native app momentum. On Haiku, you are going to run the Falkon browser, use GIMP, and run LibreOffice. None of those are developed in concert with the OS.
SerenityOS held the promise of Ladybird, and Hack Studio, and the userland utilities ( and everything else ) all being developed in concert. The same GUI toolkit was used for everything. The same standard library. The same error handling and code level security measures.
This was the “need or use case”. Not anymore.
And it is not just SerenityOS. Ladybird is not as independent as it was. Not just the sponsorships but the code. SerenityOS is no longer a dependency but 8 other projects are. No more mono-repo and goodbye to all the reasons it was considered a good thing.
Godspeed to them.
We need more browser engines, especially those that are under NFP ownership. WebKit and Chromium have become too dominant.
For sure going to use a webbrowser from some random programmers/organizations.
"I know what a lot of you are thinking" Yeah what about Firefox? "It's impossible to make a new web engine" Um... No ... Probably not that hard really with pretty decent standards these days. Performance JavaScript is probably pretty hard and a lot of the fancier protocols.
Seriously, what makes you better than Firefox?
Whatever, another choice isn't bad I guess.
Firefox has its own set of issues. It is the best we have right now but we could benefit from another choice.
Ah, the famed non-profit Shopify.
