Ladybird web browser now funded by GitHub co-founder, promises ‘no code’ from rivals

devclass.com /2024/07/03/ladybird-web-browser-project-now-funded-by-github-co-founder-promises-no-code-from-other-browsers/

160 comments

Who cares? It's run by reactionary incels, transphobes, and racists. https://cmdr-nova.online/2024/07/03/serenityos-and-ladybird/
- Who cares? It’s run by reactionary incels, transphobes, and racists.
  Wait until you find out who runs Lemmy development.
  
  Good news, most folks at beehaw know and the admins have decided to move to a new platform
  
  Lemmy devs are awesome. 1 more reason to use the platform.
  
  wasnt it leftists?
  
  What did they do?
  
  Confused which of those you think applies to the lemmy devs?
- Didn't they fly off the handle on someone for politely pointing out that the text shouldn't use the word "he" and assume that every user is male?
  That's not political, thats flat out unprofessional. I would think it's a pretty junior mistake if any of my colleagues filed a non-gender neutral PR in the first place, and would flat out fire them if they ever reacted to a review that unprofessionally.
  
  Someone found a way to weaponise bikeshedding.
- Sometimes terrible people can do good things.
  Those good things should be supported.
  Judge a project on it own merits.
  People still use the Autobahn.
  
  "What about the good things Hitler did?" Is not the flex you think it is. Also, using the Autobahn does not send support to Nazis
  
  Great analogy and perspective.
  
  Sometimes terrible people can do good things. Those good things should be supported. Judge a project on it own merits.
  The thing here is that Ladybird and SerenityOS are both the community and the code. One cannot live without the other because the code will always need its community to develop it. And in this case, it is not possible to support them without supporting the people who, y'know receive the money. I think nobody is arguing against an independent browser engine - the argument is against the implementation of it.
- Boring hit piece that way overblows some issues on the topic.
  
  The piece was definitely slanted.
  Was what the devs did great? No. Does the whole project need to be outcast/abandoned due to what language they use? No. There needs to be nuance with these issues. Open source does not owe individuals anything and that is why it is provided without warranty. On the flip side, individuals can choose not to use it.
  We should be promoting open source software and not have infighting when open source software doesn't have much mass market appeal to begin with.
  
  No, I'm actually with them on that one. The he / they issue in of itself is tiny, I agree, and if they'd just changed it from gendered to gender neutral language then nobody would've even cared. Most of us tend to write in a gendered way out of habit or because we think about our own gender, and in a casual conversation that isn't that important. But this is about a piece of software that, surely, is not just meant for male audiences. It's just unprofessional to address someone as male by default. Most importantly though, being this stubborn on having the user specifically male is just a weird hill to die on, but even weirder if that particular action is the one that is actually causing the drama - which they allegedly claim wanting to prevent by dismissing "politics". And I'm sorry, but changing a "he" to "they" is not politics, it's just including non male users. Nothing more, nothing less. So why is it such an issue to not just address specifically male users? It really only would be because those people hold some very questionable views, which, in my opinion, clash heavily with the whole concept of free and open source software, which is supposedly for everyone. So if your actions and views are this flawed, how can you be trusted on such an important project?
  Also, in regards to this news... "no code from rivals" also is just a stupid thing to say and do. There's plenty of good open source code that they could and probably even SHOULD use. But whatever. I'm not gonna support this project and predict it will fail anyway.
  
  And then another, where a trans woman is called “spam.”
  With comments like this it's clear the author is just overreacting. They were clearly calling the PR spam, not the person. (And this is coming from someone who was definitely angry with them for denying the original PRs and stuff.)
- I've no love lost for the developers in question. But between the original two PRs and associated comments being from over three years ago, and the "trans woman [being called] 'spam" comment being said about a PR that seems pretty strongly to me to be meant as a sarcastic insult rather than a genuine contribution, I can't help but find it a little unconvincing.
  It's not without merit by far. I feel that Kling's blog post not addressing the drama was in poor taste and may indicate a lack of self-improvement regarding the initial fuckup, and saying you want to "avoid alienating people" when closing a PR that aims to improve inclusivity is more than a little pathetic. I also understand not wanting bigots to be able to just bury their past and pretend they were never bigoted. It's just that the fiery response this has gotten still ends up feeling a bit disproportionate given how old the truly insulting issues were. Am I missing something?
  
  You seem to have missed this third PR, that was genuine, three days ago. It seemed to be the cause of the trans woman's sarcastic PR. The author of the article does mention it.
- I do, I feel like we desperately need some more competition/options in the browser engine space.
- “reactionary”. Self-aware much?
  I do not know either of you.
  That said, on the one hand we have a guy that trivial research reveals has been dramatically transparent about his own life, struggles, and frailty in a really humble and disarming way. He shares his talent freely not only with code but mentorship and teaching. He has created a thriving and closer-knit community working together to do interesting and valuable things ( OS and browser ). His somewhat famous tagline is “well, hello friends”. He has also showcased both his wife and other females on his channel. Unless I misunderstand the term “incel”, you are demonstrably and factually wrong on that front at least. The biggest complaint I could find about him elsewhere is that his is “too neutral”. Perhaps that is at play here.
  On the other hand, we have somebody directly peddling destruction, slander, and hate ( you ). And why? As far as I can tell, the only contribution the SerenityOS founder has made to this “discussion” is the sentence “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”. Is that really it? Overreaction?
  That sentence spawned all of this? I must have misunderstood which of you we were labelling as “reactionary”.
  Regardless of if the project should have accepted the commit or not ( a valid debate ), I cannot possibly side with this reaction. It is awful.
  Downvotes welcome. I would rather be ethical than popular.
  
  his wife and other females
  His wife and other women. The word "female" is an adjective and should not be used as a noun unless referring to e.g. animals. Like myself, you are (probably) non-native speaker of English so I don't weigh this all too heavy, but others might since it is considered somewhat disrespectful to women.
  
  You're wasting your breath. These people cannot be defeated with logic. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't use reason to get into in the first place.
  At the very least they will claim "gender neutrality and/or a person's right to exist is not an ethical OR political issue."
- Oh didn't you hear? It's fine now because a PR was finally accepted well after being called out and ~~stepping down~~ stepping aside from the project
  /s
  
  Imagine that talking with people about issues and not just shouting and brigading them actually works. Who would have known.
  
  Teaching changing minds, influencing... it needs plenty of repeating and sleeping on things. To be fair, when all else fails applying pressure has its place as well. Nevertheless small victories are still victories.
  The ability of Ladybird’s team to face scrutiny of all kinds is important for them to eventually gain traction in the browser market. But I’m still hopeful, and we need more options.
- What does that have to do with the code tho
- no it's not, and nobody worth listening to cares anyway.
  please stop bringing up this absolute nothingburger.

saying 'no code' from rivals seems highly misleading, and I can't seem to see a hard citation for this, in fact, it very directly contradicts this same sentence from the article
He also said that unlike SerenityOS, Ladybird will “leverage the greater OSS ecosystem,” meaning that it will use other open source libraries for some features.
it would be better to say they aren't relying on libraries and features from rivals. not that they will use "no code" from them, good code is good code afterall
- What I got was that there would be no Google or Mozilla specific code/libraries, but FOSS libraries for common media formats would be included so that the project can reach a wider audience.
  
  What I got was that there would be no Google or Mozilla specific code/libraries, but FOSS libraries for common media formats would be included so that the project can reach a wider audience.
  AFAIK They use Skia, the rendering library made by Google so this does not appear true either.
  
  Honestly, I'm not sure that's quite a good takeaway. The article itself was pretty much a bland nothing burger and the articles that were cited were, again, pretty bland. The biggest thing I can find is that they won't be facing off another browser and then it's like, well duh.
  It's just one of those things. It just feels like the original dude said one thing and the author interpreted it a completely different way.
- They are not PR people, don't expected that of just normal people having fun. No one is promising "chrome killer coming in six months".
  Thig is that for SerenityOS they want to make everything from scratch, ssh, ssl, libraries, utils, text editor... even the browser. They could have just porr Firefox, but that was not the point. To use it you had to complile whole OS.
  But since browser got some attention and sone complex sites (like guthub and twitter) started working in it, to make project more viable they are dropping this constraint for browser. I guess they migt use some gui library, ssl lib, codecs... stuff like that. But, I expect, they will not use others code for rendering engine and js, but continue with implementation from documentation.
  While some in this thread say they are racist, homophobic and stuff. Maybe some are maybe just not polished for public speak, do we really think everyone in google is totally clean?

Ladybird seems to have a lot of excitement and big names around it right now which is making me really doubt it...

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