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Announcing the Ladybird Browser Initiative
(ladybird.org)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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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.
Servo is going to fill that void
Never heard of it, I'll check it out
I meant alternative browsers, like vimb or surf, but on Gecko and not WebKit.
Sorry, should've explained I was just responding to the first sentence in particular.
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?
Because of the momentum behind Blink/Chromium.
Guess they couldn't replicate the "own everything that people use to get stuff on the internet and make secret breaking changes to constantly mess up other browsers" strategy.
Could they not add HEVC support? Or is there some technical limitation that meant starting from zero was a good idea?
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.
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.
Google probably is putting pressure on Mozilla, but if the options are licensed HECV or open royalty-free AV1, the choice is pretty clear for a FOSS project.
Yes but: HEVC is the standard for UHD content for now, until AV1 gets much broader adoption. And judging from how long HEVC took to be as broadly available as h.264, it’ll still take a while for AV1 to be viable for most applications.
The good news is no streaming service even supports UHD in browers (except Netflix on Edge?) because of DRM. So I don’t see the value.
My Jellyfin server does and on Firefox it needs to transcode to h.264
You could use an app
I do, generally. But there have been situations where I couldn’t. And most of my friends that are using my server don’t. Dunno why.
Mozilla had the same problem with h.264 until Cisco allowed them to use openh264 and ate any associated licensing costs. Just from a cursory glance, HEVC licensing seems much more of a clusterfuck.
Yeah I'm curious as to whether there's not merit in taking the imperfect codebase and improving it.
I suppose Mozilla is already doing that as best as they can.
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…
Webkit and blink have the same base
Yea, but Webkit was forked from KHTML 23 years ago and Blink was forked from WebKit 11 years ago. In the mean time they all definitely evolved to become their own thing, even though in the beginning they were the same.
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.
Making a web browser that’s fully compatible with modern standards is not easy nor cheap (and worse it’s a moving target because the standards keep evolving). I’m rooting for these folks but eventually money will be an issue.
Oh my sweet summer child.
webkit and blink are based of KHTML
Technically blink is based WebKit but yes. However, they were forked 23 and 11 years ago respectively, so it’s safe to assume they evolved into their own thing. But they probably do still share code, yes.
No webkit browser on Android either. If there was gnome web for Android id switch in a heartbeat
Does anyone know why there are barely any WebKit based browsers? WebKit is open source and at least Safari works really well. Is it hard to work with? Do people just hate Apple that much? Is there some limitation?
Also, WebKit was based on KHTML, which was open source and platform independent itself.