7 ms·

Congratulations on the kick-off! Now that Ladybird is no longer a part of SerenityOS, will you consider a switch to a licence which not only grants, but also pr

by F3nd0 2y ago

Congratulations on the kick-off! Now that Ladybird is no longer a part of SerenityOS, will you consider a switch to a licence which not only grants, but also protects user freedoms (e.g. the GPL, MPL, EUPL)? Also, any thoughts on having official communication channels on some open, freedom-respecting platforms, rather than Discord only?

pferde 2y ago
Indeed. This is something I could see myself contributing to (or attempting to, anyway), but as soon as I saw Discord+Github, I lost all interest. Github I can understand to some extent, it's a convenient temporary staying place until they can afford, community-wise, to move to something truly open, but Discord? In this day and age?
- dandellion 2y ago
  Agreed, Discord is a terrible platform and I wish people stopped using it. I expect in the next five years or so it'll undergo a very rapid enshitification and people will start using other things after that, but by then we'll have a decade of lost content.
  - komadori 2y ago
    Ditto. Discord is fantastic platform to use and I'm a member of so many interesting communities across a range of subjects, but it does seem so very precarious to rely on the company to keep it going as it is.
- paulcole 2y ago
  > but Discord? In this day and age? What’s your recommended alternative?
  - guappa 2y ago
    discuss?
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Matrix is a wonderful alternative
    - account42 2y ago
      Better but a the real alternative is what we had before: publicly visible forums, mailing lists with an archive, etc. I'm not going to sign up for your discussion group without being able to get a feel for the community first.
      - pferde 2y ago
        Indeed. There can never be just one platform for project communication, because there are different kinds of communication - mostly sorted between synchronous and asynchronous. So, IRC, Matrix (these can even be interconnected) for synchronous, mailing lists or forums for asynchronous. And of course issue tracker, where some topical communication can happen as well, but that could completely be covered by mailing lists. There's no reason to ever have anything non-open in your FOSS project's infrastructure.
        lukan 2y ago
        "There's no reason to ever have anything non-open in your FOSS project's infrastructure." Except, that it is easier to set up? What you describe sounds reasonable. But someone needs to set all that up and host it and needs to be trusted etc. So I guess if many people get involved and do set this up, they would convince the rest of the team to join them. But right now it is just a demand for more work for them.
        pferde 2y ago
        You are correct, of course. If the project leadership does not see a value in using open infrastructure, of course it would look like additional (and unreasonable) demand. It's up to them.
        2y ago
  - zzo38computer 2y ago
    IRC. And for slow discussions with long messages, you can use NNTP. (However, GitHub is accessible by git in case you only want to download the repository, regardless of what else they do; however, having multiple mirrors on other services as well can be helpful)
    - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
      While I’d love to agree: many people these days simply don’t want to use IRC.
      - guappa 2y ago
        You can bridge to matrix and use a matrix client. Then you get history even offline.
- thiht 2y ago
  > but Discord? In this day and age? Discord IS the platform of this day and age, what the hell are you talking about? You might not like Discord for whatever reasons, but trying to make it sound outdated or legacy is very weird sounding.
  - pferde 2y ago
    It is the platform of this day and age much like Instagram or Xitter is. Doesn't make it very smart for FOSS projects to be using it for their primary coordination and communication.
  - snvzz 2y ago
    Discord is not E2EE. It is a non-starter.
    - MobiusHorizons 2y ago
      That doesn’t seem like a nonstarter if the goal is to have public conversations. While I certainly agree that E2EE could be very valuable to some of discord’s use cases, I expect there are a lot of valid use cases for public discussions in open source projects where E2EE would not be an improvement at all.
      - snvzz 2y ago
        >public conversations Not public. Got to register an account and accept Discord ToS first.
  - shufflerofrocks 2y ago
    I think you maybe taking it in the wrong context. There was a hype for discord about 5 years ago for EVERYTHING - discord servers were made for every little thing and there was little to no objection about it. But in recent times, I have seen many people complain about the lack of searchability, discussion-thread management, and other stuff in Discord and moving away to forums, especially for software projects. There is definitely a lot more disgruntlement with Discord today, so their statement makes sense.
awesomekling 2y ago
Thanks F3nd0! There are currently no plans to switch to a less permissive license. And we're perfectly happy using proprietary services like GitHub and Discord as long as they make our work easier and more enjoyable. We recently evaluated a number of alternatives, and found that they all introduced more friction than we were comfortable with. Although the task of building a browser is itself challenging, we're a pragmatic project :)
- dataflow 2y ago
  > There are currently no plans to switch to a less permissive license. Hey, just a reality check: in the event that you actually do become wildly successful, this means that others (Google, Microsoft, etc.) will be able to fork the browser and then develop it faster than you - thus leaving you behind and taking away your users! Would highly recommend leaving yourself some mechanism to prevent that, unless you're really okay with the project defeating itself through its own success.
  - eitland 2y ago
    Reality check: 1. All the BSDs have been out there for decades without anyone running with it. 2. Google and Microsoft - while being a shadow of their former selves technically - are probably still very capable of reimplementing whatever they want. 3. If Ladybird gets so wildly popular, lets celebrate wildly!
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      You wouldn't count OSX as someone running with BSD?
      - eitland 2y ago
        I run Mac OS. I am aware that it builds on BSD. Yet BSD is very alive and nobody who wants BSD is lost to Mac. At least I personally have never heard anyone deliberating over a free BSD vs Mac. Edit: and of course upvote. Apple ran with it. But they didn't run away with it. We still have it. Actually we have some patches thanks to them. As I mentioned in my other reply: Open source is not a zero sum game.
endgame 2y ago
This seems very important given how KHTML lead to the current near-monoculture in the browser space.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
The BSD license protects user freedoms just fine.
trustno2 2y ago
The guy used to work for Apple at WebKit team. So he knows that corporations can take open source browsers and make it proprietary.

by F3nd0 2y ago

pferde 2y ago

Indeed. This is something I could see myself contributing to (or attempting to, anyway), but as soon as I saw Discord+Github, I lost all interest. Github I can understand to some extent, it's a convenient temporary staying place until they can afford, community-wise, to move to something truly open, but Discord? In this day and age?

dandellion 2y ago
Agreed, Discord is a terrible platform and I wish people stopped using it. I expect in the next five years or so it'll undergo a very rapid enshitification and people will start using other things after that, but by then we'll have a decade of lost content.
- komadori 2y ago
  Ditto. Discord is fantastic platform to use and I'm a member of so many interesting communities across a range of subjects, but it does seem so very precarious to rely on the company to keep it going as it is.
paulcole 2y ago
> but Discord? In this day and age? What’s your recommended alternative?
- guappa 2y ago
  discuss?
- freedomben 2y ago
  Matrix is a wonderful alternative
  - account42 2y ago
    Better but a the real alternative is what we had before: publicly visible forums, mailing lists with an archive, etc. I'm not going to sign up for your discussion group without being able to get a feel for the community first.
    - pferde 2y ago
      Indeed. There can never be just one platform for project communication, because there are different kinds of communication - mostly sorted between synchronous and asynchronous. So, IRC, Matrix (these can even be interconnected) for synchronous, mailing lists or forums for asynchronous. And of course issue tracker, where some topical communication can happen as well, but that could completely be covered by mailing lists. There's no reason to ever have anything non-open in your FOSS project's infrastructure.
      - lukan 2y ago
        "There's no reason to ever have anything non-open in your FOSS project's infrastructure." Except, that it is easier to set up? What you describe sounds reasonable. But someone needs to set all that up and host it and needs to be trusted etc. So I guess if many people get involved and do set this up, they would convince the rest of the team to join them. But right now it is just a demand for more work for them.
        pferde 2y ago
        You are correct, of course. If the project leadership does not see a value in using open infrastructure, of course it would look like additional (and unreasonable) demand. It's up to them.
        2y ago
- zzo38computer 2y ago
  IRC. And for slow discussions with long messages, you can use NNTP. (However, GitHub is accessible by git in case you only want to download the repository, regardless of what else they do; however, having multiple mirrors on other services as well can be helpful)
  - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
    While I’d love to agree: many people these days simply don’t want to use IRC.
    - guappa 2y ago
      You can bridge to matrix and use a matrix client. Then you get history even offline.
thiht 2y ago
> but Discord? In this day and age? Discord IS the platform of this day and age, what the hell are you talking about? You might not like Discord for whatever reasons, but trying to make it sound outdated or legacy is very weird sounding.
- pferde 2y ago
  It is the platform of this day and age much like Instagram or Xitter is. Doesn't make it very smart for FOSS projects to be using it for their primary coordination and communication.
- snvzz 2y ago
  Discord is not E2EE. It is a non-starter.
  - MobiusHorizons 2y ago
    That doesn’t seem like a nonstarter if the goal is to have public conversations. While I certainly agree that E2EE could be very valuable to some of discord’s use cases, I expect there are a lot of valid use cases for public discussions in open source projects where E2EE would not be an improvement at all.
    - snvzz 2y ago
      >public conversations Not public. Got to register an account and accept Discord ToS first.
- shufflerofrocks 2y ago
  I think you maybe taking it in the wrong context. There was a hype for discord about 5 years ago for EVERYTHING - discord servers were made for every little thing and there was little to no objection about it. But in recent times, I have seen many people complain about the lack of searchability, discussion-thread management, and other stuff in Discord and moving away to forums, especially for software projects. There is definitely a lot more disgruntlement with Discord today, so their statement makes sense.

awesomekling 2y ago

Thanks F3nd0! There are currently no plans to switch to a less permissive license. And we're perfectly happy using proprietary services like GitHub and Discord as long as they make our work easier and more enjoyable. We recently evaluated a number of alternatives, and found that they all introduced more friction than we were comfortable with. Although the task of building a browser is itself challenging, we're a pragmatic project :)

dataflow 2y ago
> There are currently no plans to switch to a less permissive license. Hey, just a reality check: in the event that you actually do become wildly successful, this means that others (Google, Microsoft, etc.) will be able to fork the browser and then develop it faster than you - thus leaving you behind and taking away your users! Would highly recommend leaving yourself some mechanism to prevent that, unless you're really okay with the project defeating itself through its own success.
- eitland 2y ago
  Reality check: 1. All the BSDs have been out there for decades without anyone running with it. 2. Google and Microsoft - while being a shadow of their former selves technically - are probably still very capable of reimplementing whatever they want. 3. If Ladybird gets so wildly popular, lets celebrate wildly!
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    You wouldn't count OSX as someone running with BSD?
    - eitland 2y ago
      I run Mac OS. I am aware that it builds on BSD. Yet BSD is very alive and nobody who wants BSD is lost to Mac. At least I personally have never heard anyone deliberating over a free BSD vs Mac. Edit: and of course upvote. Apple ran with it. But they didn't run away with it. We still have it. Actually we have some patches thanks to them. As I mentioned in my other reply: Open source is not a zero sum game.

endgame 2y ago

This seems very important given how KHTML lead to the current near-monoculture in the browser space.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

The BSD license protects user freedoms just fine.

trustno2 2y ago

The guy used to work for Apple at WebKit team. So he knows that corporations can take open source browsers and make it proprietary.