5 ms·

Why not just fork Firefox? IIRC there are already several actively-developed forks.

mouse_ 2y ago
Starting fresh with a competent, modern, minimal initial platform can provide many benefits in the realms of sustainability, security and performance. See: WireGuard vs. OpenVPN, Wayland vs. X.Org. Sustainability wise, Firefox is not built for hackers. One example is the Haiku community has been working on porting Firefox for years, to varying degrees of success. The problem is that it's just so huge; there are so many things going on, so many libraries that each require porting efforts on their own, DRM standards built into the core platform that will likely never see support, so real "Firefox" is likely to never happen regardless of community effort. Meanwhile, though it is in a quite early state, multiple people are already experimenting with their own working builds of Ladybird on Haiku. I'm not trying to say I can guarantee this will continue being the case as the ladybird project reaches maturity, but I think they deserve an honest shot. Wouldn't it be nice to have a truly portable browser engine?
- infotainment 2y ago
  Fair point, but then, what about Servo? Being based on Rust and not C++ seems like a major plus point over Ladybird, IMO.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    I'm going to look seriously at Ladybird. I'm completely neutral about Servo. I don't care if the language a thing is written in is Rust or not.
    - tardy_one 2y ago
      When ypu are talking web facing client full scale browser, C++ is impossible to secure as well as a safer language and most safer languages are impossible to optimize as well as C++. So rust is not so much exciting as not horrifying.
      - nextos 2y ago
        I agree with this, I love SerenityOS and LadyBird looks very interesting. But scaling that to a serious and safe browser with C++ is going to be hard. Plus, I don't see how Firefox is really broken. Right now, forking and shipping with a custom user.js is sufficient to fix most annoyances.
      - JohnFen 2y ago
        Yes, I know the argument and it has some merit. I just don't find it very persuasive, so a thing being implemented in Rust doesn't make me any more or less willing to use it. To each their own.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        Microsoft: 70% of all security bugs are memory safety issues: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-se... Chrome: 70% of all security bugs are memory safety issues: https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-70-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-70-of-all-security-bugs... "Rust is an emerging programing language that aims at preventing memory-safety bugs without sacrificing much efficiency. The claimed property is very attractive to developers, and many projects start using the language. However, can Rust achieve the memory-safety promise? This paper studies the question by surveying 186 real-world bug reports collected from several origins which contain all existing Rust CVEs (common vulnerability and exposures) of memory-safety issues by 2020-12-31. We manually analyze each bug and extract their culprit patterns. Our analysis result shows that Rust can keep its promise that all memory-safety bugs require unsafe code...": https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03296 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03296 Seems persuasive to me.
        JohnFen 2y ago
        As I said, there is some merit to the argument. I do think that it's stretched a bit far, but that's neither here nor there. In any case, I'm not saying I'm opposed to applications being written in Rust. Use the language that suits your needs the best. All I'm saying is that the fact that something is implemented in Rust is not really a factor (either way) when I'm deciding whether or not to use a particular piece of software.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >Starting fresh with a competent, modern, minimal initial platform can provide many benefits in the realms of sustainability, security and performance. See: WireGuard vs. OpenVPN, Wayland vs. X.Org. Wayland's been in the works for well over a decade now and many Linux distros still haven't switched over yet. I don't think this is a great example.
autoexec 2y ago
I'm moving to a fork at first, but what's exciting to me about Ladybird is that it's got a new web engine. There's not really a lot of options in that space right now, so it's great to see a non-proprietary newcomer. I'm hoping it helps bring some more diversity to the ecosystem which is extremely Blink heavy at the moment.

Starting fresh with a competent, modern, minimal initial platform can provide many benefits in the realms of sustainability, security and performance. See: WireGuard vs. OpenVPN, Wayland vs. X.Org. Sustainability wise, Firefox is not built for hackers. One example is the Haiku community has been working on porting Firefox for years, to varying degrees of success. The problem is that it's just so huge; there are so many things going on, so many libraries that each require porting efforts on their own, DRM standards built into the core platform that will likely never see support, so real "Firefox" is likely to never happen regardless of community effort. Meanwhile, though it is in a quite early state, multiple people are already experimenting with their own working builds of Ladybird on Haiku. I'm not trying to say I can guarantee this will continue being the case as the ladybird project reaches maturity, but I think they deserve an honest shot. Wouldn't it be nice to have a truly portable browser engine?

infotainment 2y ago
Fair point, but then, what about Servo? Being based on Rust and not C++ seems like a major plus point over Ladybird, IMO.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I'm going to look seriously at Ladybird. I'm completely neutral about Servo. I don't care if the language a thing is written in is Rust or not.
  - tardy_one 2y ago
    When ypu are talking web facing client full scale browser, C++ is impossible to secure as well as a safer language and most safer languages are impossible to optimize as well as C++. So rust is not so much exciting as not horrifying.
    - nextos 2y ago
      I agree with this, I love SerenityOS and LadyBird looks very interesting. But scaling that to a serious and safe browser with C++ is going to be hard. Plus, I don't see how Firefox is really broken. Right now, forking and shipping with a custom user.js is sufficient to fix most annoyances.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      Yes, I know the argument and it has some merit. I just don't find it very persuasive, so a thing being implemented in Rust doesn't make me any more or less willing to use it. To each their own.
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        Microsoft: 70% of all security bugs are memory safety issues: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-se... Chrome: 70% of all security bugs are memory safety issues: https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-70-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-70-of-all-security-bugs... "Rust is an emerging programing language that aims at preventing memory-safety bugs without sacrificing much efficiency. The claimed property is very attractive to developers, and many projects start using the language. However, can Rust achieve the memory-safety promise? This paper studies the question by surveying 186 real-world bug reports collected from several origins which contain all existing Rust CVEs (common vulnerability and exposures) of memory-safety issues by 2020-12-31. We manually analyze each bug and extract their culprit patterns. Our analysis result shows that Rust can keep its promise that all memory-safety bugs require unsafe code...": https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03296 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03296 Seems persuasive to me.
        JohnFen 2y ago
        As I said, there is some merit to the argument. I do think that it's stretched a bit far, but that's neither here nor there. In any case, I'm not saying I'm opposed to applications being written in Rust. Use the language that suits your needs the best. All I'm saying is that the fact that something is implemented in Rust is not really a factor (either way) when I'm deciding whether or not to use a particular piece of software.
shiroiushi 2y ago
>Starting fresh with a competent, modern, minimal initial platform can provide many benefits in the realms of sustainability, security and performance. See: WireGuard vs. OpenVPN, Wayland vs. X.Org. Wayland's been in the works for well over a decade now and many Linux distros still haven't switched over yet. I don't think this is a great example.

autoexec 2y ago

I'm moving to a fork at first, but what's exciting to me about Ladybird is that it's got a new web engine. There's not really a lot of options in that space right now, so it's great to see a non-proprietary newcomer. I'm hoping it helps bring some more diversity to the ecosystem which is extremely Blink heavy at the moment.