• @ambitiousslab@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    57
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    I donate to Ladybird and Servo, and I hope they succeed. We need serious competition and a check on Mozilla (not to mention Chrome and Safari).

    That said, I’m sad that neither Ladybird or Servo are licensed under strong copyleft licenses. We need user-oriented browsers now more than ever, and strong copyleft enables that. I worry that, even if these engines are successful, they will be co-opted by proprietary browsers and eventually superseded by them.

    This happened before - both Chrome and Safari ultimately derive from KHTML, Konqueror’s browser engine. If KHTML had been licnesed under the GPL instead of the LGPL, Chrome and Safari (and not just their engines) may have been free software today. Or, at the very least, it would have been much more difficult for Apple and Google to get started.

    That said, I wish Ladybird the best. There donation = no influence policy is excellent, and I really, really hope they can stick to it in the long term.

    • Phoenixz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      162 months ago

      No.

      If khtml had been GPL, it simply never would have been used for chrome or safari, some other engine would have been picked.

      Anything but real open source for these types of companies

    • @butter@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      92 months ago

      How does one have a donation = no influence policy?

      Huge companies donate to make open apps like this reliant on them. Then they threaten to pull the donation if that doesn’t happen…

      Strong Copyleft licenses protect from this by allowing others to fork and keep an app going without being taken advantage of.

      If Google donates 1 billion dollars tomorrow, and over several months, Ladybird will expand to use that money. Then Google can threaten to stop the donations unless LB does something like “make ad blockers worse”

      It’s a web browser. The only money they will make is from donations. Unless they do something wonky with their business model, like charge. Then no one will use it anyway.

    • @MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 months ago

      That would not have changed much, since browser engines are million-manhours projects and a small group of devs doing that voluntary, just isn’t enough.

    • @schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 months ago

      in my mind it’s kinda the point of Ladybird to have a permissively licensed implementation of web standards, I like permissive licenses if only because they reduce legal risks

    • @Zangoose@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      22 months ago

      Isn’t servo mostly a Mozilla-led project? I thought servo would probably just replace gecko as the engine firefox used if it ends up succeeding

  • @the_q@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    392 months ago

    To go along with the alt right stuff, one of their major donors is Shopify.

        • @doodledup@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -11 month ago

          Why is this relevant to this sponsorship and the development of the browser? I wouldn’t mind Kanye donating himself if that ensures that we get a great browser. Who cares where the money comes from?

          • @the_q@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            21 month ago

            Wow. So if Nazis contributed to a project you like that’d be ok cause that’s what I’m reading from your reply…

                • @doodledup@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  -1
                  edit-2
                  1 month ago

                  Nazis go to cinemas and pay tickets, supporting the cinema’s business. But that doesn’t mean the cinema endorces nazism. Your logic is simply flawed.

    • @rickdg@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      432 months ago

      Looks like a confused Swedish dude that when questioned about his use of English pronouns defaults to not wanting to get political. Is there more besides a misguided decision to avoid relevant political topics?

      I think we should chastise people that insist on not getting political, but not necessarily boycott everything they do. Or at least we should apply the same moral demands to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft or Google when choosing which browsers to support. Which of them is the least bad?

    • @Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      122 months ago

      I see zero reason to out the “transphobic” label on the dev.

      Think and read before labelling people.

        • A Wild Mimic appears!
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -42 months ago

          there may also be the possibility of the dev simply not wanting to define his views publicly out of the blue, because regardless of stance, you will make enemies, potentially hindering the projects development or facing personal repercussions.

          It should be allowed for someone to not out themselves as either transphobic or an ally. If the person does have issues with pronouns, it’s better if they simply keep to themselves instead of loudly proclaiming it. The other way around it’s the same - even if someone is pro trans, it might not be suitable for them to openly speak about it - it might even put them in danger.

          I agree with you that this is often a dog whistle, but it might also be a poor choice of wording.

    • @gnygnygny@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      52 months ago

      Totally excessive in view of the facts.

      There are so few alternative browsers and the collapse of the privacy is so global. That seems to me a minor point in relation to the goal.

    • Kalcifer
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 months ago

      Transphobic main dev […]

      Do you have a source?

    • @theherk@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -5
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I didn’t know anything about this, but it doesn’t sound as bad with context.

      edit: Removed link to a site which shouldn’t be receiving more traffic. I should have vetted it more thoroughly.

        • @ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          82 months ago

          Because it is. A quote from the linked page on asahi linux devs leaving twitter because of rising anti trans rhetoric

          ““Half of us are trans,” he says. Accompanied by a call to “fight back” against an imagined “genocide”, assumedly perpetrated by those who do not fully buy into his particular sexual fetish.”

          The blogs author purposely misgenders Alyssa Rosensweig and refers to being trans as a sexual fetish, which makes their politics obscenely clear. Further, Alyssa has a resume of amazing accomplishments in reverse engineering the apple m1 and m2 chips and developing graphics drivers for their gpus. Lundukes resume is basically growing up as a nerd and being a “tech blogger” from early in the game and going full qanon a few years ago

          Further in the article he references hector Martin saying that people demanding to keep politics out of tech is bullshit because tech is made by humans and anti trans rhetoric is going to kill his colleagues. His response to this:

          “Of course nobody is trying to kill Hector’s colleagues.

          And the vast majority of major corporations – not to mention the President of the country – are continually coming out in support of the Trans fetish. So declaring that there is a genocide occuring is beyond ridiculous.”

          So that didn’t age well (from less than 2 years ago)

        • @theherk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -12 months ago

          I don’t know. But rather than just accepting the assertion, I did a cursory search. This turned up and I perused it. I didn’t see anything damning and thought maybe somebody could clarify. I am absolutely not trying to defend anybody, but I didn’t spend much time on it. Sorry folks.

          Maybe he is a bad guy. Truly, I didn’t know.

      • gon [he]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        13
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        That blog post is pretty ridiculous, IMO.

        You’ll see the alt-right do that a lot, for some reason.

        There’s real criticism, but they always mix it in with some made-up complaints like the slavery thing, which is some of the most obvious sarcasm I have ever seen on the internet, but somehow taken literally by the author of the post.

        IDK if he’s a transphobe or whatnot, but his reaction to the change in language was indicative of, at the very least—with the most charitable of interpretations—, a disregard for inclusive language and, more realistically, some philosophy that doesn’t allow for “others” to participate because the existence of those that aren’t male is “political,” somehow.

        You might not see it, because you haven’t seen it enough times to recognize it, but it happens again and again and again… But it’s always quiet.

        “Don’t make this political,” “ideology isn’t welcome,” stuff like that. Statements that sound reasonable, but are only wielded to quiet those aiming for inclusiveness and acceptance of marginalized people.

        It might sound like a less-than-generous interpretation, a bit callous and over-zealous, but it’s just patterns. I hear wolf, I say wolf.

        Also, I thought that article had a really funny passage:

        One activist (“cafkafk”) seen below, within the GitHub repository for the developer being attacked, celebrating the fact that other activists – organized on “The Fediverse” – had arrived to harass the Ladybird developer.

        This alone made me think that it might be satire, but I don’t think it is… The Fediverse, huh? OK.

        • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          42 months ago

          I would’ve rejected the PR too, but not for violation of that rule, but because one-line changes that merely fix a comment waste everyone’s time reviewing it, and are often just to build someone’s resume. I’ve even seen some that remove trailing whitespace.

          If you want to fix it alongside other changes, go for it (and the reviewer said as much on the PR). But if you’re only interested in sending in drive-by commits to build a resume or something and aren’t actually interested in helping, then it should be rejected as noise.

          If there’s a broader pattern of this, maybe that’s cause for concern. But if it’s literally just this instance, I could see the dev being annoyed at drive-by PRs.

          • gon [he]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            12 months ago

            I would’ve rejected the PR too, but not for violation of that rule, but because one-line changes that merely fix a comment waste everyone’s time reviewing it, and are often just to build someone’s resume.

            That’s exactly what I was talking about. You’re taking what they said reasonably, because you’re probably a reasonable person! However, look at what they’re actually saying. The issue wasn’t framed as being a “drive-by,” though later that’s what they claimed. It was about ideology. It was about politics. They didn’t pull up rules about one-line changes to justify not accepting them, they pulled up rules about talking politics.

            The problem wasn’t that it was a meaningless PR, the problem was that it was a meaningful PR that they disagreed with.

            And, quite frankly, disagreeing with that does make you an asshole, at the very least, and a transphobic misogynist, at worst. There were at least a few PRs open about similar issues, too.

            Look, I’m not calling him a transphobe or a misogynist; I’m just saying this was an asshole thing to do, and it was done in an asshole way, and that allowing this sort of thing to exist, especially in FOSS, is not good. That’s all.

            Check this out: https://mkultra.monster/tech/2024/07/03/serenityos-and-ladybird

            • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              5
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              The issue wasn’t framed as being a “drive-by,” though later that’s what they claimed. It was about ideology.

              But that’s the problem, it’s both a drive-by, useless change and a politically motivated one. If you show up to a project and submit a change that violates multiple rules, it’s dealer’s choice which one to pick.

              With asynchronous discussions like this, it’s impossible to know their motivations, so it’s helpful to assume the best instead of the worst.

              Check this out: https://mkultra.monster/tech/2024/07/03/serenityos-and-ladybird

              From that:

              In order to not look like I’m just repeating myself over and over, here is another pull request where a user fixed the specifically gendered language, and was denied

              Here’s the PR in question. It was merged, probably because it didn’t just change “he” to “they” in one spot (but did just that in a few spots), but actually fixed confusing language.

              And then after it was merged, there were tons of irrelevant comments about the policy and other PRs.

              The one I pulled here included changes from the other rejected PRs. Maybe this was by a different reviewer, idk. That said, it’s still a little iffy since it’s just fixing grammar and especially pronouns that aren’t really relevant to the code it’s commenting.

              I probably would’ve accepted that last one because it fixes stuff in a lot of places rather than one (quantity has a quality of its own), and accepting it will hopefully stop PR spam.

              Look, I’m not calling him a transphobe or a misogynist

              He may be. Idk.

              My criticisms here go to everyone involved:

              • reviewer should’ve rejected the PRs because they’re noisy, not because they’re “political”
              • submitter shouldn’t just submit a 1-line grammar fix in a comment
              • github users shouldn’t brigade, discussion should be technical
              • blog author should be more accurate (see above)

              It’s stupid drama all around.

              Fixing comments is fine. If you’re going to only fix comments, at least fix a bunch of them at once, and ideally more than just a pronoun or grammar mistake here and there. English isn’t everyone’s first language, so assume the best and don’t waste everyone’s time with useless changes.

              • gon [he]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                22 months ago

                Sigh, you do have a point.

                Maybe this was by a different reviewer, idk.

                It was. Some other member of SerenityOS, not the person behind Ladybird (awesomekling).

                blog author should be more accurate (see above)

                That’s fair. I’ll say though, the blog post is dated from 1 day after the PR was actually merged. It’s not unreasonable to think that, when they wrote it, it really hadn’t been merged and they only saw the initial denial citing the policy.

                He may be. Idk.

                Yeah, I was just trying to say that that wasn’t the point of my rant. I get it I get it.

                • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  1
                  edit-2
                  2 months ago

                  It’s not unreasonable to think that, when they wrote it, it really hadn’t been merged and they only saw the initial denial citing the policy.

                  That never happened on this PR. The only human reply before the merge (aside from the submitter) was this:

                  Please fix the commit messages (see BuggieBot’s comment); and maybe this can go in one commit? Doesn’t really need to be 5 separate ones.

                  And this is BuggieBot’s comment:

                  Hello!

                  One or more of the commit messages in this PR do not match the SerenityOS code submission policy, please check the lint_commits CI job for more details on which commits were flagged and why.
                  Please do not close this PR and open another, instead modify your commit message(s) with git commit --amend and force push those changes to update this PR.

                  It’s a completely different.

                  This, plus the tone of the blog post looks like they were on a crusade instead of trying to accurately portray events.

                  Sorry to beat a dead horse here, my point is that we all need to be careful jumping to conclusions, especially in FOSS where discussion almost exclusively happens asynchronously in text and with people with different backgrounds. Pretty much everyone involved failed at that.

                  I agree with the rest.

        • @theherk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          42 months ago

          My mistake. I didn’t look far enough into it. But the accusation was made without context so I didn’t know. I’m not trying to defend him.

            • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              42 months ago

              It also can be a reasonable take though, and you’ll need more context to distinguish it.

              In this case, Lunduke has a history of injecting politics where it doesn’t belong, which is a shame because I used to watch some of his content (esp. his “Linux sucks” series). But now it’s filled with nonsense.

              My point is, don’t write someone off because they don’t want politics or political correctness in their project. Write them off when they use that excuse to silence things they don’t like and allow things they do.

            • @pr0sp3kt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              -22 months ago

              Don’t you think for a second that talking like this is indicative of extremism, polarization, even fanatism? It is ok to take political posture, but this is excessive

  • ZeroOne
    link
    fedilink
    English
    112 months ago

    Once Servo is finished, we might have a browser rennaisance (I hope)

    • mesaOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 months ago

      That would be nice. I know lately I’ve been playing around with gopher sites with command line browsers. It’s been fun seeing what others have made.

  • @e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    52 months ago

    You can compare the WPT test results of many different browsers here. Its surprising to me that Servo lags behind Ladybird in successfully passed WPT tests.

  • @cm0002@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    32 months ago

    I love it when I see Ladybird come up! ESPECIALLY now with the ongoing enshittification of FF lmao

  • kamen
    link
    fedilink
    English
    22 months ago

    Politics aside, I’d be curious to see how far something like this can go. Can’t not think of Opera Software - even they were not successful while they were using their own proprietary tech.

  • @kepix@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    -12 months ago

    same slogan everywhere, plant pictures for a strong greenwashing aesthetics, old white men smiling reassuringly. 5/7 homepage.