This is very encouraging:
Ladybird uses a new browser engine called LibWeb that is being created from scratch by the development team.
Browsers that rely on Chromium / Blink rely on Google. Firefox relies on Google for its funding, so any browser based on Gecko relies on Google. If they can make a browser engine that has rough feature parity with Chromium but doesn’'t rely on Google that’s very healthy for the web.
ladybird has been infected and its our job as the believers of the church of emacs to get rid of this cancer.
challenge the status quo by partnering with the status quo…
How much you want to bet Cloudflare went to them and was like ‘hey either work for (sorry, “with”) us or we declare you a “suspicious” traffic source and block you.’
I’ve seen a lot of Ladybird news recently. Let me know when I can actually try using it.
pack it up folks, we’ve been compromised
You were the chosen one!
I’m still waiting on a Chuck Schumer/Hakeem Jeffries episode.
ladybird browser coming up with status quo integration so they challenge status quo.
it’s like these browser devs have no idea what people actually want in a browser.
There’s nothing about integrating anything (I assume you mean Cloudflare turnstile?). It’s Cloudflare giving money to projects they like. Apparently Ladybird also has a 100k per donor limit, so that’s the max Cloudflare can give (annually?)
that’s like taking money from google just so they aren’t considered monopolies in the browser segment.
doesn’t “challenge” no status quo.
Apolitical people are really funny.
to be fair “apolitical” usually leans right-wing
Straight outta Onion
Ah yes, of course the status quo challenges the status quo!
Cloudflare and “challenging the status quo” in the same phrase ?
Well, the browser status quo. I guess they want their own Chrome.
Its sponsorship only of an open source browser, with no telemetry, advertising, crypto, etc, etc built in.
Sponsors get listed as sponsors, thats it.
For now
So when they do just fork it?
I likely won’t touch it anyway, but it is fully open source, so it can be forked easily. With the transition to Swift I suspect there would be plenty of devs who could take things forward if they wanted to.
If you look at history, Google did the opposite with Chrome, they forked an open source browser and turned it into the world’s most used.
I guess we’ll see.Thats google though, with the added ability to put it direct into an extremely common OS (Android). With ladybird, you’ve got an apparent neocon and 3 years currently planned for a GA release (2028). Its future is already pretty uncertain regardless of sponsorship.
So when they do just fork it?
say the same for chrome, and think again if you mean it seriously.
Iridium, cromite, edge, brave, thorium, vivaldi, pale moon…
And this is a drastically simpler browser that would be in swift 6.
and what can they do against the manifest v3 migration? they cannot afford to keep maintaining the code for mv2 addons. it is an important topic for efficient content blocking.
its funny you bring up edge as an alternative. brave too has opt-out telemetry and other shenanigans.
Challenge the status quo in a Snowpiercer fashion.
I’ve got a roach farm, so I’m already on board.
Was this too obscure for Lemmy?
Cloudflare has announced its sponsorship of the Ladybird browser, an independent (still-in-development) open-source initiative
Is it still independent?
Yes, and their donations are limited to 100k a year per corporation/organization, so there cant be a company who comes, donates 20million and then tries to gain control of them through money
Yes, and their donations are limited to 100k a year per corporation/organization
Interesting that they did that.
Yes, it is still independent. Cloudflare is just one of the three Platinum sponsors. Other two are Shopify and FUTO. Proton is also a sponsor, but in Gold tier, iirc.
Shopify being a sponsor makes it highly suspect instantly.
Andreas (lead engineer) has told the story of how he got that money - they just happen to know each other and $100k is peanuts for the Shopify founders.
But you’re right to suspect anything of the sort!
I think It’s on their charter that no matter how much corporate money they’ll get they’ll never accept any outside influence just the same. The donators are amply warned to not expect anything other than development as usual or faster.
People always imagine this as “I will pay you $100 to kick the puppy” and of course they would never.
But what actually happens is that you have a long-term donor. You rely on their help (they’re paying for you to be able to hire a nice college intern who’s really smart and has been fun to have on the project). They never tell you what to do so you see them as more of a friend than anything else. It’s perfectly normal to get some lunch with friends and talk. You’re stuck on some problems and they have some good connections that help you out. That might even be worth more than $100k, but it’s not money at all so it’s OK that they’re helping you like this. They also talk you up, which is like free advertising except you didn’t ask for it so that also doesn’t count. Anyway, at some of the lunches they’re telling you about what’s going on with them and there’s some problems they’re dealing with that you could help with. They don’t ask for help, of course, because they know you’re independent. But being independent means it’s OK for you to do what you want. Even help a friend out who didn’t ask for help so they’re not influencing you…
they stated on their website this project will remain independet and that donators don´t have a say in how this is being developed
No browser with third party investors can be really independent, they always will obey more the interests of the investors as on those from the users. Anyway the guys from Ladybird have balls of steel to develope an browser engine from scratch in an market saturated of browsers of any kind and a brutal competition, this would had more sense 15 years ago, but not now. Good luck, maybe in 2029-2030 there is an good browser multi-platform with all the needed infrastructure, servers and extensions, but I’ll see to believe.
No browser with third party investors can be really independent, they always will obey more the interests of the investors as on those from the users.
That’s why they limited donations to $100k per organization. No one is allowed to make themselves indispensable to the project.
How can you say it’s saturated when chrome has an effective monopoly. If you look at browser engines, there’s basically only 3 for desktop, with one of them targeting only Macs.
As said, there are currently three engines + two forks of these (Gonanna and Qt), except some basic render engines from text only browsers (Links, Lynx and some others), but over hundred different browsers which use these engines, + almost 70 abandoned ones, because outdated engines and others which also tried to develope an own engine. This is what I mean with saturated. It’s nice to try to release a browser with a new independent engine, but if there are not enough users which also use it, it’s a death born child. For some products the market is limited. Make it eg. sense to release a new OS? There also existing only 4, Unix, Unixbased like Windows or Mac and Linux with tons of distros. It’s not only the browser engine, in over 20 years there are also growed complete infrastructure arround these engines, dedicated plug ins, extensions, etc, which don’t exist for a new indie engine, precisely because other browsers, which also tried to release a new engine, before Ladybird, are currently all death. Sad, but you need also a minimum of infrastructure for an browser and which offer also somewhat more as only a new engine. It need security and privacy measures, inbuild or with extensions/plug-ins which need an extra developement and other things more.
Still, it’s hard to understand why Cloudflare chose to back exactly Omarchy.
Maybe the developers in Cloudflare use it? Also weird because Omarchy’s default browser is Chromium I think. The webpage didn’t list the default browser, so not sure about that.
Here’s one theory: https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and-fascists.html
Anyway, Omarchy and Ladybird are both run by fascists. Omarchy makes this pretty obvious from the outset – on the home page the big YouTube poster image prominently features SuperGrok, which is a pathetically transparent dog-whistle to signal alliance with Elon Musk’s fascist politics. Omarchy is the pet project of David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH, who is well known as a rich fascist weirdo.2 One need only consult his blog to browse his weird, racist views on immigration, fat-shaming objections to diverse representation, vaguely anti-feminist/homophobic/rapey rants on consent, and, recently, tone-policing antifascists who celebrate the death of notable fascist Charlie Kirk.
Speaking of tributes to Charlie Kirk, that brings us to Andreas Kling, the project lead for Ladybird, who tweeted on the occasion of his assassination:
RIP Charlie Kirk
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists.
– @awesomekling
I was not prepared to learn these things today.
most people outside the us have never heard any of kirk’s talking points. if you only know that he is a conservative debater and use your normal (non-us) definition of “conservative”, then “people should not die for their opinions” is not a controversial take. i’m not saying that’s what’s happened here but it’s the most likely situation considering klings history.
I definitely wouldn’t expect people to have heard of Kirk at all. Even within the US he was a bit of a niche asshole. But I would expect that before posting “RIP <somedude> he was a good guy” they would do some quick web searches and get an idea of what somedude was about and then only post if they agreed that that’s their notion of a good guy.
The argument on Kling seems pretty weak to me… is he Fascist because… he doesn’t support violence and an assassination? 🙄
By this logic for being not fascist one must support the death penalty?
I am pretty sure fascists are in favour of violence and murder (in fact the person cited was killed by a fascist)
RIP Charlie Kirk
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists.
“carry on his quest”. What was Charlie Kirks quest again? Where does he say he doesn’t support violence and assassination? Are you Klings PR?
I am pretty sure fascists are in favour of violence and murder (in fact the person cited was killed by a fascist)
Just because fascists kill fascists doesn’t make spreding hate less fascist. Does your definition of fascists only start when they start shooting people on sight?
People like kirk were revelling in current administration. But since they didn’t “use violence”, they must’ve been innocent in all this trend, huh?
Honestly there’s a reason fascists are on the rise. People like you seem too oblivious to see the subtle narrative of spreading hate by casual undertones.
But hey, you do you. I hope you take up his quest as well.
No, Kling is not at his first “offence” - he doesn’t support LGBT, so that surely makes him a fucking fascist.
Can you cite something for that? I’m not disagreeing, I’m just disappointed by the revelation and would like to get my facts straight.
Grrrreat. So one can already tick off that browser before it is even ready to test.
Honestly, Firefox has been stable AF and forks are doing awesome work. Maybe those forks might even continue doing their own thing by the time this project will be ready for beta testing.
Competition is great but this one’s on already on shaky ground.
I’m rooting for Servo more than these fascist wannabes.
Jesus, what a reach for two projects run by normal dudes.
The open source community is filled with people on the left side trying to bring down people they disagree with. You can tolerate them, or fork away and leave their “shitty project run by fascists” instead of witch hunting and name calling anyone you dissagree with
fascists guy: has an opinion
leftist guy: wants to witch hunt a guy for his opinion amd get him kicked out of his own project
like it or not, who’s being fascist? you know it well.
Foss is one of the most inherently leftist institutions in our society
Hey, hi, trans person here. Calling my mere existence “political” is not “just an opinion”. Rejecting a PR to change “he” to “they” in some code comments is also just a stupid hill to die on. No singular they is basically baby’s first edgy opinion.
Sorry which are we talking about the rejected the PR, DHH or kling?
I suspect its DHH just making sure
Edit: Found it
Kling rejected with: “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”
For SerenityOS documentation to use a singular they to not assume gender.
Edit 2: For the record, this is even more stupid than you think. The documentation was written with gendered language for a male reader only in mind.
“Hey, I fixed your bad writing”
“POLITICS?!1?!%?!”
The tweet about Kirk has some firm context with this. I’d call it pretty dang likely that kling is a fan…
You yourself are tagging the fascist guy as a fascist. Not all opinions are just opinions.
Who’s the real fascist?
The one you tagged as such.I’m labeling him that to make clear the irony of the situation
the supposedly “fascist” guy: has an opinion
the totaly “moderate” leftist guy: wants him gone even from his own project from it
hope I made myself clear now 👍
the “supposedly” fascist guy:
has an opinionwants to get rid of people not like him and who did not do any wrongNo, you did, but my point still stands. Not all opinions are just an opinion.
Person A: yeh we need to accept shootings. Empathy is damaging. So much more damaging crap.
Person B: they debated, such good people, we need more like them.
Yeah. No? My point is that there’s a reason they get tagged as fascists or fascists apologists, they have fascist opinions or condone/glorify people saying them.
“Has an opinion” is an unacceptable generalisation in this case.
Let’s not forget that Drew is the one that wants to burn Stallman at the stake.
Yeah, they could have just backed arch
