cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/53891687

Hello guys, today I wanted to talk about a project I deeply care about and I’m actively contributing to, as I believe its good for everyone, including privacy concerned users

Ladybird Browser

This browser comes from the project “SerenityOS”, and has since evolved and separated from it. The founders are Andreas Kling, and Chris Wanstrath. The main goal of this project is to create a browser from scratch, avoiding chromium, gecko, etc. The main keypoints that should be of interest for Privacy Oriented Users are the following:

  • Ladybird lead (Andreas Kling) states “We’re not monetizing users, in any way. This is uncharted territory for browsers. So we’re not going to do any default search deals. We’re not going to do cryptocurrencies or try to monetize user data, just sponsorships and donations”

  • While** Ladybird will implement current web standards including cookie handling and tracking mechanisms for compatibility**, the browser’s philosophy puts the user in control of these decisions, not the company. The browser won’t have built-in incentives to encourage data collection since it doesn’t profit from it.

  • It aims to be “free from advertising’s influence” Ladybird, representing a shift away from the current web ecosystem where users like us are the product. This allows the project to implement privacy features without worrying about harming advertising partners or revenue streams.

As of now, the project has hired several developers with money coming from donations, from partners such as FUTO, Shopify, Cloudflare, among many, and is also seeing lots of volunteer activity on github. So well, if you like the web having more diversity and us having another alternative to google, check them out https://ladybird.org/

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    3·
    2 days ago

    Do they create a completely new engine of are they reusing something existant?

    Ladybird is a from scratch engine including a totally from scratch JavaScript engine.

    It is written entirely in C++ though they want to move to Swift.

    Originally, as part of the SerenityOS project, they wrote literally everything themselves (even crypto libraries). However, they broke away from Serenity and now reuse all kinds of existing support libraries, including non-trivial stuff like the Skia graphics library (written by Google).

    So, while Ladybird is not based on another browser, it is not really true anymore that it does not share code with other browsers (including Chromium). Depending on who you are, this is either a good thing (pragmatic, shorter time to useful) or death of the dream.