Comment by jll29
9 months ago
Andreas is a fantastic coder and also a great shepherd of geeks (community builder).
The split makes sense for practical reasons - I also sense he is personally perhaps more passionate about browser hacking than OS hacking (his own contributions were more to Ladybird than to the OS for about a year as he himself writes). Smart as he is, he may have recognized that he is in a unique position to be able to contribute a cross-platform browser that competes with the big tech companies, where as SerenityOS is essentially more of a toy OS (32 bit, 1990s look and feel, not compatible with important other operating systems, no radically new OS concepts) - without wanting to dimish the contributions of its amazing developers. IMHO, SerenityOS is more about the process of writing code from scratch than the resulting software itself. Its purpose appears to be 1. to prove it is possible despite the naysayers ("only large tech companies can build a browser", "no-one can build an OS from scratch") and 2. to enjoy the coding itself.
As other commenters have already stated, the only issue will be taking as much from Ladybird over to SerenityOS as possible.
Having watched this over years, and deleted every single comment I've written on it thus far, I'm challenging myself to be honest and forthright.
There's another way of looking at, that is confirmed by the same set of facts:
- There was an OS project run by an awesome dude with a great story that was seen as in a unique position to compete with big tech companies.
- It needed a web browser.
- A web browser project was created.
- Now, the web browser is in a unique position to compete with big tech companies.
- This means it needs to fork itself, and drop support for the OS. That is because the OS project is now a toy.
My last deleted comment mentioned my deep respect for Andreas, and that my next milestone for the browser is downloadable builds and/or moving from pre-alpha to alpha (the downloadable builds was listed as a warning it was in pre-alpha).
I don't like appearing negative or arguably unsupportive, hence all the deleted comments over the years.
But, it's very important to me to make sure there's an accurate signal of what working on your own project looks like. Including the progress rate on things that sound awesome to work on, like an OS or web browser.
I've been dreaming of doing that since I was 17, and it took me 18 years of preparation, predominantly careful observation of successes, and failures, to go out on my own successfully.
The idea that this is something that companies care about seems wrong.
I agree, and I think it's worth pointing out. A younger me would have misunderstood complex technical work for business / success. Do it to scratch your own itch, but not for fame/money/fortune. Also worth noting the decision to focus on it is an excellent example of this: do what feels right, rest falls into place.
What unique position does this browser have? in the nicest way, truly nobody cares, both are pet projects
That's not the nicest way, nor is it the most honest or accurate. I actually do care (and I know I'm not the only one) and even find myself firing up ladybird from time to time. It's probably more accurate to say "few" people care, and caring comes in degrees. Just in case it needs to be said: popularity isn't necessarily a great measurement of salience either.
You're 110% right. Why would any company care about competition from it? Its years away from being real, then it can start trying to build name recognition like Firefox had to. And once all that's done...does it actually do anything different fundamentally that could lead to a qualitatively different experience, like Servo?
There's a certain set of topics that are beyond my ability to explain exactly why they have an aphrodisiac-like appeal to enough commentators that they can't be discussed.
It's dangerous because if you read the threads, all the signal you'd have is "these are important, noteworthy, well-known projects that even get funded!", and anyone making decisions about their own career based on that would be gravely mistaken.
So, you're left with impressions and no facts: you have no idea that its a web browser that you have to compile to use, most people talking about it aren't using it, even as a toy, even one-off.
The multiple engineers hired to help came from a one-off grant from pandemic-era Shopify that thought it was 10x'ing in size, & it was given for absolutely no reason, strategic or otherwise. That would fund, in actuality, roughly 1 engineer for a year, whereas it's lauded as funding that enabled hiring multiple engineers for the long-term.
I waited days to reply to you, because if I voiced anything remotely straightforward on the topic, it'd be downvoted to invisible, which would have just further reinforced the ideas in a reader, it'd look like I was making inaccurate claims.
* quick try: appeals to 'oh it wasn't that hard' we all meet somewhat regularly while programming. Then add the "I could build Dropbox in a weekend" effect. Then throw in "big tech companies suck", and "all web browsers suck", and you want this to succeed. Then throw in "man this guy sure has an awesome personal story, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and recovered!". Without any counter discussion, which is verboten because of the personal story, you're just getting absolutely bombarded with messaging that appeals to your common HN confirmation biases, you can do it, you can break bigco and fix the web/computers/etc.