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/
It's nice and needed that there is someone creating a new browser engine after more than 20 years, but it is a huge work to do and sadly it will last almost 2 years until the first beta release and other 2 years more to have a stable multiplatform version. Creating a browser engine from scratch isn't a joke and a lot of others who tried it are among already 70 other discontinued browser projects. It's a lot of effort to maintain even an existing engine. We'll see, anyway these guys show balls to try it.
Its no small task, but the progress has been outstanding. They are just shy of 600 tests to pass Flow in WPT tests, and have made great breakthroughs lately, I believe the project has been going on since 2022 mixed with SerenityOS, but separated in 2024, so it's been 3 years in development, 1 or so independently
Good luck to them, we'll see where development stands in a year when alpha comes