Finally, another web engine is being developed to compete with Chromium and Firefox (Gecko), and they're also working on a browser that will use it.
The devs have some problematic views, mainly transphobic and misogynistic.
Is this because they used "he" instead of "they" in the build instructions? ... They changed that and acknowledged the mistake. Surely that's enough. It's the fucking build instructions. I think we can probably find it in our hearts to forgive them.
[edit] Just in case people think I'm joking. I'm not. As far as I'm aware, the critical incident that that has resulted in people calling Ladybird devs anti-trans is that they wrote 'he' instead of 'they' in the build instructions. That's what caused the original outrage. And as far as I'm aware, there have been no other incidents. But please, if there is something of substance that I'm not aware of, post about it here.
That's literally it. People are getting angry over unsubstantiated information for 0 reason
Also, the use of AI-generated images on their website.
So?
For many small project is AI/copied images or no images at all.
When you do not have money you are not hiring a 2000€/month artist to do imagery for your website. You go online to copy something or nowadays you can use AI to wrap it up. It's a tool at people's disposition like any other.
And before anyone comes talking about copyright laws... shall I present them my 10 TB hard drive of pirated media? Human culture is to be shared, not gatekeeped.
For one, AI datasets often break copyright law, frequently appropriating from artists. Executives are also trying to use it to eliminate the jobs of artists, and I feel it’s wrong to try and obsolete something people love doing.
In addition, they take a lot of power, not helping in the way of the needed changes to follow climate goals.
Clarification: Copyright laws can be annoying, and I don’t always agree with them. However, it also protects smaller artists. I think there are many cases where piracy is totally fine, though, like if a company vaults an animated streaming show and gets rid of all other ways to watch it.
Normal people boycotting AI models will not stop executives from being hostile to artists.
Especially people who would have otherwise not paid for art.
Interesting. I am an artist, but I find it helps me make better art. Faster too.
But all my work is copyleft and I give zero shits about so-called "copyright infringement"
I do break copyright law every single day of my life. And so far the only harm I've done is avoiding Disney a free pass to kill my wife.
Copyright law is bad. Sharing is caring.
Also I've make AI images with Stable Diffusion self hosted on my N100 server that takes way less energy than a normal computer being turned on for hours using Photoshop, so I saved the world by doing AI images instead of manually painting them.
Executives are also trying to use it to eliminate the jobs of artists, and I feel it’s wrong to try and obsolete something people love doing.
Luddism, much?
I fail to see how is traing AI on publicly available images hurting small artists?
You don't have to write if you don't have time, link to explanation is good for me.
I basically use generated images in places that would not have any ilustrations before. There is no budget. When I have money for an artist I hire an artist.
people who add AI features to shit like this are always the dumbest fucking people alive
you're not some big tech company actually developing an AI assistant for your browser or OS it's just a fake feature every time lol
if they're already trying to pass off AI imagery as proof their project is robust, they will do the same with copypasted AI features every time
Meh, that just killed my interest in the project. I was really looking forward to their first release. Now I don’t care anymore.
Jumping to transphobic and misogynistic for not wanting to use inclusive language in some repo documentation is a big jump. He didn't ever dead named anyone or refuse to use some person preferred pronoums. Its just not wanting to use inclusive language on documentation. Most, if not all, documentation I have ever read in my life don't use the newest trend of inclusive language.
By they way accusations were written it seemed like devs were actually exposing hate speech or something like that.
Let's not be like that, ok? At least I choose not be like that. You can destroy people lives with such accusations over basically nothing, be better.
I know that we are near Americans elections as it always makes the whole internet jumping, and throwing knives to find "the enemy". But it could be as simple as inclusive language might be confusing for non english speakers, or might the trend change over time and it's just a bother to keep updating with the lastest trend. Do you know how many versions of inclusive language did we have in my language? We started using ell@s, then ellxs, then ellos y ellas, then elles, then ellos, ellas y elles. It's too volatile and little to be that mad over it. Specially when there's people out there who truly hate anyone who is not a cis str male and is doing true hate speech over that.
If there's more evidence of devs being evil, I will aknowledge it. But for such a little inconsequential thing (again it's not even being against someone chosen pronoums, it's just general documentation) I refuse to spread hate towards other human being.
So do you have any evidence for this instead of just dropping it with no source?
It almost like a bot is posting this sentence every time SerenityOS is mentioned.
Using "he" insted of "they" is not enough to call someone transphobic or misogynistic. It's like you become fascist and are targeting people for one different opinion. Which is not even true.
There are real problems transgender people are having, ladybird browser must be low on that priority.
There are real problems transgender people are having, ladybird browser must be low on that priority.
Are you trying to tell me that Ladybird inadvertently referring to a computer process 'he' instead of 'it' is not a high priority problem for transgender people? What could possibly be worse? :p
(But seriously though. I find it really weird that people are still upset at Ladybird about this. It makes me wonder if there's some social manipulation going on. Like, is anyone actually upset about this, or is it just an excuse to attack the devs?)
It was changed to they later, to the lead dev, in german they/them is a neopronoun, and "he" is gender neutral is those situations, i assume he thought it was the same in english
I dunno friend, after reading a bunch of comments here it sounds like this may not be true, please edit this to include the context or a source to the claim
From last time. TL;DR real weird vibes. This is a PR where you say "oops, that makes sense", click merge, and go on living your life. Not whatever this ended up being.
Upgrading to gender neutral language is important.
Having a reflex to avoid politics, especially when you live in an environment where concepts like gender aren't discussed, is understandable. It's an attempt to do no harm that doesn't have the expected impact. It still causes harm because simple problems like gendered language are treated with an allergic response. This is what happens when conservatives hyper-sensitize well-meaning people on social topics. Considering the world we live in, you can't expect everyone to know how to flawlessly navigate these issues on the first try.
Their policy of "no politics" was misguided, but understandable. Everything is political. It was fashionable for decades to pretend otherwise. Many people grow up in an environment that ignores social topics. They need to be accepted into spaces where social topics are discussed, not immediately ostracized for not knowing the rules to a game they are new to.
I would like them to neutralize gendered assumptions in their documentation and learn from the experience, but that can only happen if they aren't ostracized from the community. I want to give them a chance to learn and improve to disrupt Google's unhealthy monopoly in the browser space.
The PR in question is also in error. It claims that the documentation assumed the gender of the user or the developer. A close reading of the requested commit reveals that the documentation instead assumes the gender of an example user named "anon" whose permissions are being altered. The documentation's use of gender is in using a male as an example user needing their privileges deescalated. Still problematic, of course: not only men need their privilege checked from time to time.
Having a reflex to avoid politics, especially when you live in an environment where concepts like gender aren't discussed, is understandable
Being female is not "political".
Their policy of "no politics" was misguided, but understandable.
Being female is not "political".
Everything is political.
Being female is not "political".
Being female requires a society that preserves the freedom to be female and for each generation to define what that means for themselves.
The rights of all are political and need to be at the forefront of politics. The rights of women being threatened politicizes them. The political constitution of the united states chose to clearly define rights that ought to be upheld. We seem to be losing them, as they fall through judicial cracks. They were only ever built by jurisprudence updating interpretations of old text to modern values (e.g. the weakly inferred right to privacy that needs to be more explicit, upon which Roe was founded). Now connotations are being stripped, and it will take political action to restore our rights. The US Constitution is almost 250 years old, and still says enslaved people get 3/5 votes. The 13th amendment says only criminals can be slaves. That means felons should have 3/5 of a vote, not no vote, right? Broken document in vital need of a reassessment of values. It's fallen apart and America needs a new one. It's time for a constitutional convention and for the country to vote on some amendments, or even a new document. A document that ensures free and fair elections, with independent primaries and ranked choice voting. A document that guarantees more explicitly our rights to privacy and to seek medical care. A document that upholds labor rights and reins in greed before it can choke the country with monopolies like Google has with Chromium + solely funding Mozilla. It's time for a new deal with the American people that can survive the courts for more than 80 years because anything we put in the new constitution will be constitutional by definition.
This is a political time. We are all political actors. We define how politics proceeds and decide whose rights are considered.
Good points.
I don't quite get how you find it "understandable" to have a reflex against human rights, but otherwise I think we're in agreement.
I think it's understandable to have a few allergic reactions in a new environment until you get a grip on it. Especially if it's not someone's native language.
Not a strategy I recommend, but one I see often enough and understand to be benign and correctable and not necessarily indicative of problematic beliefs. It is indicative of someone needing an introduction to a facet of their communication, not someone needing to be shown the door.
Ousting people and projects from community spaces makes them vulnerable prey to the capitalist vultures. Desperation fuels the labor pool of the very worst parts of our society. Ostracization should only be done in extreme circumstances, if at all. Please seek abolitionist restoration, not retributive punishment.
It's a one-time error the maintainer made 3 years ago (at a time when much of the US-influenced west was going crazy with polarization over the use of pronouns), not a consistent behavior of intolerance as one would expect given the level of hostility towards the project seen here. I personally find it weirder to hold such a long-standing grudge for a one-off error, and over a project one is not even personally involved with.
at a time when much of the US-influenced west was going crazy with polarization over the use of pronouns
lmao, speak for yourself. The anti-pronoun crazies have always been fringe, and their message has always been hateful and sexist.
When someone tells me who they are, I believe them. I'm seeing no evidence that anything has changed in 3 years.
IDK what you mean with "speak for yourself" (don't we always speak for ourselves? :S)
Just to clarify, i think it's better to use gender-neutral pronouns when gender is irrelevant, or unknown. And it's easy! I've been doing so writing on English online forums since more 2 decades ago.
But i don't think it's reasonable to get mad at someone, or even attack them, for using male pronouns instead of gender-neutral ones. It doesn't say anything about the person being sexist or hateful. The veeery vast majority of people who do this do it out of ignorance rather than malice. And attacking someone for something they don't even consider as a moral choice —like referring to a generic programmer a "he" instead of "they"— does nothing positive for this world, on the contrary.
Like i said earlier, it was changed to they later, to the lead dev, in german they/them is a neopronoun, and "he" is gender neutral is those situations, i assume he thought it was the same in english
I don't understand how a German grammar situation would elicit the response from the PR. Are gender neutral pronouns "political" in Germany? Why did the dev say "personal politics" specifically?
Are gender neutral pronouns "political" in Germany?
Yeah, (like in french) male pronouns ARE the gender neutral option, and using they/them would be like using xim/xer in english
So doesn't that still mean that they think gender-neutral pronouns are political, i.e. they don't accept them? I've also noticed the dev in question is Swedish, so I'm not sure where German language quirks came from?
Well, yeah, but in gendered languages every common noun has a gender, and gender neutral pronouns are very very new, especially 3 years ago, so even most people in those lgbtq communities use male pronouns as gender neutral.
Tldr: yeah, but its like the tiniest deal ever
Edit: wanted to add that in gendered languages using gender neutral instead of male pronouns when referring to the user in the app would be wierd
That's why I didn't say "transphobia" anywhere in my comment. Real weird vibes is what I'm personally sticking with until I see more. The 'transphobic' and 'misogynist' claims are a leap without further evidence, but there's a very strong clue about the type of person someone is when they say pronouns are "political".
i don't even want to click your link because it says "unhinged dishonest activists". i have literally only ever heard the worst people with the worst opinions ever say shit like that.
if I were in a room with Hitler and Lunduke etc
So you agree with the idea that submitting a "minor nitpick" PR suggesting that the software doesn't refer to all users as male is "personal politics" and deserves an angry response for even suggesting it?
You sure do sound like someone who would agree with Lunduke...
Being a woman or being transgender isn't "political". Vocally opposing inclusiveness is asshole behavior.
Not even mad that he's not accepting a low-effort PR. It's trivializing people's existence as "political" that makes him shitty.
Making a low effort argument against a straw man that was never stated. You sure you aren’t a conservative?
No, I disagree with the idea of digging into years of history to drag up the one thing to be mad at and bandwagon over with a loud mob with surface level care that move onto the next bandwagon in a week. Typical to Twitter behavior. Doesn’t actually help anyone, typically hurts the movements they claim to support among everyone else.
I’m about the farthest from Lunduke you can get, he’s just not wrong in this specific instance. You don’t know me, “you sure do sound” is a silly attempt at internet games. Yawn.
I guess what I'm saying here is that if you agree with Lunduke's sexist take, you're just revealing yourself to be a sexist.
Making a donation to a campaign that the majority of Californians voted for is unforgivable.
I couldnt really care less about my chefs personal view as long as the meal is ok.
Don't put all all Ladybird devs in the same basket, there's currently more than 1000 contributors.
Ok, Andreas Kling said some untasteful things a few years ago when it was mostly his project, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss the whole project for this reason now.
Hot take: Since it's a BSD licensed browser at some point in the future, there's going to be a company that funds it brings it to mainstream with their flavor, and then will over throw chromium in time. Replace an 'evil' with another 'evil'.
Yeah not a good licence at all for an independent browser. Idk if Servo MPL is a good license either. Do you know of any web browser that is GPL?
Definitely not what you want, but Gnome web (Epiphany) is GPLv3 according to flathub.
Its better than a BSD style license which is what I was mainly critiquing
Luckily Gecko still exists. And who knows, maybe Servo will make it one day (but the odds are stacked against both them and Ladybird anyway).
There was a gpl licensed browser engine someone by hobby is writing from scratch. I think theese companies supporting ladybird just do so because of license that they can proprietarify(like chromium)
How is it progressing so fast compared to Servo? Isn't Servo being developed for a longer time?
It's interesting to see a new browser engine aside from Gecko and Chromium, especially with all the conundrum surrounding the Manifest v2 support.
i'd like to see a revival of webkit and an open source browser that uses it
I used luakit for awhile. Really fun to only use keyboard, but definitely lacking features that makes "modern" websites not suck so hard
I feel like this is a dumb question but why do web engines need constant development? I thought we had an established standard for HTML. Once a web engine matches that standard isn't that sufficient?
some reasons that I can think of:
- performance improvements (e.g. JIT)
- new standards (e.g. WASM)
- vulnerabities
- new features (e.g. web engines weren't always sandboxed)
Some of the new features most people aren't aware of us that I used recently :
- WebXR, make a Web page immersive and work in the browser of VR/AR headsets, e.g Meta Quest, Lynx XR1, Apple Vision Pro, etc
- WebBlueTooth, connect to a BT device, e.g a Lego controller in order to move actuator, data from sensors, etc
- WebUSB, connect a device and update its firmware, e.g SmartWatch, mechanical keyboard, etc
- GamePad API, use a gamepad or joystick to play from a browser window
- Realms in JavaScript for "better" sandboxing, it's a relatively new feature of the language so the engine must be updated
So... sure none of that really helps to read a 2D Web page (like this one on Lemmy) but they pretty much all help to achieve better cross-platform support. By using the Web rather than native to connect to hardware then it is instantly delivered without having any OS specific driver to build and install. Practically speaking it does make the browser increasingly complex but IMHO it is worth it.
PS: I probably also used some modern CSS so there also the engine (which is ridiculously complex by the way) has to be updated too.
HTML used to be a pretty set standard, maintained by the W3C. HTML5 was retired in 2018 (5.2 in 2021). Now it is a Living Standard that changes often and is maintained by a consortium of browser vendors.
It is also not the only technology being changed.
There are features that constantly get added. It's not only HTML (maybe the html part is stable, I don't know), but there's CSS and most importantly JavaScript.
Also, browsers don't always follow the standard exactly. Some features get added that aren't in the standard.
All the code is hosted on GitHub. Clone it, build it, and join our Discord if you want to collaborate on it! We're looking forward to seeing you there.
So much for freedom when everything is done thru proprietary services under US jurisdiction.
There was a gpl licensed browser engine someone by hobby is writing from scratch. I think theese companies supporting ladybird just do so because of license that they can proprietarify(like chromium)
I agree. However, things are so bad in the browser market that even a proprietary browser could be good news if they don't become a duopoly and actually compete.
I don't know if it's a good idea to build a new engine from scratch... Maybe it is but I don't know, behind an engine you need to have support and development, so this thing needs to be improved and supported along the versions to be safe, so I don't know if it's a good idea or not 🙃
