GitHub - LadybirdBrowser/ladybird: Truly independent web browser
-
Ladybird is a brand-new browser & web engine.
-
I'm surprised this got any kind of attention.
Here's the turn of events from my perspective:
- Someone submits a 1-line PR changing the gender used in a code comment
- PR rejected on the grounds that the change is "politically motivated"
- Submitter got mad, and proposed removing the rule against "politically motivated" changes
- Someone wrote a blog post about it
Here's my analysis:
- Stupid change - don't make PRs that simply correct an irrelevant typo in a comment somewhere; some people do this to put stuff on a resume (look at how much FOSS work I do!), and it just wastes everyone's time
- Stupid response - it should've been rejected because it's a useless change, not because it's "politically motivated"
- Stupid proposal - do you really want to waste a bunch of time fighting over wording in a comment? Because that's the kind of crap you get without a rule like this.
- This is all about an irrelevant change to a comment? Why is this getting so much attention?
"comments must be accurate," is not a rule you should bend. Bending it even a little leads to last programming and shit code.
-
That blog post is pretty ridiculous, IMO.
You'll see the alt-right do that a lot, for some reason.
There's real criticism, but they always mix it in with some made-up complains like the slavery thing, which is some of the most obvious sarcasm I have ever seen on the internet, but somehow taken literally by the author of the post.
IDK if he's a transphobe or whatnot, but his reaction to the change in language was indicative of, at the very least---with the most charitable of interpretations---, a disregard for inclusive language and, more realistically, some philosophy that doesn't allow for "others" to participate because the existence of those that aren't male is "political," somehow.
You might not see it, because you haven't seen it enough times to recognize it, but it happens again and again and again... But it's always quiet.
"Don't make this political," "ideology isn't welcome," stuff like that. Statements that sound reasonable, but are only wielded to quiet those aiming for inclusiveness and acceptance of marginalized people.
It might sound like a less-than-generous interpretation, a bit callous and over-zealous, but it's just patterns. I hear wolf, I say wolf.
Also, I thought that article had a really funny passage:
One activist ("cafkafk") seen below, within the GitHub repository for the developer being attacked, celebrating the fact that other activists -- organized on "The Fediverse" -- had arrived to harass the Ladybird developer.
This alone made me think that it might be satire, but I don't think it is... The Fediverse, huh? OK.
I would've rejected the PR too, but not for violation of that rule, but because one-line changes that merely fix a comment waste everyone's time reviewing it, and are often just to build someone's resume. I've even seen some that remove trailing whitespace.
If you want to fix it alongside other changes, go for it (and the reviewer said as much on the PR). But if you're only interested in sending in drive-by commits to build a resume or something and aren't actually interested in helping, then it should be rejected as noise.
If there's a broader pattern of this, maybe that's cause for concern. But if it's literally just this instance, I could see the dev being annoyed at drive-by PRs.
-
Lunduke is definitely right wing and has been for years
Lunduke used to be somewhat interesting, and I enjoyed his "Linux sucks" series, but he really has doubled down on political nonsense.
-
The Discord-based "support" makes it a "meh." The main devs alt-right BS makes it a "hard pass."
Is there any source for this?
-
Stay vigilant. Content about "Political correctness gone mad!" is step one of the alt-right pipeline.
It also can be a reasonable take though, and you'll need more context to distinguish it.
In this case, Lunduke has a history of injecting politics where it doesn't belong, which is a shame because I used to watch some of his content (esp. his "Linux sucks" series). But now it's filled with nonsense.
My point is, don't write someone off because they don't want politics or political correctness in their project. Write them off when they use that excuse to silence things they don't like and allow things they do.
-
We definitely need more competition in the browser space, I just wish it wasn't using such a permissive license as the BSD.
You're free to fork and use a more restrictive license, that's one of the cool things about BSD licenses. It's not like it's something dumb like the CDDL, which is incompatible with the GPL (and many other licenses) and the reason ZFS can't be directly included in the kernel.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Politics aside, I'd be curious to see how far something like this can go. Can't not think of Opera Software - even they were not successful while they were using their own proprietary tech.
-
Lemmy was created by a tankie, many of whom's opinions I abhor.
As long as it's FOSS and doesn't inherently promote their beliefs, I will use the software.
I agree it's not great and I'd prefer if it weren't made by imbeciles
Tankies are annoying, but they're not on the same level as fascists.
-
Transphobic main dev ruined the project for me
I see zero reason to out the "transphobic" label on the dev.
Think and read before labelling people.
-
Looks like a confused Swedish dude that when questioned about his use of English pronouns defaults to not wanting to get political. Is there more besides a misguided decision to avoid relevant political topics?
I think we should chastise people that insist on not getting political, but not necessarily boycott everything they do. Or at least we should apply the same moral demands to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft or Google when choosing which browsers to support. Which of them is the least bad?
There is nothing political about acknowledging peoples' existence.
-
“Don’t Be Evil” happily indexing while Bingcrosoft sleeps
DDG search is garbage, I'm sorry... Whenever I switch to a browser that defaults to it, I'm reminded why I always switch it back to Google (unfortunately). Even Yandex is better, and that's prob Russian spyware.
-
It still has some of the same problems as the comic, though not to the same extent, it doesn't need to be a standard for the comic to make sense, it's also about market share. Having yet another browser has the potential of diluting the market and making people just go for the default.
I might agree if it was another Chromium browser or something, but this uses its own rendering engine and thus directly opposes Google's dominance on web standards. Currently, there are only 3 major rendering engines:
- Blink - Chromium browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, etc)
- Gecko - Firefox browsers
- WebKit - Safari, GNOME Web (Epiphany), and Konqueror
Ladybird and Servo (Mozilla R&D project) are new ones, and Ladybird seems to have more traction.
Engine diversity is important. Browser diversity... a bit less so.
-
If the latter is Safari, then WebKit-based browsers are available for Windows and Unix-likes too.
Which are? Please list a few current ones that have reasonable backing and at least a mid-size community.
Here are two on Linux:
- GNOME Web (was called Epiphany)
- Konquerer - KDE
Those are the two biggest desktops on Linux. In fact, when I run Tauri (like Electron, but uses your system webview instead of bundling it), it uses GNOME Web on my system.
-
Tankies are annoying, but they're not on the same level as fascists.
TBH, it is very difficult to me differentiating between the different flavors of authoritarians.
-
I would've rejected the PR too, but not for violation of that rule, but because one-line changes that merely fix a comment waste everyone's time reviewing it, and are often just to build someone's resume. I've even seen some that remove trailing whitespace.
If you want to fix it alongside other changes, go for it (and the reviewer said as much on the PR). But if you're only interested in sending in drive-by commits to build a resume or something and aren't actually interested in helping, then it should be rejected as noise.
If there's a broader pattern of this, maybe that's cause for concern. But if it's literally just this instance, I could see the dev being annoyed at drive-by PRs.
I would’ve rejected the PR too, but not for violation of that rule, but because one-line changes that merely fix a comment waste everyone’s time reviewing it, and are often just to build someone’s resume.
That's exactly what I was talking about. You're taking what they said reasonably, because you're probably a reasonable person! However, look at what they're actually saying. The issue wasn't framed as being a "drive-by," though later that's what they claimed. It was about ideology. It was about politics. They didn't pull up rules about one-line changes to justify not accepting them, they pulled up rules about talking politics.
The problem wasn't that it was a meaningless PR, the problem was that it was a meaningful PR that they disagreed with.
And, quite frankly, disagreeing with that does make you an asshole, at the very least, and a transphobic misogynist, at worst. There were at least a few PRs open about similar issues, too.
Look, I'm not calling him a transphobe or a misogynist; I'm just saying this was an asshole thing to do, and it was done in an asshole way, and that allowing this sort of thing to exist, especially in FOSS, is not good. That's all.
Check this out: https://mkultra.monster/tech/2024/07/03/serenityos-and-ladybird
-
"comments must be accurate," is not a rule you should bend. Bending it even a little leads to last programming and shit code.
True, but that only applies if it's misleading. For example:
// pythagoran theorem distance = abs(p2.x - p1.x) + abs(p2.y - p1.y);Fixing that makes sense because it's wrong and misleading (it's actually Manhattan distance), and a quick glace is insufficient to tell the difference.
But fixing a typo or something that wouldn't be confusing is just noise and should only be fixed with other changes. For example, I intentionally misspelled Pythagorean in my comment above, fixing that to be the right spelling would be a useless change, even if the distance formula used the hypotenuse. It wouldn't be an unreasonable policy to reject PRs that only fix spelling or similar to reduce noise for the maintainers.
-
Oh shit. I despise Discord, why not a normal forum?!
-
There is nothing political about acknowledging peoples' existence.
Existence? Because somebody used a wrong pronoun?
-
DDG search is garbage, I'm sorry... Whenever I switch to a browser that defaults to it, I'm reminded why I always switch it back to Google (unfortunately). Even Yandex is better, and that's prob Russian spyware.
there's startpage which is a Google wrapper if you're interested
