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Comment by nextaccountic | Hacker News Reader

> Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is dropped.

Why dropping the SerenityOS target??

Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order to keep development?

Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed, or there will be two diverging Ladybird projects with the same name? (Maybe a qualifier would help, like SerenityOS Ladybird vs Open Ladybird or something?)

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I think the fork has to do with the following item:

> Unlike SerenityOS, Ladybird will have a relaxed NIH policy (instead of "no 3rd party code!"), and will leverage the greater OSS ecosystem.

SerenityOS wants to be an OS from scratch, to see how to do things better from existing implementations. When ladybird wants to target that OS as well, using 3rd party libraries would make it hard to stay compatible. Which is easier to do on just MacOS and Linux.

Ok this makes perfect sense. Thanks for pointing it out.

SerenityOS's browser has never been named Ladybird AFAIK, it's always been just Browser.

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...

Ladybird was the name used for to the cross-platform version of the browser.

https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...

Would it be fair to assume this means the SerenityOS maintainers will have to pull LibWeb/LibJS changes in from Ladybird?

SerenityOS' browser began identifying itself as Ladybird last year or the year before in the UI, the folder was always called Browser.

It'll probably just be renamed back, or the "port" of Ladybird will always be built as part of the base system (which would make sense, so Serenity could continue getting updates to LibWeb and LibJS)

> Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order to keep development?

It will probably mean that Ladybird becomes a port. As for what happens to the LibWeb that's in SerenityOS right now, that's still undecided.

> Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed, or there will be two diverging Ladybird projects with the same name? (Maybe a qualifier would help, like SerenityOS Ladybird vs Open Ladybird or something?)

SerenityOS' browser will probably go back to being called "Browser", like it was before.

As mentioned by Andreas, it's because SerenityOS does not depend on third party libraries and part of the new ethos of Ladybird is to decrease "not invented here" syndrome.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40561408

because the main focus on serenityos is writing code. hence no 3rd party code policy. the fork is mostly to make the browser use 3rd party code, hence it is now no better than just porting Mozilla. i think this will fork both forever

SerenityOS already has Ports directory for 3rd party software, I guess ladybirds will go there.

I'd say ladybird moving out is a big incentive to get a packaging system up and running.

Yeah that's a little bit concerning, honestly. It really sounds more like an abandonment of SerenityOS, rather than a shift in emphasis

the writing has been on the wall for a long time (as the post mentions too). I'm cynical so I think to some extent it's related to the fact that writing a browser from scratch has been able to attract significant funding, whereas the operating system has earned a lot of nerd goodwill and small donations but would have a really hard time commercially justifying itself. I think it's a shame because it's a far cooler project, but of course it's not up to me to dictate how others spend their time.

my understanding is that serenity will focus less on the web browser in the first place. it might just go back to being a simple html viewer with rudimentary js support?

my hope is that they take this as an opportunity to come up with a purpose built "web" stack for serenity? use it as an excuse to reinvent the web and "fix" the mistakes that were made? maybe by actually Putting Scheme In The Browser rather than js?

They could put Scheme in the browser, but then what websites would work? How many have Scheme; zero? Have JS - almost all?

I would argue WebAssembly is a better idea than Scheme.

you can have both! https://spritely.institute/hoot/

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