WebKit and Chromium are hard forks. The former is a fork of KHTML, and the latter is a hard fork of the former. However, in recent years I've only seen soft forks, and as for hard forks, I've only seen one with Pale Moon, which hard forked Gecko and named it Goanna due to disagreements with the direction the Mozilla Project was taking.
But why wouldn't any organization make a hard fork, whether of WebKit, Chromium, Firefox, or another browser not based on the three mentioned above?
36 Comments
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 65 pts · 69d
Because developing and maintaining a browser is extremely hard and expensive. It's easier and cheaper to just soft fork a browser, still depending on it, and then make all the changes that are needed.
nerdspice@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 48d
Yeah. Chromium has something like > 30 million lines of code. Browsers these days are like mini operating systems in a way.
a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 68d
I would rather write a custom operating system than build a web browser of any significance.
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works · 37 pts · 68d
What a lot of people are forgetting to mention here, is that the reason why maintaining a browser is so hard is because Google keeps updating the standards, and has the resources to do so, while Firefox struggles to keep up.
Remember, Google Chrome is Google's OS. Like Microsoft has Windows, and Apple has MacOS. This is why web standards include support for USB, GPU, and other esoteric use cases. It's in Google's best interest for users to use web apps to do things instead of desktop apps, since that means they are likely using Chrome, within Google's control. And Google has a perverse incentive to keep evolving these standards so that other browsers struggle to keep up, and their browsers feel outdated and feature lacking relative to Chrome.
eldavi@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 68d
ditto with their office software and filesystems.
HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 68d
Wouldn't Microsoft be the main perpetrator of this in office software? Google Docs, LibreOffice, etc have to read their .docx files correctly so they keep changing how it works?
eldavi@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 67d
to-MAY-tow
TAH-mah-tow
Force of habit. Lol
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml · 30 pts · 69d
As others have said it is a huge amount of work to maintain a fork of such a complicated piece of software.
Especially around security: web browsers constantly process potentially-malicious data, which gives them a large attack surface. Every browser regularly has new vulnerabilities discovered which must be fixed. Hard forking a browser means that, even ignoring any bugs in the new code the fork has added, every time a bug is discovered and fixed in the code they forked from someone needs to analyze the upstream's fix and port it to the fork. The more they diverge, the more work this is. Failing to do this work lets any malicious website exploit the bugs and install malware on users' computers.
dessalines@lemmy.ml · 12 pts · 68d
A big part of me wishes the browser would just die. Its become a bloated and surveilled mess, entirely controlled by like 2 companies, with 90% of the actual data being javascript spyware. There's almost no browser that can't be fingerprinted and linked to your identity nowadays.
A simple markdown browser for static content (IE like gemini), and native apps with open APIs that can render markdown for dynamic content (IE like most fediverse apps), should be all we need.
vapor_body@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 67d
Gemini is very cool I found out about it through RSSGuard, which has a browser for it built in
racoon@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 67d
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 29 pts · 69d
Modern web browser hard to maintain and develop. Really hard.
mmmm@sopuli.xyz · 27 pts · 69d
On the specific case of Firefox - its code not only is huge complex but also a bit of a mess. There were efforts many years ago to do a Qt port of Firefox but they found out it was really hard to decouple the Gecko engine from the UI part. That's why you can't find 3rd party "frontends" using the Gecko engine, but only what would be Firefox forks with extra steps, cosmetic changes and so on, but nothing really substantial - big changes in Firefox would break them.
One of the reasons I'm really looking forward to Servo development is for this reason.
beyoublahaj@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 68d
Wasn't Servo Mozillas attempt to solve that before they laid off all Servo staff and gave the project to the Linux foundation?
Ephera@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 68d
It was one of the stated goals for Servo itself to be designed like that. But I don't think anyone at Mozilla expected Servo to take over from Gecko. They were already quite happy that they were able to incorporate Servo's style engine and URL bar implementation and such into Gecko.
mik3dd0@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 69d
What's Servo? 🤔
marcie@lemmy.ml · 14 pts · 68d
a browser written entirely in rust, should be fun on redoxos when it matures (all rust operating system with a mini kernel)
gajahmada@awful.systems · 3 pts · 68d
Whoa, didn't know about redox os. Neat.
The preview on their site make it looks like it's pretty usable for basic daily use (even has balatro). I'm gonna try it. Thanks !
barryamelton@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 67d
Understanding that browsers are in a dire situation because of corporate meddling while promoting a MIT-licensed OS is quite the cognitive dissonance there
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 68d
A playable character from the Sims 2 expansion "Makin' Money"
SwooshBakery624@programming.dev · 3 pts · 68d
Isn't that exactly what WebLibre is?
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 68d
A modern webbrowser has more loc than the operaring system running it.
Ephera@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 68d
I don't think that's quite right. The Linux kernel, Firefox and Chromium all sit around 30 millions lines of code, last I checked, so if you add the rest of the operating system, it should still have more lines of code than the browser.
But yes, similar order of magnitude.
MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 69d
Money that could be better used on other projects.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 68d
FOSS exists, which is where people do things for no money, just because they think it will help people
bilb@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 68d
Sometimes a decent FOSS app is created with no income flow, true, but I don't think anything on the scale of a web browser/rendering engine has ever.* All of the sizable FOSS projects I can think of have the support of one or more sponsors who have an an interest in seeing the project succeed. I'm thinking of Linux, Chromium, AOSP, Debian, KDE, Blender, and the like. About 85% of commits to the Linux kernel are from full-time employed corporate contributors.
Lemmy gets some sponsorships I think, but from non-profits. Besides that, it is supported by donations, and seemingly not enough. I was a regular donator, but I've since fallen on hard times and cannot help right now. They deserve better, honestly. My point is, we take nice FOSS projects for granted, and I don't think we really have any right to complain if they go away or wind up driven primarily by corporate interests. The work is not free.
*Come to think of it, I think KHTML, the rendering engine on which Blink and Webkit are ultimately based was started as a volunteer project. After it became a viable starting point for Apple and Google though, it was forked and primarily developed by employees of Google and Apple. I guess that's a similar story as Linux, but without the fork.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 68d
Because there's no good reason to do that that justifies the cost and effort.
Hard forks are generally fairly rare, e.g. you could ask the same about the Linux kernel...
orochi02@feddit.org · 5 pts · 68d
Arent Browsers almost as complicated as OSes?
grue@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 68d
Possibly more complicated than OSes.
(Depends on the browser, and possibly what counts as the scope of the "OS." For example, you could be comparing GNU/Linux+wayland+KDE to Netscape 1.0, or you could be comparing modern Firefox to QDOS.)
Remember, a modern web browser contains a Javascript VM, which arguably makes it an OS in and of itself.
orochi02@feddit.org · 1 pts · 67d
Is a js vm really that complicated?
Candice_the_elephant@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 68d
Security is hard, having timely compatible patches is priceless.
ByteMe@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 68d
There is
ladybugladybirdgwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 68d
*Ladybird
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 68d
which is however not a fork, either hard or soft, of anything
ByteMe@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 68d
Xd
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 68d
Easy mistake to make tbh
AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 67d
There are too many forks already lol. And none of the forks have the features I want anyway. It's also expensive.