Well Ladybird [0] it is

I'm reading HN on my laptop outside, and a ladybug landed on my screen right as I was reading this comment. It's sitting there as I write this. I know this doesn't contribute to the discussion in any way but it's so neat I just needed to share.

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nine_k 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it is

You must be meaning "will be". Because the first alpha release is promised some time in 2026. So hopefully by 2028 it will be solid enough.

	▲	GalaxyNova 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		You can use it right now if you build it from source, in fact I am writing this HN comment from it.

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hamdingers 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is this usable day to day yet? I built it a few months ago and there were showstopper bugs on any nontrivial website.

Exciting project nonetheless.

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ares623 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I know it's very shallow but the marketing page gives me the ick. I have been Pavlov'd that websites with such designs are scams/vaporware.

	▲	lionkor 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Fair, but I've been following Andreas Kling since he started (publically) with SerenityOS back a couple years ago, and he's a real hacker -- as real as they come. I've watched hours of how he works on YouTube, it's fantastic, if anyone can lead a browser team, its him.

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rvz 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And we can at least donate directly to Ladybird's development [0]

Unlike Mozilla which Firefox is completely funded with Google's money.

[0] https://donorbox.org/ladybird

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smt88 6 days ago | parent [-]

You can donate to any nonprofit and stipulate that your money be used only for a certain purpose, and they're legally bound by it.

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sfink 6 days ago | parent [-]

Not relevant here. Yes, you can donate to Mozilla.org and stipulate whatever you like, but Mozilla.org does not develop Firefox so telling them to use it for developing Firefox will do about as much good as telling them to use it to resurrect unicorns. Mozilla.org owns Mozilla Corporation, which is a for-profit entity that develops Firefox, but thus far the corporation hasn't wanted the complications and restrictions that would come from accepting donations.

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smt88 6 days ago | parent [-]

Everything I can find online says that there are contributors working for both Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

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sfink 6 days ago | parent [-]

Contributors are people. Donations are dollars. People ≠ dollars.

Unless you grind them up and eat them as sausages, but don't do that. The anti-theft threads will get stuck in your teeth.

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smt88 6 days ago | parent [-]

The contributors are paid by Mozilla Foundation. This is not complicated.

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sfink 6 days ago | parent [-]

Hm. I'm dumb so you'll need to spell it out for me.

MoFo and MoCo both have contributors, yes. Both have unpaid contributors, which apparently are not who you're talking about. Both also have paid people who work for them. Whether or not you call them "contributors" or "employees" doesn't matter much, I guess. But still, MoFo contributors, paid or not, do not work on Firefox. Firefox is not a MoFo product. Most MoCo contributors do work on Firefox. Firefox is a MoCo product. It's confusing because MoFo owns MoCo, but owning a company does not mean its products are your products, nor that you can freely assist with those products (especially in an arms-length setup involving taxes, which is the very reason for the MoFo/MoCo split in the first place.) MoFo does other things, non-Firefox things, like advocacy and pissing off HN commenters who assume that "Mozilla does X" headlines always mean MoCo is doing X.

One of us is confused. I have that uneasy sensation I get when something is going "whoosh!" over my head, so it might be me.

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smt88 6 days ago | parent [-]

> Most MoCo contributors do work on Firefox. Firefox is a MoCo product.

This is true.

> But still, MoFo contributors, paid or not, do not work on Firefox.

This is not true, based on what I've read about it. Do you have personal experience with these orgs that suggests otherwise?

Regardless, nothing is stopping Foundation funds from being directed to Firefox development. If someone gave them, for example, $1M that could only be spent on Firefox, they could pay Corporation or an external consultancy to contribute to the open-source Firefox repositories.

This is already happening, either through Foundation or Corporation. One of the biggest Servo contributors works for a FOSS consultancy.

There are corollaries to what I'm describing in most large nonprofits in the US. You get money that a donor requires you to spend in a certain way, and you spend that money that way. If you can't do it with in-house people, you give it to consultants.

	▲	sfink 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		> This is not true, based on what I've read about it. Do you have personal experience with these orgs that suggests otherwise? Yes, I work for MoCo. > Regardless, nothing is stopping Foundation funds from being directed to Firefox development. If someone gave them, for example, $1M that could only be spent on Firefox, they could pay Corporation or an external consultancy to contribute to the open-source Firefox repositories. I don't really understand the whole setup, but I believe tax law is what is stopping this. What you are describing would be fraud (or something like it; IANAL). Money flows MoCo->MoFo (via dividends). Paying MoCo for something directly or hiring consultants to provide value would be "private inurement" [1], a phrase which here means that lawyers like scary words. It is using tax-exempt money to enrich private individuals. But the tl;dr is that the MoFo/MoCo split was created specifically so that money could flow MoCo->MoFo and not the other way around, in order for MoCo to do business-y stuff without jeopardizing MoFo's non-profit status. Nvidia's game where it pays companies to buy their chips would not fly in the non-profit sector. > This is already happening, either through Foundation or Corporation. One of the biggest Servo contributors works for a FOSS consultancy. Servo was split out from Mozilla during COVID, and sadly is now completely unaffiliated. It is in the Linux Foundation Europe now. (Igalia is great, though!) [1] https://legalclarity.org/private-inurement-definition-exampl...