Web browsers are tens of millions of lines of code written over decades to adhere to long, complex standards specifications and defend against all manner of malicious behavior. I’ve long been convinced that an entirely new browser (not a fork or a skinning) would be impossible to build today. Just scratch pad math, maybe 100 developers making 100k/year could do it over 5 years, so call it a 50m investment on developer power alone. Who ponies that up and why?
Well, Ladybird is giving it a go. They should have 7 full timers soon, and it’s open source so they’ll get help there, and are taking donations. Plus they’ll use some third-party resources to get it done, which should trim down on requirements. It reads like the thing already runs. Their big why is that Google is just too influential — and of course there is already controversy.
There is also Flow as well as Servo, which I’m told is the furthest along of all of them. They should get together on all this if you ask me. I’m happy to admit I was wrong and that it seems like new browser engines aren’t the fiction I thought they were.
RSS