And so? Yes people (and companies) would fork your code, but the most realistic scenario would be that the original ladybird would still be the most relevant browser of it's family, just like firefox, so the problem kinda resolves by itself
Because apple themselves forked it. Only a handful of companies have the power to basically change the web browser market, and apple sure was one. Nowadays every company copies from chrome, so why would anyone bother forking ladybird?
Doesn't this contradict with what you said? According to your previous comment, even if Apple has forked KHTML, it shouldn't harm Konqueror, and it shall prevail as the most popular of its family.
However, Konqueror/KHTML is now dead and we only have a closed source Safari.
As I've already stated, any company that may fork a similar project would actually cause more benefit than harm. KHTML died because the web started to get very complex very fast and KDE volounteers couldn't keep up with that pace, unlike Apple employees. Now that the web is a bit more stable, with less standards that are more thought-out (webassembly), it's a lot easier to maintain a web browser. So if tomorrow Microsoft hops in and announces it's intent to fork ladybird, then the latter would not only be fine, but it would probably recieve a new wave of contributors.
Imagine if ladybird gets used regularly by ~1000 nerds, which is its current audience, then gets forked by microsoft and the current ME gets replaced by ladybird. Even if ladybird got over 9000 users, there's no competing with megacorps.
Well maybe they're ok with that? They want browser diversity. Getting Microsoft to use a new engine is better for diversity than if they just used chromium like now.
Getting Microsoft to use a new engine and contribute back to the original repository is better for diversity, but forking and running away with it is certainly not.
> Forking and running away with it is certainly not
If your goal is browser diversity, this would take an ecosystem of 2 browser engines and turn it into an ecosystem of 4. That seems in-line with the goal of browser diversity.
Currently we have an ecosystem of two browser engines, yes. One of them is weaponized against users by its designers, both in its open and closed form.
Having 4 (or 3.5 more realistically) browser engines where 2 of them weaponized against its users doesn't change things.
Instead, we should have 3 (or 2.5) browser engines where only one of them is (and can be) weaponized against its users. This is what brings diversity and change.
Ideally, yes. Microsoft should stay away from this, but I wanted to highlight that adopting a technology doesn't automatically make it better for diversity.
Google was almost killing Go overnight because they wanted more user data from people using the language.
Sorry for my grammatical mistake, English is not my first language.
That said, my point here was that realistically no company is going to fork ladybird since there's already chromium, plus even if ladybird was somehow forked by let's say microsoft and got popular, I don't think it would be detrimental to ladybird itself, if not even beneficial, since it would attract more users and, to a lesser extent, more contributors.
