This project, the approach contained within, the wording, license, the programming language used, the lack of a publicly accessible repository all have, in my opinion, a highly opinionated, “artisanal” approach (the reasoning behind which I’m not entirely able to comprehend) that seem to scratch the authors itch, but otherwise disregard the state of the web and what basic expectations other users have.
Regardless, good luck to the project. Would be interesting to see the end result.
To the author - there are certain social (and developer) expectations I would suggest you look into, e.g information about you (considering you are asking for donations; who am I donating to?) and a public repository people contribute code to. King of my own castle approach won’t really work here.
The expectations that some users might have are not necessarily what are considered desirable by others, and different approaches do have different advantages and disadvantages than each other. I think that some of the choices made by this project are better than other web browser implementations.
I still think that a publicly viewable version control repository would be a good idea though (there are many advantages to this), even if you do not accept pull requests or other stuff like that. (The version control system does not have to be Git; there are others as well, but it would be good to be well-documented (in my opinion, Fossil has better documentation than Git, anyways).)
> that seem to scratch the authors itch, but otherwise disregard ... basic expectations other users have
Isn't that kind of the whole ethos of free software? The current capitalistic view that open source is a (unpaid) job producing a product seems... unsustainable
I understand the ethos of free software, but there’s a significant difference between a personal project with unique quirks and a public project seeking monetary and development contributions.
Deliberately going against commonly accepted practices—like not providing a public repository—can be counterproductive to the project.
For example, the ‘submit code changes via email’ approach comes across as ‘you can help, but I’ll privately decide if your help is good enough’ which might discourage potential contributors.
Regardless, good luck to the project. Would be interesting to see the end result.
To the author - there are certain social (and developer) expectations I would suggest you look into, e.g information about you (considering you are asking for donations; who am I donating to?) and a public repository people contribute code to. King of my own castle approach won’t really work here.