Good progress this month! Good to see it running on Windows now, even if I don't use Windows myself anymore. That'll help boost adoption once it releases.
True open source web browsers on Windows, and MacOS, are dead in the water.
This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify.
They will also want to use a single browser for everything, which in practice means Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
Ladybird will very likely not have access to Widevine, because of the cost, requirements, and Google as gatekeeper. Some developers of small opensource Chromium/Electron based browsers also earlier tried and Google simply said no.
And even if they have reverse engineered the CDM extension (which will make Widevine work, not unlike a small hack/workaround with regard to Chromium and Chromium forks) it will not work because all browsers using Widevine on those two platforms require something called VMP (Verified Media Path) which is, as far as I understand, a certificate and verification library supplied by Widevine embedded within the browser.
Without VMP embedded in the browser streaming from popular commercial providers such as Netflix will not work on Windows and MacOS, even when the Widevine extension is in fact active.
Believe me, I checked.
IMO all of this is not only set in motion to (try to) protect from piracy, but also to kill any serious competition from small parties like LadyBird, and to keep the browser market firmly in the hands of the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Google. Because who will use a browser in 2025 unable to stream content, or without hacks at 720p maximum? (looking at you, Brave and Netflix)
This also means that browsers like Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox are in fact not true opensource browsers because their respective public repositories do not contain the assets needed for VMP signing.
On another note, at this moment the majority of people should be glad that browsers with corporate backing and enough income like Brave (whatever you might think of Brendan Eich's ideas), Vivaldi and Firefox exist because without them you would have no serious choice on Windows or MacOS at all.
You can build Firefox without Widevine if you don't like DRM. The browser itself will work just fine. A few specific websites won't, by design: they do not want to work on computers that will let you save the high-res video they serve to a file.
Without EME, we'd still be stuck with Silverlight or ActiveX DRM in these browsers. There are browsers without Widevine that stream just fine; they use FairPlay and PlayReady instead. The current situation is still a significant improvement over the days when "free" web browsers were still a thing.
This isn't a web browser problem, it's a video streaming problem. As it turns out, the vast majority of people care more about streaming Netflix than they do about software freedom.
The minority that wants a truly open browser can buy DVDs and Blurays, or pirate the content they want to stream.
If Ladybird is willing to agree to the right terms and sign the right paperwork, I'm sure they'd get Widevine support eventually, but obviously they wouldn't be able to publish the source code for any of it.
I don't know the usage numbers so I might be way off, but with Smart TVs becoming a more common thing I can't remember the last time I tried to stream video on my computer.
Am I in the minority here? Do we have stats on what the breakdown of streaming traffic is by Mobile / TV / Desktop?
I don’t know about you but I am perfectly content to use a free browser and open either a nonfree browser or an app if I want to use a feature that is not available in my preferred software.
I don't know about you but I am very sad that I can't really recommend a browser not made by evil-mega-corp (or their associates) to friends and family because for some stupid reason that I can't explain to them, they aren't allowed to view high quality streaming video with it.
I have been using firefox on linux for a little more than a decade now and haven't realize I was missing on anything so I guess it's probably not a real problem.
yeah, that's a problem for me like losing access to E! and TLC when getting rid of tv service box, legacy media platforms bye bye, hello copyright violation in sweet sweet high bitrate 4k
Alpha is supposed to come out next year. Until then they don’t want to offer downloads so people who don’t understand software development don’t download highly unstable pre-alpha software and judge it based on that. Those kind of first impressions can stick.
Seems though as if the WPT score is not super meaningful in measuring actual usability. The growth of passed tests seems suspiciously uniform across browsers, so I guess it has more to do with new passing tests being added and less with failing tests that got fixed.
A large amount of tests includes rendering text and basic elements correctly, which is an incredibly difficult problem. Getting JS to render right is one thing, but preventing bugs like "Google Maps works but completely breaks when a business has õ in its name" requires a lot of seemingly useless tests to pass.
Fixing a few rendering issues could fix all of the tests that depend on correct rendering but break, so I think the rate at which tests are fixed makes a lot of sense.
https://wpt.fyi/results shows that even the big players have room for improvement, but also has a nice breakdown of all the different kinds of tests that make up the score.
>We’ve continued to make solid progress on WPT this month. There has been a significant increase in passing subtests, with 111,431 new passing subtests bringing our total to 1,964,649.
The majority of this increase comes from a large update to the test suite itself, with 100,751 subtests being added - mainly due to the Wasm core tests being updated to Wasm 3.0.
They fixed ~10k tests, but indeed this month is a bit of an exception as there were lots of new tests added.
While I truly admire how much progress they’ve made, and respect that everyone should pursue whatever they feel like doing with their time, it still feels to me like such a waste that it’s not written in a modern memory safe language.
I fear it’s ultimately going to be the most promising, least safe browser to use.
But hey, I want to be proven wrong, so I still gave them some money…
This will be what Otter Browser failed to do in order to create a widely used browser written in QT after Konqueror under KDE3 days. And, well, the same with Falkon/Qupzilla.
Ladybird might be the next Opera but without reusing the Blink engine making it a Chromium clone. And, OFC, fully libre.
This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify.
They will also want to use a single browser for everything, which in practice means Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
Ladybird will very likely not have access to Widevine, because of the cost, requirements, and Google as gatekeeper. Some developers of small opensource Chromium/Electron based browsers also earlier tried and Google simply said no.
And even if they have reverse engineered the CDM extension (which will make Widevine work, not unlike a small hack/workaround with regard to Chromium and Chromium forks) it will not work because all browsers using Widevine on those two platforms require something called VMP (Verified Media Path) which is, as far as I understand, a certificate and verification library supplied by Widevine embedded within the browser.
Without VMP embedded in the browser streaming from popular commercial providers such as Netflix will not work on Windows and MacOS, even when the Widevine extension is in fact active.
Believe me, I checked.
IMO all of this is not only set in motion to (try to) protect from piracy, but also to kill any serious competition from small parties like LadyBird, and to keep the browser market firmly in the hands of the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Google. Because who will use a browser in 2025 unable to stream content, or without hacks at 720p maximum? (looking at you, Brave and Netflix)
This also means that browsers like Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox are in fact not true opensource browsers because their respective public repositories do not contain the assets needed for VMP signing.
On another note, at this moment the majority of people should be glad that browsers with corporate backing and enough income like Brave (whatever you might think of Brendan Eich's ideas), Vivaldi and Firefox exist because without them you would have no serious choice on Windows or MacOS at all.
Without EME, we'd still be stuck with Silverlight or ActiveX DRM in these browsers. There are browsers without Widevine that stream just fine; they use FairPlay and PlayReady instead. The current situation is still a significant improvement over the days when "free" web browsers were still a thing.
This isn't a web browser problem, it's a video streaming problem. As it turns out, the vast majority of people care more about streaming Netflix than they do about software freedom.
The minority that wants a truly open browser can buy DVDs and Blurays, or pirate the content they want to stream.
If Ladybird is willing to agree to the right terms and sign the right paperwork, I'm sure they'd get Widevine support eventually, but obviously they wouldn't be able to publish the source code for any of it.
Am I in the minority here? Do we have stats on what the breakdown of streaming traffic is by Mobile / TV / Desktop?
is that really so hard?
DRM is not a good thing
Well, there's a niche.
Personally I have zero interest in Netflix and Spotify and I don't even know what Tidal is.
If so, why would Google allow this but not for other OSS browsers?
Seems though as if the WPT score is not super meaningful in measuring actual usability. The growth of passed tests seems suspiciously uniform across browsers, so I guess it has more to do with new passing tests being added and less with failing tests that got fixed.
Fixing a few rendering issues could fix all of the tests that depend on correct rendering but break, so I think the rate at which tests are fixed makes a lot of sense.
https://wpt.fyi/results shows that even the big players have room for improvement, but also has a nice breakdown of all the different kinds of tests that make up the score.
They fixed ~10k tests, but indeed this month is a bit of an exception as there were lots of new tests added.
I fear it’s ultimately going to be the most promising, least safe browser to use.
But hey, I want to be proven wrong, so I still gave them some money…
Ladybird might be the next Opera but without reusing the Blink engine making it a Chromium clone. And, OFC, fully libre.