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Gosub – An open-source browser engine

(github.com)
403 points jaytaph | 1 comments | 14 Oct 24 07:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source

Last year I wrote a post about trying to make a change in the world by writing a browser.

Today, we're excited to introduce Gosub, a new open-source browser engine that we are building from the ground up in Rust!

Gosub aims to be a modern, modular, and highly flexible browser engine. While still in the early development and experimentation phase, Gosub is shaping up nicely, and we’re looking to onboard more contributors to help us bring this project to life.

Some of the key highlights:

  * Written in Rust: We're leveraging Rust's safety and performance features to create a robust and efficient engine.
  * Modular Design: The project is organized around modules, allowing for clean separation of concerns and easier collaboration. It also allows us to easily swap components based on needs and allows more freedom for engine implementers in the future.
  * Collaborative and open source: We’re building Gosub with the intention of making it approachable and open to contributions, aiming to create a project that's easier to understand and collaborate on compared to existing browsers.
Instead of writing another shell around Chromium or WebKit, we decided to write a browser engine from scratch. We believe that having a diverse landscape of engines is the only way to defeat a monoculture that is currently threatening current browsers and by extension the internet itself. We cannot and should not let a very small number of large companies dictate the future of the web and its usage.

With Gosub, we're aiming to build something more approachable that can evolve with the latest web technologies, all while being open to contributors from day one.

We’re looking for developers with or without experience in Rust. You just need to be interested in browser technologies. There are plenty of opportunities to work on core modules, document our progress, and help shape the project's direction.

We can already render simple pages, including the hackernews front page. However, to render most sites correctly, it is still a long journey, so come and join us!

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johnwbyrd ◴[14 Oct 24 18:51 UTC] No.41840616[source]▶
Yes, but I'm concerned about the number of existing browser engines that have fallen by the wayside, as the project founders have become exhausted. The scope of such a project is incredibly easy to underestimate, and it has only ever gotten larger.

Some examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/124kphe/what_do_y...

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hypeatei ◴[14 Oct 24 18:56 UTC] No.41840663[source]▶
The various web specifications are insanely complex (e.g. navigables) so I can see how people burn out from it. To add onto that, a browser operates in an extremely hostile space security wise; to be a serious competitor, you'll need to be on top of your game in that regard which maybe Rust will help with.
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bee_rider ◴[14 Oct 24 19:10 UTC] No.41840815[source]▶
Something very silly has happened, where the thing that most non-technical people have which is most exposed to hackers is also incredibly complex and requires high performance for some reason.
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1. hypeatei ◴[14 Oct 24 19:19 UTC] No.41840902[source]▶
Yeah it's a real shame. The complex (and ever expanding) nature of the web is the real thing entrenching incumbents like Google. They have the existing codebase and resources to handle the complexity.