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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 22, 2026, 11:21 PM
Bootstrapping a project like this is a daunting task.
But we are where we are.
I am almost certainly not the right person to manage this, but I believe this needs to be done enough to try and get the ball rolling.
I've setup https://codeberg.org/basebrowserproject/organization/issues/1 as a place to start to gather notes/issues/ideas and connect people - if you have some skills or any other ability to help, and want to help, then get in touch.
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Replies

Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 23, 2026, 12:43 AM
I've started unloading some notes from conversations I've had, and some stuff that was previously in my head.
If you are looking for a place to start, how about recommending the "features" that would need to be removed from any good base: https://codeberg.org/basebrowserproject/organization/issues/3
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 23, 2026, 2:53 AM
This evening I spent some time going through the latest firefox HEAD, with the idea being to catalog how many files/lines of code could be removed solely on the basis that they only exist to power the built in llm / chat / local ai stuff.
I am currently at 136000 lines of code, a number so absurd that I have forced myself to triple check it - and I'm pretty sure I'm barely half way through this patch.
The security auditor in me weeps.
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Raven667raven667@hachyderm.io
Jul 22, 2026, 11:55 PM
@sarahjamielewis
> I am almost certainly not the right person to manage this
You seem to have a clear vision with drive and more plan than anyone else, why not you? If you find someone better you could always step away.
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Marcos Dionemdione@en.osm.town
Jul 23, 2026, 12:32 AM
@raven667 @sarahjamielewis having a vision and knowing how to manage a project are not the same skill. It's similar to being a researcher vs being a professor.
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Bill Woodcockwoody@pch.net
Jul 23, 2026, 1:30 AM
Nice!

May I suggest: browsers should not ”helpfully” accept fraudulent CA certs when a DANE cert doesn’t validate.
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Chrischrisvest@mastodon.social
Jul 23, 2026, 2:32 AM
@sarahjamielewis JavaScript access to the clip-bord and control of cut-copy-paste could be on the chopping block, as long as this doesn’t break password manager integrations
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fabiosantoscodefabiosantoscode@mastodon.social
Jul 23, 2026, 6:40 AM
@chrisvest @sarahjamielewis I think those are very convenient web features that promote interop. Can they not be made safe?
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fabiosantoscodefabiosantoscode@mastodon.social
Jul 23, 2026, 6:42 AM
@chrisvest @sarahjamielewis for instance if I activate some sort of "click to copy", the browser could ask me if I really want to copy and show me what it is that I'm copying. Then I can choose to trust that site to copy things in response to user events.
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0xC0DEC0DE07EAc0dec0dec0de@hachyderm.io
Jul 23, 2026, 2:57 AM
@sarahjamielewis gah!
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Todd Knarrtknarr@mstdn.social
Jul 23, 2026, 3:23 AM
@sarahjamielewis I'd love it if the codebase was modular enough that we could extract the mechanics (HTML rendering, JS and CSS engines, network communications, that sort of thing) from the browser itself, then see how much AI was integrated into the mechanics and how much was just a part of the browser wrapped around the mechanics.
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ohirohir@vivaldi.net
Jul 23, 2026, 10:59 AM
@tknarr
> I'd love it if the codebase was modular enough that we could extract the mechanics
There is a browser that would satisfy your modular codebase dreams ;)
https://www.netsurf-browser.org/downloads/source/
@sarahjamielewis
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Arcane Roopsarcaneoverflow@techhub.social
Jul 23, 2026, 2:35 PM
@ohir @tknarr @sarahjamielewis Netsurf is the default for my e-mail client :-)
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Working Class Gamesworkingclassgames@tech.lgbt
Sep 24, 2026, 9:32 AM
@ohir @tknarr
Aside, but on https://www.netsurf-browser.org/downloads/source/ the web link to the git repo doesn't work.
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ohirohir@vivaldi.net
Sep 24, 2026, 10:55 AM
@workingclassgames
> the web link to the git repo doesn't work.
Likely artificial idiocy scrappers took the repo down.
I will ask later on the list, or you can do it yourself on the dev list (netsurf-dev@freelists.org).
@tknarr
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Pseudo Nympseudonym@mastodon.online
Jul 23, 2026, 5:23 AM
@sarahjamielewis
You are doing important work. Thank you.
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Oblomovoblomov@sociale.network
Jul 23, 2026, 5:51 AM
@sarahjamielewis I wonder if it might just be easier to hard fork before the whole slopware support thing started, and hen transplant any still relevant bugfixes (esp. security one).
Reading these numbers really makes me angry, because of how much they crippled web standards support on the basis that it would be too costly. 8-(
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Aria :blobcattrans: :blobcatpopcorn:ariarhythmic@ohai.social
Jul 23, 2026, 10:39 AM
@sarahjamielewis Be sure not to include local translation in the count, it's not generative AI, and making requests to a remote service for the same thing isn't any better.
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Aria :blobcattrans: :blobcatpopcorn:ariarhythmic@ohai.social
Jul 23, 2026, 10:48 AM
@sarahjamielewis That being said, you should aim for a modular design, where the titular base browser is very barebones and anything non-essential is provided by extensions, or plugins.
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Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
Jul 28, 2026, 3:33 AM
@ariarhythmic @sarahjamielewis Is it not? My understanding was that it's just local models but they're still statistical language models not proper machine translation.
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:39 AM
@dalias @ariarhythmic
My initial thinking was to cut around the translation functionality as it was pretty low down the list of stuff I really dislike.
But the core of the translation stuff is at least partially dependent on the rest of the base ml/genai infrastructure - and so it got wrapped up in the 850k removal patch I published today.
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Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
Jul 28, 2026, 3:54 AM
@sarahjamielewis @ariarhythmic That's rather telling that it's using a common framework with the chatbot garbage... 🤮
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Emelia/Emibecomethewaifu@tech.lgbt
Jul 28, 2026, 3:26 PM
@dalias @sarahjamielewis @ariarhythmic Transformer models were originally designed for machine translation, they just got "repurposed" into the LLM next-word-predictors, so given that they share the same underlying math primitives, it's not that surprising to me that they'd share the same foundational runtime implementation.
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Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
Jul 28, 2026, 3:29 PM
@becomethewaifu @sarahjamielewis @ariarhythmic That makes sense but it's sad, because they're an exceedingly wrong way to do machine translation.
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Diane BruceDianeBruce@bsd.network
Jul 23, 2026, 11:41 AM
@sarahjamielewis AI generated 136000 lines of nonsense? *whistles innocently*
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Grunkle MooseRootMoose@bsd.cafe
Jul 23, 2026, 2:21 PM
@sarahjamielewis Maybe that hard fork idea is not so crazy after all.
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fedithomfedithom@social.saarland
Jul 23, 2026, 3:09 PM
@sarahjamielewis how do you fell about Servo in this? If all FF-fork devs were to rally behind that already existing project, might that do the trick?
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caitpcaitp@mstdn.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:13 AM
@sarahjamielewis isnt there some sensible policy to just autoreject a patch like that? it could be an attempt to ddos reviewers
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Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
Jul 28, 2026, 3:32 AM
@caitp @sarahjamielewis Absolutely. If a patch is impossible to review in full, it's impossible to accept, and it just needs to be auto-rejected.
Of course Mozilla won't do that.
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Marcos Dionemdione@en.osm.town
Jul 28, 2026, 5:55 AM
@sarahjamielewis does that include translation?
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Whiskers 🇦🇺ecoscore@aus.social
Jul 28, 2026, 7:38 AM
@sarahjamielewis Is that why #Firefox continuously tries to get users to update? I have been ignoring these annoying messages for over a year.
BTW keep up your good wirk 👏
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socsoc@chaos.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:17 PM
@ecoscore @sarahjamielewis Well, I think that's more about the constant stream of security vulnerabilities that get discovered ... 😬
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Angela ScholderAngelaScholder@mastodon.energy
Jul 30, 2026, 7:31 AM
@sarahjamielewis On my new mobile I already replaced Firefox (Focus) with Vivaldi.
Time to really also find an alternative on Linux and Windooze.
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Chris Martinchris__martin@functional.cafe
Jul 23, 2026, 4:17 AM
@sarahjamielewis Fonts, for the love of god. Remove web authors' ability to control what fonts the users render
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Lucalucajunge@social.tchncs.de
Jul 23, 2026, 8:34 AM
@chris__martin no. set your default font.
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CPU ⬜ Carré Petit Utilecpu@mastodon.tetaneutral.net
Jul 23, 2026, 7:46 AM
@sarahjamielewis Forced browser updates is not a problem ask to remove it may be a high security issue
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Lutin Discretlutindiscret@mastodon.libre-entreprise.com
Jul 23, 2026, 10:09 AM
@sarahjamielewis i think we should also consider why people used webkit as a base for there alt browser insread of Firefox and we must satisfy those expectations to gain adoption @Vivaldi @mauve @akhileshthite @melroy
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Mauve 👁💜mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe
Jul 23, 2026, 2:42 PM
@lutindiscret @sarahjamielewis @Vivaldi @akhileshthite @melroy I built @agregore on Electron because it's fast to iterate and has full support for custom protocol handlers. There's no equivalent on other engines and forking/compiling from source is a major pain (I did this for ungoogled chromium on mobile).
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Lutin Discretlutindiscret@mastodon.libre-entreprise.com
Jul 24, 2026, 10:42 AM
Poke @konform
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PelligrinPelligrin@mastodon.social
Jul 24, 2026, 8:50 PM
@sarahjamielewis @lutindiscret ➕️ 1️⃣ I think @konform is already doing this. Why not join efforts?
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Melroy van den Bergmelroy@mastodon.melroy.org
Aug 1, 2026, 1:54 PM
@lutindiscret @sarahjamielewis @Vivaldi @mauve @akhileshthite Actually with LibreWeb I went away from HTML and webkit and just use a markdown parser instead. Since I could reinvent the internet from scratch (and build on top of https://freedomnames.org), I think we are better off without pop-ups and JS trackers.
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Aria :blobcattrans: :blobcatpopcorn:ariarhythmic@ohai.social
Jul 23, 2026, 10:35 AM
@sarahjamielewis DRM and centralized extension verification. Also, filter lists should be configurable by the user, like in uBlock Origin, and things like profile synchronization must be easy to configure to use a self-hosted server.
Also anything to do with Google, obviously.
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Funky BobFunkyBob@chaos.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:52 AM
@sarahjamielewis I still remember when Firefox was the break-away project that shed all the features into user-selectable plugins, instead of being the lumbering behemoth that Mozilla was building.
How far we've come...
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Rensshadur@mastodon.sandwich.net
Jul 23, 2026, 8:36 AM
@sarahjamielewis This sounds like the kind of project NLNet would be interested in sponsoring/supporting: https://nlnet.nl/project/current.html
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Northern Scrubnorthernscrub@dollha.us
Jul 28, 2026, 9:11 PM
@sarahjamielewis @Waterfox this might be an awesome FOSS collab
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