The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: “This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it.” Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking “Manage extension” and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).
At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft’s documentation, however, still says “TBD,” so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of “unexpected changes” coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.
Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge’s stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store
Ladybird Browser is coming, but could be a couple years still
From scratch, BSD licensed, non-profit managed
BSD licensed
Ew. It ought to be AGPLv3.
(I almost just said “copyleft,” but as Chromium proves, even LGPL is insufficient protection from corporate usurpation.)
Huh? The goal of the chromium project was to facilitate a corporate browser in the first place. It’s why they don’t have a more permissive license. They want to be able to use everyone else’s work if anyone forks it.
Permissive license doesn’t mean that corporations suddenly get the ability to completely change existing work for the worse, or change its’ license. They can bloody well do that with GPL too if they own the project including contributions, so it doesn’t matter if it’s BSD or GPL, the only protection that the open source users have, in any case, is that licenses can’t be changed retroactively, so if Firefox, Chromium or Ladybird went completely closed source and proprietary today, we’d still have the right to use the code as it was yesterday. Permissive licenses just mean that someone somewhere can create a closed source build without the permission of the person or company who owns the project and that doesn’t particularly matter for anyone using Ladybird or any future open source derivatives. Permissive licenses are useful for libraries, but also for software that could be bundled as part of a bigger solution. Maybe you want to embed a web browser in your proprietary application and don’t want to use webview because its’ usability differs platform to platform.
Also why AGPLv3 and not GPLv3? I don’t think the “A” part is even necessary here, that’s needed more for server side applications, I.e if the end user is using online without the code running on their own computer, AGPL is the one to use.
Anyway, in the modern age, (A)GPL is used by a shit ton of corporate software. Oftentimes with an (A)GPL open core and a bunch of proprietary functionality not included in the core. I should know, I work with one example on a near daily basis. This way, nobody can just take their core functionality and develop a closed source alternative, while they can sell you an enterprise license for full functionality on their “open source” software.
The reason why Chromium uses LGPL is because they forked the code from Safari, which had previously forked the code from KHTML (KDE’s web rendering component, used in Konqueror). The LGPL was provably insufficient to prevent corporate usurpation of the project, as a historical fact.
As for the “A” part of AGPL not being relevant for locally-run software, (1) it doesn’t hurt either, and (2) having maximal protections could prevent weird corporate shenanigans that we haven’t thought of yet.
