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Author Topic: Any interest in a crowdfunding for a WebKit based browser for OS4?  (Read 20713 times)

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Offline gregthecanuck

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Would be cool to see it happen. I would support it. However, past experience with the Firefox port may make some users rather wary.

The trick is having the fortitude to see the project through to the 'end' (whatever that is) and not get stuck at the 80% complete stage when things get hard with dependencies, UI, endianness, etc...

Would the plan be to have the changes go back upstream or would this end up as a permanent extra port? I presume it would end up on github or some other public git repository?

Cheers!


 

Offline gregthecanuck

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Re: Any interest in a crowdfunding for a WebKit based browser for OS4?
« Reply #1 on: November 18, 2018, 01:43:15 AM »
I like the ideas being floated - an embeddable browser engine would be cool.

With a project of this potential size I would recommend identifying the biggest hurdles to success. Work from the largest to the smallest unknown/uncertainty. No need to get 80% of the way and then start tackling the hard parts that everyone has avoided. I would suggest doing some of this homework before the big push for funding.

Work with a sprint model with multiple deliverables. Sprint duration is typically 2 to 4 weeks. Take baby steps and you will quickly identify potential project-destroying issues sooner rather than later. This may be difficult to reconcile with a bounty-style funding model.

I own/manage a team of developers and we routinely follow these two basic tenets and so far all of our projects come out reasonably close to expectations. We have so far avoided disasters which seem to plague the industry from time to time. Our project costs range from <10K to >100K and this model has served us well for many years.

It also helps to have an experienced, mature team. It sounds like you have that so that is a large contributor to success.

Cheers!





« Last Edit: November 18, 2018, 05:42:27 AM by gregthecanuck »
 

Offline gregthecanuck

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Re: Any interest in a crowdfunding for a WebKit based browser for OS4?
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2018, 03:34:57 AM »
@gregthecanuck
I completely agree. The purpose of my original post here is to gauge whether it's worth pursuing before spending time and money on the initial risk mitigation and proof of concept work. Out in the real world, I am a published author on the topics of lean/agile software and project risk management. And I was once commissioned by Mozilla to investigate porting Firefox to Symbian OS. The Firefox code was a dumpster fire at the time (it was heavily refactored in recent years). So I'd like to think I know what I'm doing.

Sounds like you have some great background wrangling teams of developers. A big plus. :)

As for 68K, there is a nice updated GCC 6.x cross-compiler from bebbo here: https://github.com/bebbo/gcc
And an EAB discussion thread here: http://eab.abime.net/forumdisplay.php?f=118

I think 68K could be doable, but realistically probably on the upcoming Vampire V4 with 512MB RAM. Of course there is emulated 68K wth more memory available as well. I suggest 68K support should be kept in mind but left to a later date. *ALL* Amiga platforms (OS4/MOS/AROS/68K) could use an updated browser.

Cheers!