[akling]

Hello friends! I’m really happy to have Shopify putting their faith in our little project like this :)

If you’d like a quick intro to the Ladybird project, I presented it at a conference earlier this month: https://youtu.be/De8N1zrQwRs

Huge thanks to Mike, Tobi and the other folks at Shopify who hooked this up. <3

[rglullis]

Could you perhaps write up how this came to be? Did you know anyone there already, or did the contact come through some previous network? Did you put together a pitch deck or did they reach out to you first?

The reason I am asking is that I was some years ago I was working on an open source payment gateway for crypto which I was sure would be something interesting for companies like Shopify, and I even posted an "Ask HN" how I could approach companies to ask for sponsorships [0]. I'm not working on it anymore, but I'm pretty sure that I'd be if I were any better at establishing these connections.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907711

[akling]

Tobi (Shopify CEO) has been supporting my open source work via GitHub Sponsors since early 2022, so I reached out to him and said (very paraphrased) "I'm gonna start pushing harder on Ladybird, would Shopify want to be an official sponsor?"

[ljlolel]

Also notice that the quoted engineer Mike Shaver was a leader at Mozilla before. So helps to have knowledgeable internal support too.

[akling]

Indeed! Mike has been really helpful :)

[ralgozino]

now I'm wondering if the "let's make Ladybird render Shopify better" video series was before or after that... :D

[rglullis]

Ok, so by induction... how did you get your first Github sponsors?

[akling]

I've been broadcasting my programming sessions on YouTube since 2019. I have over 1000 videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling

Over time, my audience grew, and some people really liked my videos, so I first made a Patreon and later a GitHub Sponsors for those who wanted to help me turn it into a full-time job someday.

Thanks to growing support, I was eventually able to make it a full-time job. For more details on this journey, I wrote about it here: https://awesomekling.substack.com/p/i-quit-my-job-to-focus-o...

[slekker]

Congratulations Andreas!

One question that might have already popped up: with more and more attention going to Ladybird (in contrast to SerenityOS), how will these sponsorships direct what you do in both projects?

[akling]

Thank you!

Indeed, all of these large sponsorships so far have been specifically for Ladybird development.

That’s also what I’ve been personally focusing on for many months already, so nothing really changes about my day-to-day.

The main new thing this enables is hiring more full-time engineers to work on the browser. (Still have details to figure out here though!)

That said, keep in mind that 99% of work on Ladybird also improves SerenityOS, since they are part of the same mega-project. :)

[prox]

We just talked about browser choices yesterday. I really hope we get back a “people’s” browser and not boxed in experiences from Big Tech that the market currently has.

I hope this project remains dedicated to such a vision!

[jamesbfb]

Congrats mate! I’ve been following your work on SerenityOS since the 3rd or 4th video, and it’s been amazing to see the progression from then to now!

You’ve definitely inspired me out of a few burnout humps over the years.

[abyesilyurt]

Congratulations and thank you Andreas for inspiring and encouraging developers like me to contribute to open source through your content. I began my open source journey by adding a snipping tool in screenshot utility to Serenity OS.

[defrost]

Fantastic work on the OS and browser, congratulations on the sponsership.

I look forward to your future.

( and I'll see who I can poke on the native windows port front (no promises) )

[pkphilip]

Congratulations, Andreas! Keep up the good work on Serenity and Ladybird! I hope to move to using Serenity OS once it matures somewhat :)

[mysterydip]

I love the project and want to contribute somehow, but have limited time. What would be most helpful?

[akling]

It depends on what you enjoy doing, and how much time you really have.

Good bug reports & reduced test cases are always amazingly valuable. Perhaps you have a home page of your own? You can open it in Ladybird and see if you hit some problems. Maybe we throw a surprising JavaScript exception. Maybe our CSS layout isn't quite right.

If you can then reduce the problem to a minimal HTML/CSS/JS example, that's often enough for someone working on the engine to go ahead and find a fix pretty easily. :)

[mysterydip]

I do, and a handful of html5 games to go with it. Compiling now, thanks!

[bvm]

did this come about because shopify was the first page you visited in your May update video? nice bit of serendipity!

[akling]

I first spoke with Tobi about this in mid-May, so it's been in the works for a while longer. :)

[stefanos82]

Congrats my friend, well deserved brother, well deserved!

My question is: can we get a Yak Shavers playlist on YouTube, where all SerenityOS development is gathered in one place? We have so much to learn from you people.

[keyle]

I'm really excited for you. Keep up the great content on youtube!

[tambourine_man]

Your work is inspiring and humbling. Keep on.