RE: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/116959309031485270

Many have asked: "Ok, this sounds great, how on earth do we get there?"

From the few conversations I have now had: no single project believes they will ever have enough capacity to do browser dev v.s. patch work.

And no one will commit to exploration without some assurance that the base will receive long-term active development.

Absent some leap of faith, it's likely up to a new project to commit to building that base, and getting it to a stage where those projects feel like it can happen.

I don't think that is the most efficient way of bootstrapping this thing - given the amount of effort these projects are already expending purging the same garbage functionality from Firefox release after release I think there is a world where a joint effort results in more-capacity (especially if committing to developing that base independently after a point)

But I have no way of proving that, and thus a new project might be the only practical way of bootstrapping this thing.

Based on the response to my thread yesterday, and the fact that I have been having conversations along this line for a year I really believe that there is demand for such a thing (and IME with doing non-profit dev work for the better part of the last decade: demand is not uncorrelated with the ability to long term fund a thing).

People want free and independent browsers, unencumbered with non-consensual bullshit, built by humans.

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.

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