Merezhyvo browser

pparent

Thank you for your work and app!

I have just a question , the app appears as proprietary in the Open-store. Is that a deliberate choice to make it proprietary? On my side it will unfortunately block me from installing it, even to try it.

Thank you!

naz.R

@CiberSheep Thanks for mention the code availability, I forgot to add the link, fixed it now.
Added the link to OpenStore page and adding to the post above too.
I was able to find it on OpenStore and install for there, so, hope it should work fine.
manifest.json includes following line:

"framework": "@CLICK_FRAMEWORK@"

I was trying to follow this instruction: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/11333/app-developers-guide-to-publishing-applications-for-ubuntu-touch-24.04-1.x

Thanks again and feel free to check the code if you want to.
code base

naz.R

@pparent thanks for your question.
I am not sure, may be that's not the right choose for the license type.
The app is free to use and I am totally ok to keep the code open.
I added the link to the app page on OpenStore now. My bad, forgot to do it before.

But I would like to be the owner of my app. Is it proprietary? and is it something bad ?

pparent

@naz.R

Well first thank you so much for publishing the code!

Well you are free to choose a license that suit you, whether a proprietary license or a free and open-source license. (You can also decide not to put any license but then what we are allowed to do with your code and app can be a bit ambiguous, although normally standard copyright applies by default) . Be "the owner of the app" can mean several things, you would need to precise what you mean by that in order to define your license. For exemple most Free software licenses (Free software refers to freedom not price), will require to keep the copyright of the original author, and give credit. Owning the app in the open-store is also a different matter.

For me Free and Open-source software is fondamental to control individually and collectively the software we use, and guaranty that the software is doing what we want it to do, and not something the developer has added in its own interest to exploit users, their data, and their device ( That of course, I'm sure is not the case of your app at all , but is unfortunately very common in the proprietary world ).

Basically everything in Ubuntu Touch system is Free and Open-source software, except binary blobs, given by the manufacturers, that are needed for the hardware, and it's kind of a trade-off to have to use them, because unfortunately in the mobile it's currently very hard to have acceptable hardware running without proprietary blobs drivers or firmware.

The Free software philosophy is personally the reason that I prefer Ubuntu Touch over Android. If it wasn't for that, I would use Android.

gpatel-fr

@naz.R said in Merezhyvo browser:

But I would like to be the owner of my app

From a legal point of view, you are the author of code you write and you can do what you want with it (note that usual understanding is that licenses one given are irrevocable). Problems can appear when you are taking code written by others and you combine it with your code. The other authors are also allowed to do what they want with their code and you may not be allowed to do what you want with the combined result, even if you are the person having produced the final result. This is not official legal advice

pparent

@gpatel-fr @naz.R

Yes it's true as well that if you reuse existing code in your app (like tor, chromium, electron, ect...), this may (or may not) have implications about the license that you can chose for your app, depending on the license of the softwares you are reusing.

This is because some of the Free and Open-source software enforce that any derivative software should in turn be Free and Open-source. ( But not all )

gpatel-fr

@pparent said in Merezhyvo browser:

some of the Free and Open-source software enforce that any derivative software should in turn be Free and Open-source

There are even some case of producers of Free and Open source software allow for derivative software to be turned into proprietary but for a fee. IIRC there was (is still ?) a time when Qt was producing a virtual keyboard that was just that, a giant trap, and people wanting to write proprietary software were avoiding it like the plague :-). Maybe that was a reason for maliit (the UT keyboard) to exist in fact.

naz.R

Thanks everyone for the detailed comments about licensing – I really appreciate that you took the time to explain your points of view. It definitely helped me think more carefully about this part of the project.

Just to clarify the current situation:

The source code is published on GitHub so that people can read it and see how the browser works. My own license is a “free to use, source available” license. The only restriction is that reuse, modification or redistribution of my code is not automatically allowed – people should ask me first.

The app on the OpenStore is marked as Proprietary. I don’t see any more suitable option there.

There was an inconsistency: my package.json still said MIT from an early stage of the project. That was my mistake and I have now fixed it so it matches the actual license.

About third-party components:

I build on top of Electron, which is MIT-licensed and already embeds Chromium internally.

I bundle Tor as an external binary; Tor is under a BSD-style license.

All npm dependencies I use are under permissive licenses as well.

Their licenses and notices are included in the app (THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES, Tor license section, etc.).

I’m not a lawyer, but as far as I understand, these permissive licenses (MIT / BSD-style) allow me to keep my own JS/TS code under a more restrictive “source available, free to use” license, as long as I keep the attributions and don’t claim their code as mine. This is what I am doing now.

I also fully understand and respect that some people prefer to use only fully Free/Open Source software in the strict FSF/OSI sense. My license is not fully Free/Open Source in that strict sense, even if it is close in spirit (free to use, source published to read). I might reconsider this in the future, but right now I prefer to keep this more controlled model.

In the meantime, I would really appreciate any feedback about Merezhyvo itself – bugs in existing features, UX issues, performance on your device, and especially which keyboard layouts / languages you would like to see first. This will help me decide if the browser is useful for other people and if it makes sense to invest more time into it.

Thanks again for all your input and for testing the browser.

pparent

@naz.R said in Merezhyvo browser:

I’m not a lawyer, but as far as I understand, these permissive licenses (MIT / BSD-style) allow me to keep my own JS/TS code under a more restrictive “source available, free to use” license, as long as I keep the attributions and don’t claim their code as mine. This is what I am doing now.

Yes BSD, MIT and apache license allow you to make derivative with the only obligation to give credit (to simplify).

The source code is published on GitHub so that people can read it and see how the browser works. My own license is a “free to use, source available” license. The only restriction is that reuse, modification or redistribution of my code is not automatically allowed – people should ask me first.

The app on the OpenStore is marked as Proprietary. I don’t see any more suitable option there.

Yes in that case it is indeed proprietary. You might want to add a license file explaining shortly that in you GitHub directory, to make sure everyone understands and respect your conditions.

naz.R

@pparent yes, the license is there on GitHub, as well as all third-party licenses and Tor license.
As well there in the browser is a special Licenses page where all of them are available (including licenses for every single npm package I use)

CiberSheep

@naz.R said in Merezhyvo browser:

Thanks again and feel free to check the code if you want to.
code base

Thanks. I was able to build it from source but not installing it from the Open Store, I see now why, and some minor errors.
Again, thank you. You have fun developing this app ^__^

naz.R

@CiberSheep said in Merezhyvo browser:

@naz.R said in Merezhyvo browser:

Thanks again and feel free to check the code if you want to.
code base

Thanks. I was able to build it from source but not installing it from the Open Store, I see now why, and some minor errors.
Again, thank you. You have fun developing this app ^__^

I am happy you managed to get a chance to try the app.
Would really appreciate if you could share the errors and issues you found.
Regarding to fun: definitely I do, this is the first Electron project and the first UT project. And I thought it is just a small side-project.

Vlad Nirky

@naz.R
Well, great to try...
I have a small problem with the keyboard (even in French, it's a QWERTY keyboard).
The zoom is a very good idea for a phone.

domubpkm

@Vlad-Nirky said in Merezhyvo browser:

even in French, it's a QWERTY keyboard).

I confirm !

What's about https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic. should the earth be able to rotate? Or the browser depends on Qt6 too to do that ?

domubpkm

@naz.r Thanks to offer us a new browser

Thank you for this responsive interface !

Some questions :
Currently,

Can we reload a page?
Can we save the open web page as a bookmark?

naz.R

@Vlad-Nirky , @domubpkm
Thank you for your feedback, appreciate it.

Regarding to your questions:

French keyboard layout. Actually, not only French. Yes, right, my bad, layouts have all language-specific letters, but stuck with QWERTY.
That's already fixed and going to be pushed with the next release nearest time. There are quite a lot of changes and improvements, I am testing them now. So, hope to push later today or tomorrow.
(Spoiler: there is going to be French translation for the whole browser too)
Page reload. Yes, you can reload. On the phone make a long press anywhere on the page or on the toolbar and you should get a context menu with options, including reload, back, forward and password management unlock. If you can't get the menu, please let me know.
On an external screen there are regular toolbar buttons for back, forward and reload, and the same context menu is available by the mouse right click.

Bookmarks. Yes, you can easily save active page as a bookmark, for that just open the Tabs Panel and find your active tab. Find a button with left-arrow icon and click it. It is right before Close Button. It should open a number of additional buttons, which are:

hide buttons back,
pin the tab,
add it to bookmarks,
clean all site data and then close the tab,
just close the tab.

As well, you can add or edit bookmarks, import and export bookmarks, doing it directly on Bookmarks page. Just tap the Bookmark button on the top of Tabs Panel and explore buttons and context menu there.
(Spoiler: there is going to be new tabs search functionality in the new release)

Earth rotation. Here you found a case. I have to investigate it. The browser doesn't depend on QT at all, it has Electron/Chromium under the hood. But right at the moment I have no answer to this question. Will explore it later. Thanks for this reporting.

domubpkm

@naz.R Thank you for your answers and future improvements. I will notify you of any points not understood on my part or anomalies.

As a future request I submit to you the idea of including (if possible) a DNS switcher as do firefox mobile.

domubpkm

@naz.r Keyboard doesn't work for me in duckduckgo search box

naz.R

@domubpkm thanks for letting me know, I really appreciate it.
I am going to release my updates tomorrow, hope all keyboard issues will be resolved there.

As a quick workaround you can type your search request directly into the address field and press Enter. It will pass the request into DuckDuckGo engine.

domubpkm

@naz.r https://browserleaks.com/webrtc
webrtc leak
even using Tor.. Our Public address ip shown.