Browser Ladybird will no longer accept AI pull requests towards the alpha release

The developers of the alternative browser Ladybird no longer accept pull requests. The makers say that the project is close to an alpha release and that it is therefore serious. The makers want to keep the group of maintainers small in the future. In addition, Ladybird is seeing an increase in AI requests.

The makers write about the new policy in a blog post. “This is a decision we do not take lightly,” the makers said. “As we head toward our first alpha release, the project needs a tighter development process, a better security model, and a smaller group of people to write the code that goes into the browser,” wrote Andreas Kling, the lead developer.

What is Ladybird?

Ladybird is an open source project trying to create a new browser. The project distinguishes itself because it not only creates a browser, but also the engine behind it. Most alternative browsers use Google's Chromium engine and a handful use Mozilla's Gecko, but Ladybird wants to build such an engine itself.

Tweakers previously spoke with the founder of the browser, and last year wrote a background article about how the browser is heading towards an alpha release.

In practice, this means that Ladybird no longer accepts public pull requests. The project has done that so far; Anyone could propose an adjustment via GitHub, which the developers would then look at. Kling says in his blog post that 'many valuable contributions have come from outside the normal maintainers group', but that it is no longer wise to continue with this.

AI-written code

According to Kling, first of all, many pull requests are received, the code of which is at least partly written with AI. He doesn't mind that in principle, but 'a pull request now says much less about the person who submits it'. “A substantial patch used to represent substantial effort that someone had made, and that effort was a reasonable approximation that someone was doing an honest job,” he says. This is no longer the case thanks to AI.

This is not a good way to work, especially with a browser, Kling thinks. A browser must be handled and written more securely. "Whether code is written by hand is not the issue. What is important is who is responsible for the code once it hits the browser."

Ladybird will stop accepting new pull requests and will also close all open requests. Only project maintainers are allowed to make requests. Kling also says that there will be no workarounds for pull requests. "We don't want a shadow system through issues, comments, emails or forks." Forks from Ladybird are permitted under the license, but according to Kling that should not change anything for Ladybird itself.