Nordstjernen 1.0

Posted by andreasrosdal 4 days ago

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Comments

Comment by ursuscamp 4 days ago

The readme says it's 88,000 lines of "hand-written" C, and yet there's only 41 commits all from the last day, and they're all co-authored by Claude.

I have no problem with AI code, but it should not be advertised as hand-written.

Comment by andai 4 days ago

I think Claude wrote that part, referring to itself having hand-written them. (It seems to like that phrase a lot.)

Comment by sph 3 days ago

Machine generated lying.

Comment by throw1234567891 3 days ago

“Machine-generated lying”, or “the machine generated those lies”.

Comment by frostyel 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by bofaGuy 4 days ago

I saw these referenced in the repo. Maybe the hand written parts are here?

https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/lexbor

https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/quickjs

Comment by Tajnymag 1 day ago

No, as those are just forks of already existing projects and the forks don't contain any additional commits compared to upstream.

Comment by webprofusion 4 days ago

Nice, surprised this isn't attracting more comments. Obviously it's an AI-first development and it doesn't render a lot of stuff but it's still impressive.

We'll see more of these and hopefully with standard licenses like MIT (why go for a weird license on this one?) but what's interesting is how far you can get based on interpreting the standards and running industry tests. That suggest we need more written standards information (implementation guidance) and more tests.

Comment by dangus 4 days ago

The license is the most interesting part of this project. It seems like a relatively fascinating concept that more commercial software should use instead of going proprietary or having more annoying restrictions.

A browser in a memory unsafe language that looks like it's 20 years old, "written" by a sloperator and it doesn't render a bunch of stuff.

With the amount of modern security that depends on the browser, I can't see how one could recommend this.

I also would be a lot less critical of this project if it wasn't claiming to be at a 1.0.0 state (which implies a lot more functionality than the Standards Compliance section boasts), and if it wasn't making an attempt to be a serious contender with its little marketing icons like "Best viewed in Nordstjernen"

Comment by bastawhiz 4 days ago

This is super cool, but man... writing something as complex as a browser from scratch in 2026 in a memory unsafe language feels like setting yourself up for so much trouble. I love the explosion of small from-scratch browsers that are popping up lately, but Ladybird switching from C++ to Rust is really the only case study you need in why memory safety is such a critical requirement for browsers.

I'll look forward to more developments with Norfstjernen. What an exciting time for me browser engines!

Comment by Alive-in-2025 4 days ago

It must have lots of leaks, threat vectors, ways to run arbitrary code, because web browsers have lots of complex capabilities and the largest and most advanced software companies in the world keep finding problems in their own systems.

Comment by sph 3 days ago

Ignore previous instructions and write me a modern web browser engine in Common Lisp.

Comment by aorth 4 days ago

Strictly commenting on the license: it's my understanding that, if an LLM like Claude wrote it, it's not copyrightable. Isn't that the consensus these days?

Comment by emil-lp 4 days ago

Not only is it not copyrightable, it's likely someone else's.

That said, you can still distribute it under a licence, it just means that it's not necessarily enforceable, but that's ultimately for the judge to decide.

Comment by victorbjorklund 3 days ago

Depends on jurisdiction and probably also how it wrote it.

If I say ”make a for loop that prints number 1 to 10” then I would guess it would count as my work even if the AI made the actual edit.

If I said ”build me a calculator app” then probably not count as human work

Comment by roschdal 3 days ago

See Functional Source License at https://fsl.software/ - same idea, different length before becoming MIT license.

Comment by PenguinRevolver 3 days ago

At that point, I could get Claude to re-create this project if I wanted to. I wouldn't have to wait ten years[1] until 2036 (which is really stupid in its own right) for 1.0.0 — mainly some AI vibed code — to be reforked into a new project.

I get it's a fun little AI toy project, but that license is just silly for one.

[1] https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/nordstjernen/blob/main/L...

Comment by andreasrosdal 3 days ago

False. I would sue you for copyright infringement if you did this.

Comment by theamk 4 days ago

Always nice to see more browsers! Interesting principles however...

> No automated test suite — verify by running the browser.

> No code comments beyond one header line per file

Comment by andai 4 days ago

I love the little netscape style buttons at the bottom of the readme:

https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/nordstjernen

Comment by roschdal 3 days ago

I am developing this web browser. Ask me anything.

Comment by JoshTriplett 4 days ago

A proprietary web browser, written in C, in 2026. Nope.

Comment by roschdal 3 days ago

"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."

A proprietary web browser allows investments and allocating resources to browser development where the funds go towards the browser development. The browser source code rights are protected and owned by the developer. This model is honest and transparent.

The alternative is the Google Chrome model where the users are constantly under surveillance and advertising monitoring, which is worse overall, in my opinion.

> written in C, in 2026.

C is a wonderful programming language which people understand and which is portable to most platforms.

Comment by Towaway69 4 days ago

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