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.
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?"
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.
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?
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!
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.
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. :)
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.
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