About qutebrowser and this campaign
The campaign has now ended. If you missed it and still want shirts or stickers, please contact me, I might still have some left.
The development will start on 6th of May, and I set up a development blog where I'll blog daily-ish updates.
My name is Florian Bruhin, also known as The Compiler. I am the main developer of
qutebrowser, a web browser with a keyboard-focused user interface inspired by the
vim editor.
qutebrowser is a very active project with a big community: More than 60 people have contributed
over 250 changesets (pull requests), and hundreds of people are actively using it. In the past 2.5 years,
nearly 7500 changes (commits) were uploaded.
It is currently based on the QtWebKit rendering engine which is getting dated and has various issues, described in more detail below.
With this campaign, I hope being able to work full-time for a month (or more!) on qutebrowser. The goal is to add support for the newer
QtWebEngine backend, which is based on the
Chromium project (like Google's Chrome browser).
This will make qutebrowser fit for the modern web and solve dozens of existing issues. In addition, it will bring lots of overall security, stability and performance improvements compared to the current QtWebKit backend.
What QtWebEngine will get you
Security
Stability
There are
various qutebrowser stability issues for which QtWebKit is to blame. With QtWebEngine, all those problems will be gone, and so will be crashes experienced by many users on Twitter or Facebook.
Future of QtWebKit
QtWebKit
got removed in Qt 5.6. While most Linux distributions will keep it around for a while, some are expected to drop it (or have already done so). This means qutebrowser will not run on those platforms anymore. With QtWebEngine, qutebrowser will be ready for the future, as QtWebEngine is
very actively developed and will probably be so for years to come.
Support for other engines
I plan to keep QtWebKit support for the time being, as some Linux distributions (Debian/Ubuntu) don't package QtWebEngine as of yet.
Since the qutebrowser code will work with two different engines, it'll be easier to add support for additional backends. I'll definitely keep an eye on Mozilla's
Servo for the future.
Goal
My goal is to raise 3000€ to work on QtWebEngine support in qutebrowser full-time for a month.
Depending on where you live, this probably sounds like a lot of money.
Living in Switzerland is rather expensive, and what you'd probably consider quite a good salary is really modest here.
Adjusting for the "location factors" (which I believe are a quite reasonable combination of various sources), that amount corresponds to:
-
1300 EUR (assuming you're living in Germany)
-
1200 GBP
-
2300 USD
If I raise less or more money, I'll be able to work full-time on qutebrowser for a shorter or longer period of time, up to around 2.5 months.
A few examples:
- 3000 EUR is my goal, which means I'll be able to work 4 weeks (20 days) full-time on qutebrowser.
- If I only raise 1500 EUR, I'll be able to dedicate 2 weeks to qutebrowser
- If I raise 6000 EUR, I can work on qutebrowser for a full two months!
I'll also need to find a good trade-off between the (extra) money raised and the quality of stickers/t-shirts I can purchase. They become a lot cheaper in higher quantities - and if there is some extra money, I might choose to invest it in better t-shirts/stickers rather than working a day or two more.
What you'll get
For any pledge level starting with €5, you'll be listed in a "backers" file which will be linked from the README.
For €20 and above, you'll get 5 qutebrowser stickers to stick to your laptop, or anywhere else!
For €60 and above, you'll get a qutebrowser t-shirt as well as 5 stickers. The t-shirt will be black or dark blue.
Both the t-shirt and the stickers will have the the
qutebrowser logo on them, as well as "qutebrowser.org" and maybe its slogan, "a vim-like browser".
With €150, you'll sponsor a whole day of qutebrowser development, and you'll get a t-shirt and stickers as well. I'll organize a WebRTC/Google Hangout session with you (or IRC/mail if you prefer), to talk about what you like/dislike about qutebrowser, or anything else you'd like to talk about. You'll also be listed as a day sponsor in the backers file, optionally with an URL of your choice.
For €300, you'll also get a WebRTC/Hangouts session (or IRC/mail if you prefer), and I'll talk to you about what qutebrowser issue is bugging you the most. I'll then (within reason) prioriti[zs]e that issue, and try to fix it as soon as possible after QtWebEngine support is implemented. Of course, you'll also get a t-shirt and stickers. You'll also be listed as a gold sponsor in the backers file, optionally with an URL of your choice.
For the stickers and t-shirts, a small shipping fee is added (except for the €150/€300 perks). I can ship the stickers for 2€ worldwide. Shipping for the t-shirt is 5€ within the EU and 10€ worldwide, to be sure I can cover my costs.
I'll also keep a public development blog, with the goal of posting an update with the current state and what I've worked on every 1-2 days.
Risks & Challenges
QtWebEngine support will be a lot of work, and a lot could possibly take more time than I estimate. I hope to get the biggest chunk out of the way, but it's certainly possible not everything listed in
the issue will be implemented after the month. I'll of course continue to work on qutebrowser (like I am already) in my free time after the campaign, focusing on getting QtWebEngine up to speed!
I've never printed and shipped t-shirts or stickers on this scale before, so I'll probably need some time to find a company which I can trust to provide a good quality. This is why the estimated shipping date is set to August, to ensure I have plenty of time to ensure neither you nor I am getting ripped off.
I'll probably have time from June to mid-September to work on qutebrowser, but I'll also have some other obligations (like the python testing sprint, from which qutebrowser will indirectly benefit too). This means there might be some small breaks in between. I'm confident I can make room for 1-3 months of development time (starting in June/July/August) without any issues though.
If the total amount raised is significantly more than 9000€, I'll work on qutebrowser 3 months this late summer and use the rest of the money to work on qutebrowser full-time during my university semester break next year.
Please share!
Please spread the word about this campaign, e.g. on Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News, or wherever you think it'd fit in without annoying people!
