Being closed-source isn't just an ideological issue, it bring about a lot of practical issues. E..g.: distributions aren't going to package it, so users need to download the tarball and install it manually. They'll also need to manually update it (unless they're including some dedicated service?).

Then, integration with the OS will be weird. If you're distributing binaries, you can't dynamically link system dependencies (they are either bundled or statically linked). Any distribution-specific patches and fixes will be missing. AFAIK the default path for the CA bundle varies per distribution; I'm not even sure how you'd handle that kind of thing. I'm sure there's hundreds of subtle little details like that one.

The audience ends up being Linux users, who are fine with proprietary software, have time and patience for manually configuring and maintaining a browser installation, and are also fine with an absence of proper OS integration.

I think Steam is the only popular proprietary software on Linux, and they basically ship an entire userspace runtime, and almost don't integrate with the OS at all.

I hope freediver will shed some light on the open source plans, because that's a deal breaker for me too. I'm a long time paying customer and huge proponent (even evangelist) of Kagi, but a closed source browser is just too many steps backwards for me no matter who makes it.

I get (though wouldn't necessarily agree with) keeping it closed while it's still in the works, but would like to know if the plan is to open source in the future or not.

Kagi founder here. Orion isn't open source yet primarily because we're a 5-person team that spent 6+ years building this and created significant IP doing so, and we're not in a position to defend our work against a well-funded company using it as a base (we care very much about the business model of the browser surviving). Restrictive licenses help in theory but enforcing them against a company with a larger legal budget doesn't.

We also see limited upside from community contributions - the number of people who can meaningfully work on a WebKit browser is small (from our experience hiring), and most of them already work at Apple or Kagi. Meanwhile, managing an open source codebase of this size would add real strain to our small team.

The plan is however to open source when Orion is self-sufficient (business model of Orion is you are the customer and can pay for it - like we used to pay for browsers 20 years ago before advertisers started paying for our browsing), meaning it can sustain its own development independent of Kagi Search. I want to take the opportunity to thank all people who supported the Orion browser vision [1]. We're not there yet but recent 1.0 launch and expanding to Linux are steps in that direction. And on Jan 1st this year we began development of Orion for Windows (HN exclusive yay!).

I understand this is unsatisfying to people who want source access now. It's a tradeoff we've made deliberately, not something we're hiding behind.

[1] https://kagi.com/stats?sub_stats=orion

Especially because WebKit’s lineage goes all the way back to KHTML. It’s nice to see KHTML come home to Linux but it does need to be open source.

It seems weird to worry more about that than about the Chromium hegemony to where Chromium is becoming the only way to move money online.

Just curious, but is this really a big deal? As a customer, you already trust Kagi enough to feed them your entire search history, so I guess you don't think they're bad actors. Thus, why you find problematic the (momentary?) "unopeness" of the browser? I'd gladly try it (I'm on Arch), even just out of curiosity (unlikely to make it my main, though).

Jeez, downvoted for asking about context? People, calm down.

I also would like to try it, but won't touch it until it is open source.

Why does it seem weird? I run a lot of proprietary software on linux. Actually made a career of it. I also run a lot of open source whenever I can, but I'm pragmatic about the whole affair. I think most users are like that.

In my opinion open sourcing something is a privilege, not a duty.

Feels weird in what way?

[dead]

Even if it was open-source, I already have more than enough webkits on my Linux, I don't need another one.