I've never understood what niche Orion is supposed to fill. People who value privacy would be more likely to use an open-source browser. Firefox and Brave already serve that purpose. Maybe it's less important to Mac users, but on Linux, a proprietary browser is a major deal-breaker for most people. Plus, it's less convenient if the browser isn't simply included in the repository as a result. Orion should have been developed as open source from the start, with community involvement. Kagi can still benefit from this, though, by serving as the default search engine in exchange for funding the development, and by having the Kagi Assistant directly integrated into the platform.
Afaict the niche they attempted to fill is the one Firefox already fills on desktop, a highly customizable browser with extension support. (Firefox does not support extensions on iOS, apparently has no plans to do so, and as I understand the support is somewhat limited on Android as well). I switched for about a year because they delivered what seemed like a serious effort at that with their initial release. After seeing basically zero effort at addressing very fundamental bugs in that support in that year, I switched back. As far as I’m concerned their battle is already lost.
The iOS codebase is the only one that potentially has any value to the OSS community; this kind of "enjoy our garbage!" source release really irks me.
RandomGerm4n · · focus · HN ↗
ghostly_s · · focus · HN ↗
The iOS codebase is the only one that potentially has any value to the OSS community; this kind of "enjoy our garbage!" source release really irks me.