We also see limited upside from community contributions - the number of people who can meaningfully …

Thanks for responding. Orion on iOS with extensions has been outstanding.. looking forward to linux version.

Thanks for being so transparent about this. As a Kagi search user since the beta, I appreciate what you are doing. Good luck!

earlier in the thread I read nhe plan was to release the source "when it has merit" But that instantly left me with the feeling that the authors of the browser, and I have very different opinions on what the word merit means. Such that they would be incompatible, and I'd never want to use it. This is a decision that has lowered my opinion about exactly how much I can trust Kagi. > 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, But it's possible I haven't considered some detail where I might agree it's reasonable. Can you describe or offer any insight into the "significant IP" that you need to protect and defend? What threats from a larger company are you primarily concerned about?

The GPL has pretty good legal precedent, and so does the MPL in the browser space (though, Firefox has mozilla behind it so it gets the enforcement benefit). If the SFC wins its vizio case, would you look into freeing orion?

We support Kagi across products. We believe alternate browser engines keep the web standard. We give more weight to that than to whether a particular browser's value add (on top of a double digit* but non-hegemonic engine) is open. We believe software and hardware creators have a right to choose their business model and let that model compete, as Kagi's is competing right here in this thread. * Having worked at mega banks etc., they do look at these numbers to decide whether to invest in standards support or slap on a "Requires IE" button.

I'm a kagi user, and as many have said, I will not use Orion until it is open sourced. I understand your position, but a web browser is so important a software that it must be open. I also think that you can still sell it even if it is open source. Also, you might be able to secure funding from governments that want to move away from closed source solutions. Anyway, still congratulation for v 1.0, and I hope it will go well.

Having access to the source is just one part of open source. The state of webkitgtk is a bit rough, as I’m sure you and your engineers have noticed. The other part of what open source means to people is that you contribute back to the open source code you used to build your business, lifting all boats in the process. What people certainly do not want to see is Kagi pull an Apple: utilize FOSS to the extent it helps you but return nothing but “thanks everyone but we got ours”.

I would ignore the haters, keeping Orion proprietary makes the most sense for being able to successfully charge for it as a commercial product. You can't sell an OSS product, only supporting services, as many many startups have realized and been forced to relicense to much anger within their respective communities. And when the market is going to be primarily technical people I don't think you can trust them/us with source-available either as hackers with a strong aversion to paying for software thinking themselves clever will make and distribute bootleg builds with the license checks removed. Then you'll have to spend your time finding and DMCAing them which will only make people mad. Best to avoid it entirely. I appreciate you/Kagi actually thinking about building a sustainable business in contrast to companies that open source their core competency and then fail to make money later. S…