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A comment on Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%. Parent comment

Re:Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers... by drnick1 on Monday January 05, 2026 @06:49PM (#46506871)
This is good news, but I am confused by the following:

"""

Brave Origin is:

1/ new, optional, separate build (stripped down, no telemetry/rewards/wallet/vpn/ai);

2/ free on Linux, one time buy elsewhere.

"""

So the stripped down version (at least the non-Linux one) will not be open source?

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Re:Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers... by dfajgljsldkjag on Monday January 05, 2026 @06:53PM (#46506924)
Open source software can be sold for money. For example redhat selling cds with rhel on them, for quite a big sticker price. Free if you build it yourself but you have to pay to get a ready to use version.
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Re:Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers... by chii on Monday January 05, 2026 @10:36PM (#46508461)
or figure out how to build it yourself from source. But you can count on the lazy tax - esp. for windows (as building from source on linux is likely to be much more convenient).
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Re:Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers... by HPsquared on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @08:16AM (#46511837)
Maybe that's why it is free on Linux!
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Re:Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers... by pxc on Monday January 05, 2026 @07:36PM (#46507261)
open-source ≠ gratis binaries

Rules that require the distribution of source code don't require the distribution of binaries.

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Re:Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers... by WackyFighter on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @05:45AM (#46510812)
That seems pretty reasonable proposition IMO.

As other people have mentioned you can resell open source software. I have a big box Linux distro on my shelf here.

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Re:Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers... by johnebgd on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @08:58AM (#46512301)
I’d pay a monthly fee for a browser where I’m not the product anymore and it respects my privacy.
[ Parent | on HN ]