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Engineering Dossier

Engine Strategy & Architecture

A documented technical review of browser engines, upstream synchronization, memory-safe subsystems, and reproducible build pipelines.

Documented Evaluation

Browser Engine Selection Rationale

Why Nivara selected a hardened Mozilla Gecko core for desktop and GeckoView for Android rather than following the Google Chromium monoculture.

Mozilla Gecko & GeckoView

Selected Core

The only viable independent, non-Chromium rendering engine. Integrates memory-safe Rust in Stylo CSS, WebRender GPU compositing, and Quantum DOM, radically reducing memory corruption zero-days.

Chromium (Blink/V8)

Rejected

Directly controlled by Google to advance advertising technologies (Topics API, Manifest V3 limits). Stripping hundreds of hardcoded telemetry endpoints requires unsustainable patch overhead.

Apple WebKit (iOS)

Platform Baseline

Utilized for iOS/iPadOS to comply with Apple App Store distribution policies, combined with native declarative Content Rule Lists and local DNS proxy filtering.

Continuous Synchronization

Clean Upstream Patching

To maintain zero security lag and cleanly track upstream security advisories, Nivara isolates custom code into four strictly separated patch categories:

  • patches/01-branding: Removes Mozilla trademarks and inserts Navavritti iconography.
  • patches/02-privacy: Enforces Total Cookie Protection, Tor RFP, and HTTPS-First.
  • patches/03-network: Redirects update checks to Foundation-operated endpoints.
  • patches/04-ui: Embeds the native Nivara Privacy Shield toolbar controller.
# Reproducible Build Verification
# Verify binary byte-for-byte reproducibility:
git clone --branch v1.0.0 https://github.com/navavrittifoundation/nivara-browser.git
cd nivara-browser
docker build -t nivara-builder:1.0.0 -f build/Dockerfile .
docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/out:/out nivara-builder:1.0.0 ./mach build --package
sha256sum out/nivara-1.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
Open Source Inventory

Third-Party Dependencies & SPDX Licenses

Complete catalog of upstream open-source components compiled into Nivara Browser.

Component Category Version SPDX License Audit Status
Network Security Services (NSS) Cryptography 3.104 MPL-2.0 verified
SpiderMonkey JavaScript JS/Wasm Runtime 136.0 MPL-2.0 verified
uBlock Filtering Engine Privacy Core 1.62.0 GPL-3.0 verified
Mozilla Gecko Engine Rendering Core 136.0 ESR MPL-2.0 verified
SQLite Storage Subsystem 3.48.0 Public Domain verified
Rust Standard Library System Runtime 1.84.0 MIT / Apache-2.0 verified