Linux Foundation bands together Chromium browser makers in a “neutral space”
Linux Foundation bands together Chromium browser makers in a “neutral space”
Open source group aims to better organize and fund development of browser.
I thought I'm going to read about an initiative to join efforts between Ungoogled Chromium, Chromite, Srware Iron etc, but no. Yet another place for Google and Meta to work together.
Chromium really?
After the whole debacle of manifest v3 they're really choosing Chromium of all browsers to develop on?
Mozilla has made some controversial decisions but surely Firefox would be the better decision for the Linux and FOSS ecosystem.
Even better why not Librewolf?Seeing this news makes me sad as there are better options available and the Linux foundation chose the worst one out of all of them.
- [EFF] Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening
- Tens of thousands of Chrome extensions at risk due to Manifest V3
- Your privacy on Chrome is at risk, here’s what you can do
Ironically I also just saw this here on the fediverse: Google loses in court, faces trial for collecting data on users who opted out
Or servo. Literally anything but chrome man.
I'm very happy Servo exists but if they want, like, a working browser, it's no wonder they chose Chromium.
For comparison, from a recent Servo blogpost: "Servo can now run Discord well enough to log in and read messages, though you can’t send messages yet. [...] We now support enough of XPath to get htmx working.".
Servo has been in development for 7+ years and it's still not able to render modern web. Maybe it never will, since it's impossible to build a new web browser.
@[email protected] and @[email protected] thanks for mentioning Servo👍
I didn't know about that rust-based alternative until now and I agree; even Servo would've been a better choice than Chromium.
Linux Foundation is also the host for the Servo project.
Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit it as someone who has left Chromium behind personally, Chromium is kind of the only choice. I think people outside the browser implementation world underestimate the sheer scale and complexity of the modern browser stack and what goes into maintaining compatibility with web standards, much less advancing them.
We've reached the point where Chromium is essentially the de-facto web standard because Chromium engineers do the lions' share of feature testing and development, because Chromium receives the lions' share of funding.
Igalia, an OSS consultancy that does a lot of fairly-funded independent browser development, has lots of material about this. For example, the recent chat between Igalia members and someone from Open Web Advocacy about what to do if the anitrust ruling against Google jeopardize's Chromium's funding, and the options are pretty dire.
Edit: After reading the article, I think this is a really good sign. Bringing together the immediate stakeholders in Chromium's development and funding bodes well for the possibility of stewarding Chromium in a less Google-dependent, profit-motivated, ad-centric direction. There's unfortunately a lot of uncertainty about how this will all shake out, but it's possible that Chromium could become a truly independent project and move back in the direction of user value instead of user-hostile shareholder value.
We’ve reached the point where Chromium is essentially the de-facto web standard because Chromium engineers do the lions’ share of feature testing and development,
Most of the web standards driven by Chromium are not particularly beneficial to the web, but are beneficial to Google. This is not an accident. It is how Google has made itself gatekeeper of the web while maintaining the facade of an open and standards-compliant browser.
This is not a good thing. Community-focused projects investing time and money into supporting it is a bit like digging one's own grave.
Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit it as someone who has left Chromium behind personally, Chromium is kind of the only choice.
With Mozilla's rudderless stewardship of Firefox, I reluctantly agree with this. Firefox, and Mozilla, used to stand for something more than just a browser, but that is sadly vanishing now. Chrome is really the future and while I'm clinging on to Firefox, I will succumb in the end.
It's very sad. I've been a Firefox user for so long I've lost count. But Mozilla has lost it's way and I don't see it making any noise about getting back on course.
I think having one browser engine is a very bad idea. But here we are.
With webassembly and webgl, why do browsers need to evolve? If you want some feature the browser doesn't provide, just make it yourself and draw it onto the canvas. x86 assembly gets occasional performance improving instructions but fundamally it's existed for 50 years and can continue to support all modern programs. X11 survived for 40 years before any talk of a replacement really appeared. Why can't Chrome be maintenance only for 40 years and let apps and websites innovate on top of its primitives?
Stephen Shankland's report from 2020 notes a number of people suggesting that Chromium as a whole could be moved out of Google entirely and into an independent foundation, such as the Linux Foundation. That's not what is happening now, but it's another step toward larger organization outside of the web's dominant browser and advertising provider (though Google is still one of the supporters).
One can only hope this is the first step toward a larger trend. LF stewardship of the Chromium project wouldn't be perfect, but it's still much better than the current situation of it being controlled by one company, be it Google or whoever they'll forced to sell Chrome to.
My read of the situation is that this was driven by Google rather than LF (as in I think Google approached LF about the idea first) in an effort to give then an argument that the court shouldn''t take Chrome away from them (the only way Google would ever give up control over Chrome).
I'm not sure. The courts intends for Google to sell Chrome, not Chromium. Even if they gave guarentees that Chromium will become independant, the coourt's likely to tell them to sell Chrome anyway (as they could still apply monopolistic practices like service bundling without control over Chromium, not to mention they could 'fork' LF's Chromium later to make their own).
The way I see it, this is more Google being scared shitless about Chrome's new owner being shitty, promote their own services instead of Google's, and disrespect web standards (or depecreates the 'standards' Google implemented in Chromium without the approval of other browers, or standard bodies). That could cause MASSIVE issues for them, and the loss of business that could cause would be tremendous, in a way that's far worse than giving up control on Chromium.
To me, his seems more like the nuclear option of Google saying that if they can't own Chromiulm, then nobody can as a way to cut their losses.
donate to mozilla people
Complete servo tlf??? I am done with chrome and Firefox also getting in AI shit
So far all of their ai stuff has been:
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Accessibility features
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A sidebar that you can put a third party AI into, which probably took an afternoon to code
I just don't get why people are upset that they're doing literally the bare minimum to grab headlines so that normies realize they're a legit browser.
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Call me when they give Google the finger and start rolling back user-unfriendly changes. Until then it's larping.
The article explains some of the background to chromium which I hadn't known.
Google's Chrome is a freeware release with deeper ties to Google's ecosystem, while Chromium, released at the same time as Chrome in 2008, is open source. Google has slowly loosened its de facto control of the project, particularly since 2020, allowing outside developers into its leadership, softening its stance on non-Google-derived features and opening up its "Goma" development scheme for Chromium, as detailed by CNET in 2020.
What I haven't seen in the discussions here so far is that Chromium is the web engine that most mobile apps are built on (you don't build your own special web client to access the server for your app, you just use an existing system for that). Also it's the engine used for most web apps for embedded/standalone/IoT devices. The Electron application framework has Chromium embedded in it for web access - every Electron app uses Chromium. If your climate control device has a little touchscreen and smart features it's probably using a web app that runs in an embedded instance of Chromium. Basically any device that has a GUI and links to cloud services is probably doing the same thing.
Bluntly, when it comes to client-side access to web services, Chromium matters more than Firefox, and anything that happens with it is far more impactful because it applies to a broader context than just people using Chrome for regular web browsing.
Extremely short sighted and stupid decision. The only people that will support it are the Google fanboys.
I'm very wary of it but It could have some potential thinking that the anti-monopoly action is pending.