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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Linux users are more likely than most to be familiar with Chromium, Google's the free and open source web project that serves as the basis for their wildly popular Chrome. Since the project's inception over a decade ago, users have been able to compile the BSD licensed code into a browser that's almost the same as the closed-source Chrome. As such, most distributions offer their own package for the browser and some even include it in the base install. Unfortunately, that may be changing soon.
[...] To the average Chromium user, this doesn't sound like much of a problem. In fact, you might even assume it doesn't apply to you. The language used in the post makes it sound like Google is referring to browsers which are spun off of the Chromium codebase, and at least in part, they are. But the search giant is also using this opportunity to codify their belief that the only official Chromium builds are the ones that they provide themselves. With that simple change, anyone using a distribution-specific build of Chromium just became persona non grata.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @06:37PM (1 child)
For now. It's not hard to imagine a world where the only useful build of Chrome, that supports all the shiny APIs that everyone cares about, comes from the Play Store. So you better have an Android device and a Google account in good standing else you'll be a second-class outcast, just like we were on Linux with Netscape 4 when so many things were dependent on IE.
There are at least several steps between this world and that world. But with Chrome's market share and Google's forays into being evil, it's no longer completely unimaginable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @09:02AM
There already exist HTTPS-only APIs in both Chrome and Firefox. Can't see why they can't depend on something else arbitrary chosen.