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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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @11:37AM
The browser has become the most important piece of software on your computer. So Google doesn't have to care what operating system is running Chromium/Chrome, as long as you're using their browser they're getting what they want from you.
Further, the browser's importance keeps growing. So while you're running Chromium on Linux on the Raspberry Pi or Chrome on *BSD, Google's power increases.