SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by boltronics on Monday February 01 2021, @03:40AM
> They iterated 2 breaking protocol changes over the course of 2 decades and explained how those changes were necessary due to security concerns.
I don't believe "security" is the concern - it's just an excuse. The new sync has known security issues and last I checked they don't care. They don't want to change the way it works because it would be problematic due to their integration with Pocket (a proprietary service - it still blows my mind that Firefox added this integration). There's an open bug report about it somewhere that I was reading last year, and it wasn't a new issue either. That was one of the big disincentives I saw regarding Firefox Sync specifically.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!