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The competition between firefox and chrome is friendly competition. They're both opensource browsers that follow web standards so we aren't losing much by chrom

The competition between firefox and chrome is friendly competition. They're both opensource browsers that follow web standards so we aren't losing much by chrome gaining market share at the expense of firefox. If it were losing ground to internet explorer that would have been another issue though. As a result I don't really see the need for a fork of firefox. All they need to do is just focus of making a great browser. We're all fighting on the same side.

vog 16y ago
Chrome is only free software if you build it from source (http://code.google.com/intl/de/chromium/terms.html http://code.google.com/intl/de/chromium/terms.html). If you use their pre-built executable (as most people do), different terms apply (http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html). Also, the license isn't everything. It is also important which entity controls the official version of a software. It makes a huge difference whether the decision process is designed for transparency, or whether you can only audit the produced code commits afterwards. So instead of forking Firefox, it might be a better idea to fork Chrome. That way, we'd have an independent version that's regularily checked (and fixed) by persons outside of Google. And we could also provide a free binary to which Google's strange terms doesn't apply. (It would be interesting to see how Google reacts on such a fork. Will they insist on their term and try to apply them to the sources, or will they keep Chrome being free software?)
- Perceval 16y ago
  >a better idea to fork Chrome. ...an independent version that's regularily checked (and fixed) by persons outside of Google. We already have this. It's called SRWare Iron. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron
- Jach 16y ago
  FYI, until recently if you compiled Firefox under Gentoo with +branding (now the message comes up with -bindist): You are enabling official branding. You may not redistribute this build to any users on your network or the internet. Doing so puts yourself into a legal problem with Mozilla Foundation You can disable it by emerging ${PN} _with_ the bindist USE-flag I don't know what those legal problems are (as far as I can tell, it's just the Firefox logo), but I think that's interesting.

vog 16y ago

Chrome is only free software if you build it from source (http://code.google.com/intl/de/chromium/terms.html http://code.google.com/intl/de/chromium/terms.html). If you use their pre-built executable (as most people do), different terms apply (http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html). Also, the license isn't everything. It is also important which entity controls the official version of a software. It makes a huge difference whether the decision process is designed for transparency, or whether you can only audit the produced code commits afterwards. So instead of forking Firefox, it might be a better idea to fork Chrome. That way, we'd have an independent version that's regularily checked (and fixed) by persons outside of Google. And we could also provide a free binary to which Google's strange terms doesn't apply. (It would be interesting to see how Google reacts on such a fork. Will they insist on their term and try to apply them to the sources, or will they keep Chrome being free software?)

Perceval 16y ago
>a better idea to fork Chrome. ...an independent version that's regularily checked (and fixed) by persons outside of Google. We already have this. It's called SRWare Iron. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron
Jach 16y ago
FYI, until recently if you compiled Firefox under Gentoo with +branding (now the message comes up with -bindist): You are enabling official branding. You may not redistribute this build to any users on your network or the internet. Doing so puts yourself into a legal problem with Mozilla Foundation You can disable it by emerging ${PN} _with_ the bindist USE-flag I don't know what those legal problems are (as far as I can tell, it's just the Firefox logo), but I think that's interesting.