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Yes thank you, I understand all of that - it's very well known among web developers. None of it changes my argument: The majority of the functionality that we

Yes thank you, I understand all of that - it's very well known among web developers. None of it changes my argument: The majority of the functionality that we care about in our web browsers comes from an open source library.

WorldMaker 9y ago
Except it does change your argument: you are clearly missing a for now, so long as it pleases Google. You can imply that if Google did something to upset consumers they may flock to an alternative Blink-based browser or Chromium, but Google and Chrome are the brands they know, they don't know or care about Blink or Chromium. You may believe that Google are entirely generous and would never upset the open source balance from which they benefit, but they've done it before. The hard fork of Blink from WebKit is one obvious sign that if Google isn't happy, they can and will take their ball and move on. You can also consider in this equation the increasing disparity between open source AOSP and consumer Google Android. The number of closed, proprietary "Google Play" APIs that applications increasingly rely on still seems to be growing at a strong pace. The number of APKs that you can, for instance, sideload to AOSP-based Amazon FireOS continues to only dwindle and at this point a software developer very much has to develop two apps, one for Amazon's APIs and one for Google's, despite all the shared open source between the platforms. So of course we should worry that Chrome has such a huge marketshare and that so many web developers are essentially building "Chrome-only" websites.
- hungerstrike 9y ago
  Incorrect. We have the source, we can do whatever we want with it. Nothing that you said changes that.
  - dblohm7 9y ago
    Do "we" have the budget to do that?
    - hungerstrike 9y ago
      Emphatically, yes.
pcwalton 9y ago
> The majority of the functionality that we care about in our web browsers comes from an open source library. WebKit and Blink are not "an" open source library. They are two open source libraries (and, in the case of Blink, more of a tightly-coupled component of Chromium than a library).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

WorldMaker 9y ago

Except it does change your argument: you are clearly missing a for now, so long as it pleases Google. You can imply that if Google did something to upset consumers they may flock to an alternative Blink-based browser or Chromium, but Google and Chrome are the brands they know, they don't know or care about Blink or Chromium. You may believe that Google are entirely generous and would never upset the open source balance from which they benefit, but they've done it before. The hard fork of Blink from WebKit is one obvious sign that if Google isn't happy, they can and will take their ball and move on. You can also consider in this equation the increasing disparity between open source AOSP and consumer Google Android. The number of closed, proprietary "Google Play" APIs that applications increasingly rely on still seems to be growing at a strong pace. The number of APKs that you can, for instance, sideload to AOSP-based Amazon FireOS continues to only dwindle and at this point a software developer very much has to develop two apps, one for Amazon's APIs and one for Google's, despite all the shared open source between the platforms. So of course we should worry that Chrome has such a huge marketshare and that so many web developers are essentially building "Chrome-only" websites.

hungerstrike 9y ago
Incorrect. We have the source, we can do whatever we want with it. Nothing that you said changes that.
- dblohm7 9y ago
  Do "we" have the budget to do that?
  - hungerstrike 9y ago
    Emphatically, yes.

pcwalton 9y ago

> The majority of the functionality that we care about in our web browsers comes from an open source library. WebKit and Blink are not "an" open source library. They are two open source libraries (and, in the case of Blink, more of a tightly-coupled component of Chromium than a library).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]