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It's free in the sense you don't pay for it with money, but considering how much Google pays apple to use Google as the default search engine, I would say the G
by steve19 8y ago
It's free in the sense you don't pay for it with money, but considering how much Google pays apple to use Google as the default search engine, I would say the Google Browser is a big money maker.
- ajross 8y agoNo, Chromium is free in the GNU sense, which is what I meant. You don't whine at open source providers to support features you want, it's bad form. Go fix it yourself, or use hardware that doesn't require this kind of hacky reverse engineering.
- loeg 8y agoIt's fairly uncommon for open source software to blacklist components that (attempt to) implement a compatible interface. Usually selecting an appropriate hardware driver is left in the hands of the distribution or administrator.
- xyzzyz 8y agoYes, and the distributor or administrator is free to rebuild the browser or just set the flag to disable blacklisting. It’s only default behavior that changed.
- loeg 8y agoChrome has the special sauce — distributors and administrators cannot rebuild it, only Chromium.
- magicalist 8y agoFlip the flag then. It's crazy to suggest they should give web access (not just webgl, but CSS styling) to a buggy GPU driver by default without an opt in by the user.
- smueller1234 8y agoIs that different than the branding/trademark issue that Firefox also had for years? (Not bring cynical, I genuinely don't know.)
- loeg 8y agoYes, it's different. You can build trademark Firefox so long as you do not modify it at all. You cannot build Chrome from the chromium sources — there are components which are not present in the open source repository. It's not just the trademark, unlike Firefox vs Iceweasel.
- smueller1234 8y agoThanks for the explanation! From reading more about it, it seems these are all benign (in the sense of Chromium couldn't ship h264 because it's licensed but Chrome can).
- mehrdadn 8y ago> You don't whine at open source providers to support features you want, it's bad form. Go fix it yourself This just about sums up the problem with open source. The response is always "if you don't like it, fix it yourself". Because everybody is a developer with copious free time to learn how to fix the problem in their favorite product. It's not like cloning and building Chromium takes hours. Or like you would lose anything by using Chromium instead of Chrome.
- ndnxhs 8y agoThe proprietary version is "if you don't like it, learn to like it."
- meditate 8y agoI don't see what the issue here is. If you don't have the time to do it then get someone else to do it. If they won't do it for free then you pay them. The unfortunate part is that if you regularly buy brand new Nvidia cards then the cost of the proprietary driver is built into the price of the card, so it sucks that you would have to pay twice for drivers. But this clearly is a result of Nvidia's decision, they are thes one who are forcing you to take personal responsibility for getting your own libre drivers working, not the developers working on said libre (and gratis) drivers.