4 ms·
There's a difference between IE and Chrome, the one was completely closed source whereas chrome's engine is open source and there already many distributions inc
by kyriakos 6y ago
There's a difference between IE and Chrome, the one was completely closed source whereas chrome's engine is open source and there already many distributions including one backed by another major company. If Google takes blink into a direction users no longer want a blink fork and open source distro can be made in the same sense as Firefox. I'd be more worried about the prevalence of safari engine on ios where there are no alternatives.
- sebazzz 6y ago> If Google takes blink into a direction users no longer want a blink fork and open source distro can be made in the same sense as Firefox. I'm not completely sure about that: 1. Maintaining a browser engine is no easy task. 2. Where does the copyright reside? For instance, contributing to various open source projects requires signing a CLA so that among other things the license of the project can be changed afterwards.
- kyriakos 6y agoDefinitely not an easy task but my point is that it's not the same dead end situation that happened with IE. During the IE era the browser came bundled with the OS, it was closed source, Microsoft once it squashed competition stopped updating. About licensing I admit I am no expert but somehow brave and edge use the engine right now without going into legal troubles.
- smnthermes 6y ago> Maintaining a browser engine is no easy task Reverting anti-adblocker changes doesn't require that many resources.