5 ms·

I don't think you understand how Chromium works. Google makes all the important decisions. People have advocated for independent governance (e.g. some kind of C

by roca 5y ago

I don't think you understand how Chromium works. Google makes all the important decisions. People have advocated for independent governance (e.g. some kind of Chromium Foundation) but Google isn't interested. E.g. Brave opposes Google in some ways but they have no say in the development of Web standards implemented by Chromium.

roenxi 5y ago
It is open source. If someone doesn't like a decision they can fork the codebase. Mozilla's Gecko has been beaten down to sub-double-digit market share, they're less relevant right now than when IE6 was >75% of the market. They have no power to influence the direction the web moves in. And yet life is going on better than ever. If you want a counterbalance to stop Google making the important decisions, Firefox has failed spectacularly. And yet Google doesn't have any power to move the web in a direction it doesn't want to go - because their engine is open source and that is what actually matters here.
- matrus 5y ago
  To make any dent to Google's dominance over the web a potential fork would first have to gain any noticeable traction. This seems highly unlikely if well funded companies like Microsoft or Mozilla weren't able to leverage their properties (Windows in Microsoft's case) or their brand (Mozilla) so far. Plus, any major fork of Chromium would have to compete with Chrome's vast development budget.
- roca 5y ago
  Browser vendors can carry small patches against Chromium but significant changes are very costly to carry long-term as the code changes under you. Furthermore, Google controls how heavy that burden is for you. In practice browser vendors who choose Chromium don't challenge Google's Web platform decisions except in very narrow cases like FLoC. In contrast Mozilla and Apple examine every Google-proposed Web platform feature or change to see whether it makes sense. Mozilla's influence over the Web platform is much lower than it was but it is also far from zero. Lots of major sites still test in Firefox. Apple has even more influence. That is why Google doesn't yet has absolute power over the Web platform.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    > Browser vendors can carry small patches against Chromium but significant changes are very costly to carry long-term as the code changes under you. Furthermore, Google controls how heavy that burden is for you. This is fundamentally wrong; at any point anyone can hard fork chromium and then the long term costs of maintenance and rate of code change are completely out of Google's control. > In practice browser vendors... This is because Google generally makes great choices with Chrome that don't need to be second guessed. One of the reasons for Chrome's ubiquity is Google makes a great browser.
    - roca 5y ago
      No-one is going to hard-fork Chromium. The reason you adopt Chromium is because you don't want to pay to maintain your own browser engine.
      - roenxi 5y ago
        > The reason you adopt Chromium is because you don't want to pay to maintain your own browser engine. Same argument applies to Gecko, but if people want to get in to the web browser game it makes a lot more sense to start with a de-facto open standard - which is Chromium. There are already a lot of browsers based on that engine, which is apparently named Blink according to Wikipedia, with backers who could easily choose to maintain an engine if they wanted to. If the world ends in 12 months then sure, no-one is going to fork Chromium. But in the future, at some point Google will start doing a bad job maintaining it and Chromium could well be forked. If someone decides they need a browser engine to maintain full time they're probably going to fork Chromium as the technically strongest starting point and start maintaining a branch themselves. Forking Gecko would get them ... not much useful. Maybe some PR points. The Blink license says people can fork it. There isn't any legal or technical reason that it is unforkable. At some point, it will be forked.

by roca 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

It is open source. If someone doesn't like a decision they can fork the codebase. Mozilla's Gecko has been beaten down to sub-double-digit market share, they're less relevant right now than when IE6 was >75% of the market. They have no power to influence the direction the web moves in. And yet life is going on better than ever. If you want a counterbalance to stop Google making the important decisions, Firefox has failed spectacularly. And yet Google doesn't have any power to move the web in a direction it doesn't want to go - because their engine is open source and that is what actually matters here.

matrus 5y ago
To make any dent to Google's dominance over the web a potential fork would first have to gain any noticeable traction. This seems highly unlikely if well funded companies like Microsoft or Mozilla weren't able to leverage their properties (Windows in Microsoft's case) or their brand (Mozilla) so far. Plus, any major fork of Chromium would have to compete with Chrome's vast development budget.
roca 5y ago
Browser vendors can carry small patches against Chromium but significant changes are very costly to carry long-term as the code changes under you. Furthermore, Google controls how heavy that burden is for you. In practice browser vendors who choose Chromium don't challenge Google's Web platform decisions except in very narrow cases like FLoC. In contrast Mozilla and Apple examine every Google-proposed Web platform feature or change to see whether it makes sense. Mozilla's influence over the Web platform is much lower than it was but it is also far from zero. Lots of major sites still test in Firefox. Apple has even more influence. That is why Google doesn't yet has absolute power over the Web platform.
- roenxi 5y ago
  > Browser vendors can carry small patches against Chromium but significant changes are very costly to carry long-term as the code changes under you. Furthermore, Google controls how heavy that burden is for you. This is fundamentally wrong; at any point anyone can hard fork chromium and then the long term costs of maintenance and rate of code change are completely out of Google's control. > In practice browser vendors... This is because Google generally makes great choices with Chrome that don't need to be second guessed. One of the reasons for Chrome's ubiquity is Google makes a great browser.
  - roca 5y ago
    No-one is going to hard-fork Chromium. The reason you adopt Chromium is because you don't want to pay to maintain your own browser engine.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      > The reason you adopt Chromium is because you don't want to pay to maintain your own browser engine. Same argument applies to Gecko, but if people want to get in to the web browser game it makes a lot more sense to start with a de-facto open standard - which is Chromium. There are already a lot of browsers based on that engine, which is apparently named Blink according to Wikipedia, with backers who could easily choose to maintain an engine if they wanted to. If the world ends in 12 months then sure, no-one is going to fork Chromium. But in the future, at some point Google will start doing a bad job maintaining it and Chromium could well be forked. If someone decides they need a browser engine to maintain full time they're probably going to fork Chromium as the technically strongest starting point and start maintaining a branch themselves. Forking Gecko would get them ... not much useful. Maybe some PR points. The Blink license says people can fork it. There isn't any legal or technical reason that it is unforkable. At some point, it will be forked.