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Chromium doesn’t contain any copyleft code AFAIK, which is how Edge and Google Chrome (not exactly Chromium) exist.
by jchw 5y ago
Chromium doesn’t contain any copyleft code AFAIK, which is how Edge and Google Chrome (not exactly Chromium) exist.
- jraph 5y agoIt does. It is based on WebKit, which is based on KHTML, which was under LGPL. But if they haven't modified the LGPL code (which is likely), they probably don't need to distribute their source code. You can still do closed betas with free software though, as long as you allow the beta users to get the source code (but they can, in turn, distribute the code to everyone).
- jchw 5y agoThey only have to distribute the source code for their modified Webkit, and IIRC have some way for end users to link in their own Webkit. That does not have the same vitality of a strong copyleft license like GPL. I guess this may still be classified as copyleft, but by no means does it require them to redistribute the source code of their browser. Note that Edge is not open source, even though it is based on Chromium and contains Webkit-derived code.