4 ms·

The difference is, AOSP on its own is unusable, but Chromium Is.

anonymousab 4y ago
Google has added proprietary closed source blobs to chromium in the past and there's little reason they wouldn't do so again when they're the only game in town.
- jacooper 4y ago
  But they arent, chromium forks like brave or edge won't stand and do nothing if something ridiculous happened.
ohgodplsno 4y ago
For now.
gspr 4y ago
It's pretty close to being unusable as an open source code base. Look at Debian's struggles with maintaining security fixes for Chromium. Sure, the license is open, and Chromium is therefore technically open. But it's dangerously close to not being usable in any real practical meaning of "open source". The way things are, we do indeed stand on the precipice of a Chromium-only web with—for all practical intents and purpose—no open browser. Firefox is the last thing that stands between us and that reality. It's just a shame that they seem to be wasting hundreds of millions on admin and management instead of just throwing it all at their developers.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Its a Debian problem, there is a flatpak version and its working fine.
  - gspr 4y ago
    You're kinda proving my point: it works fine if you wholeheartedly take whatever Google gives you. Sure, that's technically open source, but is it really practically so if you can't practically adapt it?
    - jacooper 4y ago
      How ? There is brave, Ungoogle chromium, and many other modified browsers that are maintained.
      - gspr 4y ago
        Are they maintained? Or are they latest version or bust "maintained"?
        jacooper 4y ago
        Latest version or bust, because really you can't call a browser behind on updates maintained.
- gsnedders 4y ago
  > Look at Debian's struggles with maintaining security fixes for Chromium. I can't see anything about this anywhere giving any reasons; is it simply that they're released frequently and there aren't really any long-lived branches?
  - gspr 4y ago
    My understanding is that the Chromium folks handle security issues with: "version x.y.z is vulnerable, please update to (x+7).(y+25).(z+2), as it is the only supported version – the fact that the diff from x.y.z is 100 kLOC and touches mostly completely unrelated things is your problem". This isn't sustainable open source development in any practical sense. Sure, it's technically open source, but nearly useless for anything but consumption straight from Google. I'd say that that makes it practically not open source.
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      Arch has been handling minor releases on Chromium just fine. If Debian is having issues, it is most likely with them trying to backport fixes into antiquated code bases.
      - gspr 4y ago
        If a year old is considered antiquated, we have some major problems in this world. And it's kinda my whole point: code that can only be consumed wholesale as shipped might technically be open source, but if backporting fixes to a year old version is nigh on impossible, is it truly open source in practice?
        encryptluks2 4y ago
        Yes it is. That is like saying because it doesn't run on an Atari that it isn't truly open source.
        gspr 4y ago
NoGravitas 4y ago
AOSP on its own was perfectly usable, in the early days. That frog has been thoroughly boiled.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Pure AOSP is always unusable, because it doesn't have the kernel drivers for any device.
HWR_14 4y ago
Oh good, I look forward to the continued ad-blocking Manifest v2 provides after Chrome sunsets it. And we still have to see if other browsers will block the Topics API spyware or not.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm looking forward to see what will happens when V2 dies. I'm using brave so this won't change anything for me really. As for the Topics API, It looks like to be a new copy of FLOC, which flopped immediately on release, as no body adopted it other than chrome.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Topics is rebranded FLOC. Everyone pushed back on it when FLOC came out, but that was publicly reviled and there was a simple toggle to turn it off (it was an experimental feature). This is an excellent test of Google's ability to just push a very unpopular feature into Chromium derivatives.
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Non google browsers didn't only disable it, they removed it completely. Google has a lot of control over chromium, but I don't think its even close to how gimped AOSP is compared to Android google edition.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        > Non google browsers didn't only disable it, they removed it completely. They set the toggle to false and deactivated any of the options to turn it back on. That's very different from removing a feature (or maintaining a legacy feature). The only code they changed was UX-related and a single default.

Google has added proprietary closed source blobs to chromium in the past and there's little reason they wouldn't do so again when they're the only game in town.

jacooper 4y ago
But they arent, chromium forks like brave or edge won't stand and do nothing if something ridiculous happened.

ohgodplsno 4y ago

For now.

gspr 4y ago

It's pretty close to being unusable as an open source code base. Look at Debian's struggles with maintaining security fixes for Chromium. Sure, the license is open, and Chromium is therefore technically open. But it's dangerously close to not being usable in any real practical meaning of "open source". The way things are, we do indeed stand on the precipice of a Chromium-only web with—for all practical intents and purpose—no open browser. Firefox is the last thing that stands between us and that reality. It's just a shame that they seem to be wasting hundreds of millions on admin and management instead of just throwing it all at their developers.

jacooper 4y ago
Its a Debian problem, there is a flatpak version and its working fine.
- gspr 4y ago
  You're kinda proving my point: it works fine if you wholeheartedly take whatever Google gives you. Sure, that's technically open source, but is it really practically so if you can't practically adapt it?
  - jacooper 4y ago
    How ? There is brave, Ungoogle chromium, and many other modified browsers that are maintained.
    - gspr 4y ago
      Are they maintained? Or are they latest version or bust "maintained"?
      - jacooper 4y ago
        Latest version or bust, because really you can't call a browser behind on updates maintained.
gsnedders 4y ago
> Look at Debian's struggles with maintaining security fixes for Chromium. I can't see anything about this anywhere giving any reasons; is it simply that they're released frequently and there aren't really any long-lived branches?
- gspr 4y ago
  My understanding is that the Chromium folks handle security issues with: "version x.y.z is vulnerable, please update to (x+7).(y+25).(z+2), as it is the only supported version – the fact that the diff from x.y.z is 100 kLOC and touches mostly completely unrelated things is your problem". This isn't sustainable open source development in any practical sense. Sure, it's technically open source, but nearly useless for anything but consumption straight from Google. I'd say that that makes it practically not open source.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Arch has been handling minor releases on Chromium just fine. If Debian is having issues, it is most likely with them trying to backport fixes into antiquated code bases.
    - gspr 4y ago
      If a year old is considered antiquated, we have some major problems in this world. And it's kinda my whole point: code that can only be consumed wholesale as shipped might technically be open source, but if backporting fixes to a year old version is nigh on impossible, is it truly open source in practice?
      - encryptluks2 4y ago
        Yes it is. That is like saying because it doesn't run on an Atari that it isn't truly open source.
        gspr 4y ago

NoGravitas 4y ago

AOSP on its own was perfectly usable, in the early days. That frog has been thoroughly boiled.

jacooper 4y ago
Pure AOSP is always unusable, because it doesn't have the kernel drivers for any device.

HWR_14 4y ago

Oh good, I look forward to the continued ad-blocking Manifest v2 provides after Chrome sunsets it. And we still have to see if other browsers will block the Topics API spyware or not.

jacooper 4y ago
Yeah, I'm looking forward to see what will happens when V2 dies. I'm using brave so this won't change anything for me really. As for the Topics API, It looks like to be a new copy of FLOC, which flopped immediately on release, as no body adopted it other than chrome.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Topics is rebranded FLOC. Everyone pushed back on it when FLOC came out, but that was publicly reviled and there was a simple toggle to turn it off (it was an experimental feature). This is an excellent test of Google's ability to just push a very unpopular feature into Chromium derivatives.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Non google browsers didn't only disable it, they removed it completely. Google has a lot of control over chromium, but I don't think its even close to how gimped AOSP is compared to Android google edition.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      > Non google browsers didn't only disable it, they removed it completely. They set the toggle to false and deactivated any of the options to turn it back on. That's very different from removing a feature (or maintaining a legacy feature). The only code they changed was UX-related and a single default.