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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
by 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 agoIts a Debian problem, there is a flatpak version and its working fine.
- gspr 4y agoYou'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?
- 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 agoMy 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 agoArch 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 agoIf 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 agoYes it is. That is like saying because it doesn't run on an Atari that it isn't truly open source.
- gspr 4y ago