6 ms·

It's not like no one was making warnings about this.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Someone warned years ago that proxy extensions would no longer be feasible on Chromium? I must have missed that message.
- jerheinze 4y ago
  Not that explicitly, but many warned about Google abusing their power if it started hitting their profits.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  I'm more interested why it isn't possible to just fork the thing and maintain a version that's plugin enabled. Isn't Chromium completely open source? Especially for Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc.
  - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
    Developer effort.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      Don't underestimate the power of spite.
      - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
        Spite is at times my main source of motivation, and still leaves me physically uncapable of following the rate of breakage of upstream Firefox (i.e. I cant keep my patches up to date), which I'm assuming it's actually a more sensible upstream when compared with Google.
        Macha 4y ago
        I actually think not - the few third party gecko browsers abandoned ship to webkit/blink/chromium over the years
  - josefx 4y ago
    >Isn't Chromium completely open source? No, especially not if you want to watch videos, the DRM plugin is a binary blob that only Google approved browsers get to run. Then there are all the Google services that will break in unexpected ways in your browser, sometimes just because your user agent isn't identical to Chromes if past reports from Firefox users are any indication. Basically expect to be shit on by the biggest internet giant around at ever possible corner.
    - ElCheapo 4y ago
      I mean, if the DRM wasn't a blob it would be open source. Andnif it were open source it wouldn't be DRM...
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        It's possible to have DRM that's open source using cryptography.
        easrng 4y ago
        Secure DRM requires that your device have keys that are burned-in that you can't access. It's impossible to have an open implementation of a non-broken DRM system.
      - josefx 4y ago
        It could be controlled by a third party that isn't trying to dominate the browser market. And Google already caused issues years ago when it side loaded that plugin on open source distros and initially refused to provide an option to disable this behavior in chromium.
    - whoisthemachine 4y ago
      Firefox supports all DRM content I have come across, clearly there are ways to implement DRM that don't involve Google.
      - 4y ago
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    The amount of work it would take to fork Chromium and maintain a working secure browser with MV2 hooks into the browser internals would be so large that you'd need a dedicated team whose job it is to constantly backport upstream Chromium changes and ensure they still work with the old MV2 subsystem. That would take a lot of time and money.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      Well you don't need to implement every stupid thing big G thinks should be in it, just the really critical stuff. Even if you freeze all features right now you'll probably still have a better renderer than gecko for 5 years into the future. I mean right now I bet a lot of people will simply not update to MV3 and continue using the last known MV2 build into perpetuity until certs break or something else. I sure intend to.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        Backporting from an entity that is hostile towards MV2 makes me suspect that Google isn't going to play ball and make maintaining an MV2-compatible Chromium fork easy.
  - marwis 4y ago
    In addition to what others said, forks are not allowed to use Google services such as Chrome Sync or Translate.
- lucideer 4y ago
  > Someone warned years ago that <insert extremely specific thing> No, the gp said: > while pretending they weren't supporting google's Chrome monopoly Monopoly means Google's interests will be served rather than the user's. This means taking away things that are of value to users / users losing control over features / etc. Like proxy extensions, yes.
pkulak 4y ago
And every time there's a bunch of replies about how great Brave is, and everyone should just use that... Chromium wrapper.
- imbnwa 4y ago
  Brave has publicly declared support for Manifest v2 in perpetuity, no? They even seem to be pondering how to distribute v2 extensions post-sunset in Google Chrome[0] [0]https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15187 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15187
  - cpeterso 4y ago
    Maintaining out-of-tree patches for a project as large and quickly-changing as Chromium will be a lot of work. I know someone who worked on Amazon's Silk browser team and they had an engineer (rotation) working working full-time to keep their Chromium fork up to date within Google's upstream. Brave doesn't have nearly the resources that Amazon does.
    - UberFly 4y ago
      Yea you've seen it tried in projects like Waterfox and Palemoon and it eventually becomes too much to deal with. (Following the old Firefox addons system that is)
      - TremendousJudge 4y ago
        Yeah it's clear that was never going to work -- the whole point of dropping the old addons was making big architectural changes that weren't possible with the old APIs. You can't merge the new architectural changes and the old APIs without running into the issues they were trying to avoid by removing the old APIs in the first place.
    - marwis 4y ago
      There are few projects and companies that do exactly that, including CEF open source project. Perhaps they should join forces and make a joint OpenChromium project.

Someone warned years ago that proxy extensions would no longer be feasible on Chromium? I must have missed that message.

jerheinze 4y ago
Not that explicitly, but many warned about Google abusing their power if it started hitting their profits.
moffkalast 4y ago
I'm more interested why it isn't possible to just fork the thing and maintain a version that's plugin enabled. Isn't Chromium completely open source? Especially for Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  Developer effort.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Don't underestimate the power of spite.
    - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
      Spite is at times my main source of motivation, and still leaves me physically uncapable of following the rate of breakage of upstream Firefox (i.e. I cant keep my patches up to date), which I'm assuming it's actually a more sensible upstream when compared with Google.
      - Macha 4y ago
        I actually think not - the few third party gecko browsers abandoned ship to webkit/blink/chromium over the years
- josefx 4y ago
  >Isn't Chromium completely open source? No, especially not if you want to watch videos, the DRM plugin is a binary blob that only Google approved browsers get to run. Then there are all the Google services that will break in unexpected ways in your browser, sometimes just because your user agent isn't identical to Chromes if past reports from Firefox users are any indication. Basically expect to be shit on by the biggest internet giant around at ever possible corner.
  - ElCheapo 4y ago
    I mean, if the DRM wasn't a blob it would be open source. Andnif it were open source it wouldn't be DRM...
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      It's possible to have DRM that's open source using cryptography.
      - easrng 4y ago
        Secure DRM requires that your device have keys that are burned-in that you can't access. It's impossible to have an open implementation of a non-broken DRM system.
    - josefx 4y ago
      It could be controlled by a third party that isn't trying to dominate the browser market. And Google already caused issues years ago when it side loaded that plugin on open source distros and initially refused to provide an option to disable this behavior in chromium.
  - whoisthemachine 4y ago
    Firefox supports all DRM content I have come across, clearly there are ways to implement DRM that don't involve Google.
    - 4y ago
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  The amount of work it would take to fork Chromium and maintain a working secure browser with MV2 hooks into the browser internals would be so large that you'd need a dedicated team whose job it is to constantly backport upstream Chromium changes and ensure they still work with the old MV2 subsystem. That would take a lot of time and money.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Well you don't need to implement every stupid thing big G thinks should be in it, just the really critical stuff. Even if you freeze all features right now you'll probably still have a better renderer than gecko for 5 years into the future. I mean right now I bet a lot of people will simply not update to MV3 and continue using the last known MV2 build into perpetuity until certs break or something else. I sure intend to.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      Backporting from an entity that is hostile towards MV2 makes me suspect that Google isn't going to play ball and make maintaining an MV2-compatible Chromium fork easy.
- marwis 4y ago
  In addition to what others said, forks are not allowed to use Google services such as Chrome Sync or Translate.
lucideer 4y ago
> Someone warned years ago that <insert extremely specific thing> No, the gp said: > while pretending they weren't supporting google's Chrome monopoly Monopoly means Google's interests will be served rather than the user's. This means taking away things that are of value to users / users losing control over features / etc. Like proxy extensions, yes.

pkulak 4y ago

And every time there's a bunch of replies about how great Brave is, and everyone should just use that... Chromium wrapper.

imbnwa 4y ago
Brave has publicly declared support for Manifest v2 in perpetuity, no? They even seem to be pondering how to distribute v2 extensions post-sunset in Google Chrome[0] [0]https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15187 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15187
- cpeterso 4y ago
  Maintaining out-of-tree patches for a project as large and quickly-changing as Chromium will be a lot of work. I know someone who worked on Amazon's Silk browser team and they had an engineer (rotation) working working full-time to keep their Chromium fork up to date within Google's upstream. Brave doesn't have nearly the resources that Amazon does.
  - UberFly 4y ago
    Yea you've seen it tried in projects like Waterfox and Palemoon and it eventually becomes too much to deal with. (Following the old Firefox addons system that is)
    - TremendousJudge 4y ago
      Yeah it's clear that was never going to work -- the whole point of dropping the old addons was making big architectural changes that weren't possible with the old APIs. You can't merge the new architectural changes and the old APIs without running into the issues they were trying to avoid by removing the old APIs in the first place.
  - marwis 4y ago
    There are few projects and companies that do exactly that, including CEF open source project. Perhaps they should join forces and make a joint OpenChromium project.