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That's a rather bizarre way of putting it. Another way of looking at it is that Chromium is completely open source and anyone who wants to build a Web-browser b

That's a rather bizarre way of putting it. Another way of looking at it is that Chromium is completely open source and anyone who wants to build a Web-browser based netbook could do so, they just couldn't call it ChromeBook. Since all the apps are web apps, everything would continue to work as normal. There's no "if you don't agree to all of this, you can't use the GMail Web App or Google Maps on your device"

fidotron 13y ago
Can you access the Chrome API from apps not delivered through the Chrome Store? Chrome OS is closer in spirit to iOS than it is to Android.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  AFAIK, you can install apps and extensions without going through the Chrome store, and if you have the source, you can certainly hack it to use an alternate store host. The thing you might not get access to is cloud based Chrome services like Chrome Sync. But since these are Javascript APIs, you can easily polyfill them to use your backend. I don't think forking ChromeOS is as difficult as forking Android.
  - fidotron 13y ago
    That's like arguing that iOS is open since you could all become developers and distribute the ObjC. Not all Chrome apps are web apps ( http://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps.html http://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps.html ) and you can't distribute those packages trivially to end users, so the whole distinction is almost identical to the iOS situation, by design. Google's Chrome group have a serious case of Apple envy, and this is how it manifests itself. The whole point is forking Android is unnecessary - you can build all you want on top of the base platform without needing to make many lower level changes. To fork Chrome OS to add hooks for app delivery would be a far harder undertaking, whereas implementing an Android app to download an apk and run it is about 10 minutes of work.
    - comex 13y ago
      fwiw, I don't think there is currently anything preventing you from accessing the Chrome Web Store from Chromium, without any kind of API key or proprietary extension. Of course that could theoretically change if someone started commercially distributing a forked Chromium OS, but we shouldn't blame Google for something it hasn't done.
      - fidotron 13y ago
        Irrelevant, since your users would still need a Google account to use that store, and developers would still need to publish through it. The whole problem is duplicating that store.
        cromwellian 13y ago
        For Chromium, developers do not need to publish apps through the Chrome Store, nor do you need a Google account to use such apps. Chrome has the same side-loading capability of Android allowing install from unknown sources. There are apps that Google refuses from the Web Store that are distributed this way. I don't think you're going to get many people to believe that apps which target a platform that is mostly based on a spec controlled by a consortium, and for the most part, are cross-platform, are somehow more locked down and proprietary than a native apps platform. This is pretty much the first time I've seen anyone on HN try to argue that web apps, even chromium apps, are harder to port, and more of a walled garden than Android. It's a difficult to pull off argument, and I don't think it works.
        fidotron 13y ago
        Except Chrome increasingly doesn't implement the standard. For example, Adobe's recent CSS stuff isn't in, and instead an early version of the shadow DOM stuff which even Mozilla doesn't agree with is going in, on top of all the Chrome app API itself. As I keep pointing out, you can literally implement something that presents the user a button and on pressing it downloads an apk, installs the package and runs the content in about 10 minutes. Can you do that with crx files in Chrome or Chromium without it triggering a nasty popup? Can your locally installed app then provide services to this other app we just downloaded without needing an intermediary server? If not, it's not as open as Android is.

fidotron 13y ago

Can you access the Chrome API from apps not delivered through the Chrome Store? Chrome OS is closer in spirit to iOS than it is to Android.

cromwellian 13y ago
AFAIK, you can install apps and extensions without going through the Chrome store, and if you have the source, you can certainly hack it to use an alternate store host. The thing you might not get access to is cloud based Chrome services like Chrome Sync. But since these are Javascript APIs, you can easily polyfill them to use your backend. I don't think forking ChromeOS is as difficult as forking Android.
- fidotron 13y ago
  That's like arguing that iOS is open since you could all become developers and distribute the ObjC. Not all Chrome apps are web apps ( http://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps.html http://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps.html ) and you can't distribute those packages trivially to end users, so the whole distinction is almost identical to the iOS situation, by design. Google's Chrome group have a serious case of Apple envy, and this is how it manifests itself. The whole point is forking Android is unnecessary - you can build all you want on top of the base platform without needing to make many lower level changes. To fork Chrome OS to add hooks for app delivery would be a far harder undertaking, whereas implementing an Android app to download an apk and run it is about 10 minutes of work.
  - comex 13y ago
    fwiw, I don't think there is currently anything preventing you from accessing the Chrome Web Store from Chromium, without any kind of API key or proprietary extension. Of course that could theoretically change if someone started commercially distributing a forked Chromium OS, but we shouldn't blame Google for something it hasn't done.
    - fidotron 13y ago
      Irrelevant, since your users would still need a Google account to use that store, and developers would still need to publish through it. The whole problem is duplicating that store.
      - cromwellian 13y ago
        For Chromium, developers do not need to publish apps through the Chrome Store, nor do you need a Google account to use such apps. Chrome has the same side-loading capability of Android allowing install from unknown sources. There are apps that Google refuses from the Web Store that are distributed this way. I don't think you're going to get many people to believe that apps which target a platform that is mostly based on a spec controlled by a consortium, and for the most part, are cross-platform, are somehow more locked down and proprietary than a native apps platform. This is pretty much the first time I've seen anyone on HN try to argue that web apps, even chromium apps, are harder to port, and more of a walled garden than Android. It's a difficult to pull off argument, and I don't think it works.
        fidotron 13y ago
        Except Chrome increasingly doesn't implement the standard. For example, Adobe's recent CSS stuff isn't in, and instead an early version of the shadow DOM stuff which even Mozilla doesn't agree with is going in, on top of all the Chrome app API itself. As I keep pointing out, you can literally implement something that presents the user a button and on pressing it downloads an apk, installs the package and runs the content in about 10 minutes. Can you do that with crx files in Chrome or Chromium without it triggering a nasty popup? Can your locally installed app then provide services to this other app we just downloaded without needing an intermediary server? If not, it's not as open as Android is.