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Yes, we are aware of how permissive licenses work. If someone forks our code and does a better job with it than we do, fair game. :)
by awesomekling 2y ago
Yes, we are aware of how permissive licenses work.
If someone forks our code and does a better job with it than we do, fair game. :)
- dataflow 2y agoNote they won't have to do a better job in the long run, just a good enough job in the short run to leave you behind. But yeah, as long as you're keeping this in mind :) best of luck!
- freehorse 2y agoNot even that sometimes, browser popularity can just be a matter of advertising (eg how chrome took off in the internet explorer offboarding era even though there were objectively equal or better alternatives at the time by just using google's internet omnipresence at the time for advertising). Sadly, modern internet is governed more by advertising industry rather than any kind of open-internet principles. But ultimately this is all developers' decisions and I respect that. If anything, if a major company decided to take off and invest, they could do it in any case, publishing their modified source code would not make that much of difference essentially. It is really refreshing to see at last a browser that does not absolutely depend on google's resources in any way.
- guappa 2y agoJust so you know, chromium exists now as an open source project because KDE developers used GPL.
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- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dataflow 2y agoWould you mind elaborating? How did KDE's use of GPL prevent Chromium from being closed-source? What about Google Chrome?
- ForHackernews 2y agoWebKit, the rendering engine that originally powered Chromium began its life as a fork of KHTML a GPL-licensed rendering engine produced by the KDE project for their Konqueror browser.
- dataflow 2y agoThat part I know, but how are you saying that prevented Chromium from being closed-source, and why didn't the same apply to Google Chrome?
- elviejo79 2y agoThe rendering engine: Chromium had to be kept "libre", because khtml/Webkit was LGPL. The browser: Chrome. could be kept closed because the LGPL allow the integration of libre libraries in closed products as long as the library itself remains "libre". In this case the library is the renering engine: Chromium. As a counter example MacOS was built on top of decades of work on the BSD operating system and Apple is under no obligation to give the code back to the BSD project... and it doesn't. So the most valuable company in the planet took from the community and it doesn't bother to give back. For some of us that is unacceptabme.
- dataflow 2y agoThe parent said GPL, which is what got me confused. LGPL makes more sense. Although... this still doesn't explain why the other parts of the browser besides the rendering engine are open source? i.e. if the license was the reason, then presumably Google would've made the rest of the browser closed source, but that wasn't the case for most parts.
- fuzztester 2y ago
- hamandcheese 2y agoIts a good thing the GPL stopped google from taking it and running with it!
- donkeybeer 2y ago"Hey we had a security breach!" "Ah that means we must remove all security protections, instead of you know further strengthening security." If older GPL failed, this means we needed a stronger license...such as AGPL, or in future something even better, instead of giving up and saying we should have just given them shit on a platter.
- cabalamat 2y agoBut if they embrace, extend and extinguish, in a way that harms your users' freedom, that would not IMO be a good outcome.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoThose users can always use the original browser. They haven't lost anything.
- cabalamat 2y agoImagine Ladybird is developed and is successful. Lots of people use it to read websites. But then Badcorp takes the code and builds their own varient with extensions. Badcorp is big and has lots of market share. Lots of people use Badcorps's browser, and because lots of people are using it, lots of web developers code for it, including coding for its extensions. Soon, lots of websites -- including Badcorp's own websites, and they have lots of popular ones -- use the extensions in the Badcorp browser. Then people still using Ladybird can't use it for most websites. They have lost something.
- zarzavat 2y agoWhat if BadApple takes BSD and forks it. Then they make their own BSD with extensions that only works on their own shiny fruit hardware. What have the original BSD users lost? Absolutely nothing. BSD still exists, it’s still maintained, and people can still use it. They can also use fruit BSD if they want.