Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
view the rest of the comments
Again, this approach works for surface level changes in Chromium. Should Google make deeper structural changes, then the amount of work to maintain a fork would drastically increase. And what APIs are you suggesting can be turned off in Vivaldi that can't be turned off in Firefox?
And you misunderstood my point regarding Chromium. I'm talking about things like ad blocker support that rely on Chromium design. Google is actively looking for ways to neuter such plugins right now. While, Chromium based browsers could be affected by this, Firefox is not dependent on internal workings of Chromium.
Vivaldi has its own ad and trackerblocker, with a list of expandable filters. It even uses filters that block these annoying Cookie pop-ups and Malware. As Chromium, of course, you can use extensions from the Chrome Store, but you can also install it from third-party sources, for example from GitHub or Sourceforge, among others, although most of the extensions are redundant, because Vivaldi includes them as its own functions. Do not confuse Vivaldi with other Chromium forks, which mainly limit themselves to just putting their own logo on a Chromium as is, nothing to do with it.
I just invite you to preview it and see for yourself that Vivaldi has nothing to do, not only with any other Chromium, or with any other browser on the market. More than a browser, it can almost be called an online productivity suite. It's a democratic collaboration between users and the Vivaldi team, in a community as there are few (already more than 2 million users active internationally in this community.)
There is no guarantee that what Vivaldi implemented will continue being compatible with hwo Chromium works internally. These are surface level changes. You're marketing Vivaldi, which is a commercial closed source product based on Google tech. I'm really not interested in it. I think we've said all there is to say about it at this point.
Vivaldi's 'Closed Source' is only for commercial use precisely and is only a small part of the UI. It is accessible to users and modifiable by them, in the forum they even teach how to do it. Of course, the user can do this at his own risk. This only prevents the big Chromiums, Chrome, Edge and Opera from using it for their own purposes, although if in the latest versions of these it is seen that they try to copy it, adding bad copies of these functionalities. Closed Source in the sense that you can't fork Vivaldi and publish it with another Brand (for the moment, there are internal discussions on this matter and perhaps in the future, when Vivaldi has achieved a certain strong percentage in the market, it can allow itself to go completely FOSS, for the moment it would be suicide)
As I said before, although Google can add certain things to Chromium, it cannot influence its development, since this would also mean having to revoke the status of FOSS to Chromium, which is nothing short of impossible and it will also have to face Microsoft and to Edge, which is not in Google's interest at all.
What Google does is this, to add APIs, which Vivaldi removes, or to eliminate the ability to sync with Google's servers, which has certainly broken the neck of a whole series of other Chromiums. But it turns out that Vivaldi has never used sync with Google servers, but always with its own servers with end to end encryption, Vivaldi itself has neither access to this data nor to the sync passwords. That is, if you lose your sync password, you cannot recover it, it is the price of privacy.
Where Google prefers to influence is in web standards, this is what it is mainly dedicated to, since, being the dominant company on the web, it knows that most of the pages are oriented to Google's standards in its creation, that is why Blink currently has the best performance and compatibility with newer formats.
Meanwhile going with Firefox, also depends on Google (Yes) or using some firefox forks, which are most outdated, not very stable, also depending de Mozilla and with this de Google ore otherwise with Systeme One, even worse . It's irrelevant which you use, the browserworld is or dominate or sponsored by Google, the loser always is the user in those browsers which make money with tracking (read the TOS and PP of Firefox/Mozilla and you will see that they are not better. Well, they are not the worse certainly). That is the Problem, FOSS or not, it has nothing to do with this., the problem is the lack of privacy and the surveillance which kills the free internet.
Google absolutely can and is influencing the development of Chromium. While the source is public, the development is very clearly tightly controlled by Google who decide on what features end up in Chromium, what patches they accept, and so on. It's of course possible to fork Chromium, but at that point the amount of work would be similar to what Mozilla has to put into developing Firefox.
You keep repeating that Google hasn't significantly modified the workings of the engine so far in a way that prevents Vivaldi from easily working around. However, it's a logical fallacy to extrapolate from the fact that this hasn't happened that it will not happen in a future.
Vivaldi directly depends on the code that Google is producing while Firefox does not. This makes Firefox strictly preferable to Vivaldi.
At this point we're just going in circles, repeating the same thing over and over. So, I don't see the point of continuing the conversation.
Have a good day.
Ok, and who tells you that he is not going to do it with Mozilla? This would be even easier for Google, he just have to stop supporting it and provide the necessary APIs that Firefox also uses. In this way he will directly dominate the entire browser market and he do not need to confront Microsoft, which also uses Chromium. Firefox forks don't really count for anything and will disappear from the market, adding to the list of discontinued, like the other 70 before them.
No, the market does not work like that, it is a very common practice of large monopolies to create and support different companies that are supposedly competitors, thus creating a supposed variety that does not exist in reality. Thus controlling the entire market. Disabling Chromium for others will only result in a self-shot.
One Example of something similar: It also happens in other product areas. Due to the unethical ethics of the Nestlé company, many sought to boycott the products of this multinational company. But it turns out that this is not so simple, since apart from the famous Nescafé, it also owns other coffee brands, for example Bonca, not even counting the private labels that also come out of its production. He also owns several brands of animal feed, cocoa, different brands of chocolate, sweets and even various brands of bottled water and other aliments. The list is kilometer long and covers almost half of any supermarket.
That is, the intend to boicot Google using Firefox or other Mozilla fork, is like boicot a Nescafé, buying Bonca or one of it private labels. That change nothing, because it isn't the cause of the problem.
Combating this problem is not about staying stuck in one product or another, but about combating the bad practices used by all major browsers, Firefox included. It does not serve to combat a product, using another that does the same, but to boycott everyone who uses these practices, using those who do not. From being active in initiatives to require legislators to ban these practices, this is the way to go.
Full letter in PDF https://www.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/20210622-final-report-time-to-ban-surveillance-based-advertising.pdf
THIS is the way to go, all other in looking at the finger which pointed to the way without the Big Brother watching you in internet.
We fundamentally disagree here, and I've explained my position already.