this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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130
Linux Foundation bands together Chromium browser makers in a “neutral space” (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago by tkw8@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] unautrenom@jlai.lu 5 points 5 hours ago

Stephen Shankland's report from 2020 notes a number of people suggesting that Chromium as a whole could be moved out of Google entirely and into an independent foundation, such as the Linux Foundation. That's not what is happening now, but it's another step toward larger organization outside of the web's dominant browser and advertising provider (though Google is still one of the supporters).

One can only hope this is the first step toward a larger trend. LF stewardship of the Chromium project wouldn't be perfect, but it's still much better than the current situation of it being controlled by one company, be it Google or whoever they'll forced to sell Chrome to.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

donate to mozilla people

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, because 500 M/year from Google are not enough. Gotta increase the CEO paycheck. Moreover, donations don't even fund FF development.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

and if more people donated they wouldn't need alternative sources of funding......

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee -4 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Again, what you donate don't fund FF development but goes toward Mozilla's bullshit/activism/whatever/huge CEO paychecks. Who cares about that?

I for sure don't. I will celebrate the day Mozilla disappears for good.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 hours ago

mozilla's activism is part of the reason why i donate

[–] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-foundation-form-990-public-disclosure-ty23.pdf

Mozilla CEO pay is $6M, and the rest of the board members are about $0.7M or less. Total executive compensation is a little under $10M.

Their total revenue is $64M. By and large, the money is going toward developers and activism, which is where it should go.

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 1 points 31 minutes ago

Feel free to donate, then. For all I care...

[–] TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

Extremely short sighted and stupid decision. The only people that will support it are the Google fanboys.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 8 points 11 hours ago

What I haven't seen in the discussions here so far is that Chromium is the web engine that most mobile apps are built on (you don't build your own special web client to access the server for your app, you just use an existing system for that). Also it's the engine used for most web apps for embedded/standalone/IoT devices. The Electron application framework has Chromium embedded in it for web access - every Electron app uses Chromium. If your climate control device has a little touchscreen and smart features it's probably using a web app that runs in an embedded instance of Chromium. Basically any device that has a GUI and links to cloud services is probably doing the same thing.

Bluntly, when it comes to client-side access to web services, Chromium matters more than Firefox, and anything that happens with it is far more impactful because it applies to a broader context than just people using Chrome for regular web browsing.

[–] recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca 135 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (4 children)

Chromium really?

After the whole debacle of manifest v3 they're really choosing Chromium of all browsers to develop on?

Mozilla has made some controversial decisions but surely Firefox would be the better decision for the Linux and FOSS ecosystem.
Even better why not Librewolf?

Seeing this news makes me sad as there are better options available and the Linux foundation chose the worst one out of all of them.

Ironically I also just saw this here on the fediverse: Google loses in court, faces trial for collecting data on users who opted out

[–] Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 54 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Or servo. Literally anything but chrome man.

[–] recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca 25 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

@Static_Rocket@lemmy.world and @neblem@lemmy.world thanks for mentioning Servo👍

I didn't know about that rust-based alternative until now and I agree; even Servo would've been a better choice than Chromium.

[–] neblem@lemmy.world 36 points 23 hours ago

Linux Foundation is also the host for the Servo project.

[–] LPThinker@lemmy.world 19 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (4 children)

Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit it as someone who has left Chromium behind personally, Chromium is kind of the only choice. I think people outside the browser implementation world underestimate the sheer scale and complexity of the modern browser stack and what goes into maintaining compatibility with web standards, much less advancing them.

We've reached the point where Chromium is essentially the de-facto web standard because Chromium engineers do the lions' share of feature testing and development, because Chromium receives the lions' share of funding.

Igalia, an OSS consultancy that does a lot of fairly-funded independent browser development, has lots of material about this. For example, the recent chat between Igalia members and someone from Open Web Advocacy about what to do if the anitrust ruling against Google jeopardize's Chromium's funding, and the options are pretty dire.

Edit: After reading the article, I think this is a really good sign. Bringing together the immediate stakeholders in Chromium's development and funding bodes well for the possibility of stewarding Chromium in a less Google-dependent, profit-motivated, ad-centric direction. There's unfortunately a lot of uncertainty about how this will all shake out, but it's possible that Chromium could become a truly independent project and move back in the direction of user value instead of user-hostile shareholder value.

[–] tutus@sh.itjust.works 8 points 11 hours ago

Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit it as someone who has left Chromium behind personally, Chromium is kind of the only choice.

With Mozilla's rudderless stewardship of Firefox, I reluctantly agree with this. Firefox, and Mozilla, used to stand for something more than just a browser, but that is sadly vanishing now. Chrome is really the future and while I'm clinging on to Firefox, I will succumb in the end.

It's very sad. I've been a Firefox user for so long I've lost count. But Mozilla has lost it's way and I don't see it making any noise about getting back on course.

I think having one browser engine is a very bad idea. But here we are.

[–] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 47 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

We’ve reached the point where Chromium is essentially the de-facto web standard because Chromium engineers do the lions’ share of feature testing and development,

Most of the web standards driven by Chromium are not particularly beneficial to the web, but are beneficial to Google. This is not an accident. It is how Google has made itself gatekeeper of the web while maintaining the facade of an open and standards-compliant browser.

This is not a good thing. Community-focused projects investing time and money into supporting it is a bit like digging one's own grave.

[–] LPThinker@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago

Source? Like obviously none of us on this platform appreciate manifest v3, but it's obvious that's a corporate push, and exactly the thing this new organization might help mitigate.

On the other hand, the Chromium team has been pumping out all kinds of day-to-day platform improvements for the last 5 years at least. I'm thinking of CSS ergonomics and more robust HTML that make web devs less JS-dependent. The kinds of down-in-the-weeds work that gave us CSS grid, all the useful new CSS pseudoselectors, the command attribute for buttons, etc. etc.

I'm not a web maximalist, and I would love to see a simpler web/browser prosper, but I just don't think it's realistic.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 24 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Would you think that maybe the feature set implemented by modern web browsers has grown too large? Perhaps we need to start dropping some features to keep the web browser design lean.

[–] LPThinker@lemmy.world 19 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I think anyone is welcome to try this, but the core ethos of the web is backwards compatibility. To my unending irritation, even non-standard behaviors/APIs like WebUSB have become critical for sites to function.

The last time we actually dropped a feature, it was Flash, and that took a decade and there is still tons of effectively dead/permanently lost content because of it.

Creating a browser that only implements a subset of the standards is fine for very niche usecases but I don't expect it to ever overtake the major browsers. We'll see how Ladybird fares as it's compatibility increases.

[–] Deway@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Flash wasn't a web feature, it was a proprietary software that was filling a need that wasn't met by the actual web standards.

Flash wasn't dropped, Flash died when it wasn't needed anymore (thanks to HTML5).

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I’d rather drop some of the more modern features like WebGL, WASM, and AI. A lot of this crap needs to be plugins instead of built into the browser.

[–] JaddedFauceet@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

What's the issue with WebGL and WASM? I don't want to use a plugin to be able to view 3d model, run Figma, play browser game, view WebVR content, ...

[–] cornshark@lemmy.world 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

With webassembly and webgl, why do browsers need to evolve? If you want some feature the browser doesn't provide, just make it yourself and draw it onto the canvas. x86 assembly gets occasional performance improving instructions but fundamally it's existed for 50 years and can continue to support all modern programs. X11 survived for 40 years before any talk of a replacement really appeared. Why can't Chrome be maintenance only for 40 years and let apps and websites innovate on top of its primitives?

[–] JaddedFauceet@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

To make web development a more consistent experience?

To make it easier for developers to build a more accessible web for users with certain impairment? Without needing to re-invent the wheel with thousands of lines of JavaScript or write Web Assembly (i am not even sure how to build an accessible input element with canvas that work with screen reader, keybroad focus etc, this is crazy)?

[–] cornshark@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

On desktop, questions like how to make an accessible input element are handled by your widget toolkit. Why does the browser need to handle every question itself? Let the qt or gtk or whatever folks answer the question of how to create an accessible input element. Split the scope and investment among many players which individually don't need as much funding and can innovate more quickly.

[–] db2@lemmy.world 33 points 23 hours ago

Call me when they give Google the finger and start rolling back user-unfriendly changes. Until then it's larping.

[–] vatlark@lemmy.world 21 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

The article explains some of the background to chromium which I hadn't known.

Google's Chrome is a freeware release with deeper ties to Google's ecosystem, while Chromium, released at the same time as Chrome in 2008, is open source. Google has slowly loosened its de facto control of the project, particularly since 2020, allowing outside developers into its leadership, softening its stance on non-Google-derived features and opening up its "Goma" development scheme for Chromium, as detailed by CNET in 2020.

[–] kubica@fedia.io 4 points 22 hours ago

I'm very wary of it but It could have some potential thinking that the anti-monopoly action is pending.