Re: [directory-discuss] FSF opinion on chromium, QtWebEngine, electron

[bill-auger]

On 11/04/2017 02:34 AM, David Hedlund wrote:
> Should we add a Antifeature for https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Iridium ? 


this is not an anti-feature but a licensing issue and i dont know why
you singled out Iridium - was that post to the wrong topic maybe?

chromium browser is listed on the "List of software that does not
respect the Free System Distribution Guidelines" wiki page[1] - as far
as i have been able to determine this issue affects all browsers derived
from chromium simply because no one from any of the popular forks i have
looked at such as un-googled chromium and iridium has claimed to address
it - i gave atom and vscode only as examples - AFAIK this issue equally
affects all software derived from chromium, qtwebengine, or electron

the intention of this thread is to re-kindle the discussion regarding
the licenses (or lack of) in the chromium code-base that has recently
fizzled out and appears to be fading away into obscurity unresolved -
while the parabola distro is left bearing the brunt with users asking
why their favorite programs which they though were free are not
available in parabola and without actually having a clear answer to give
other than: "no one knows for certain but it was a casualty of the great
Chromium/QtWebEngine purge of 2017"

the suspicions surrounding the chromium browser began as best as i can
tell within the first week of the release of the *nix port back in 2009
- the original discussion on the gnu-linux-libre list spanned over two
months[2] and was discussed again on several occasions over the
years[3][4][5][6] and a stack of issues has accumulated on the parabola
bug tracker[7]

from 2009 through to 2012 there was much activity by the chromium team
to address these concerns and then activity petered out - although the
issue was never officially closed[8]

[1]:
https://www.libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#chromium-browser

[2] "Status of google chrome and chromium"
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2009-12/msg00000.html

[3]: "chromium not free?"
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2011-10/msg00000.html

[4]: "Time to recheck Chromium?"
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2012-03/msg00028.html

[5]: "QTWebengine is nonfree"
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2017-01/msg00000.html

[6]: "QTWebengine is nonfree"
https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/dev/2017-January/004673.html

[7]: "QTWebgine embeds "entire Chromium platform""
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1167?issue_count=410&issue_position=14&next_issue_id=1505&prev_issue_id=1492

[8]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=28291

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