Comment by dataflow

Not 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.

Its a good thing the GPL stopped google from taking it and running with it!

Would you mind elaborating? How did KDE's use of GPL prevent Chromium from being closed-source? What about Google Chrome?

Those users can always use the original browser. They haven't lost anything.

I run Mac OS.

I am aware that it builds on BSD.

Yet BSD is very alive and nobody who wants BSD is lost to Mac.

At least I personally have never heard anyone deliberating over a free BSD vs Mac.

Edit: and of course upvote. Apple ran with it. But they didn't run away with it. We still have it. Actually we have some patches thanks to them. As I mentioned in my other reply: Open source is not a zero sum game.

Well, macOS is sort of BSD, but not quite. The kernel isn’t really BSD despite large sections being originally taken from BSD. The XNU kernel isn’t really BSD anymore. Then, the userland (BSD is both kernel and userland developed together) isn’t really BSD anymore, and Apple neglects their UNIX userland anyhow.

Don’t forget the PS5! At it’s heart it’s just a computer running FreeBSD.

Which one? They have dozens of “OSes” across their various products.

Cisco IOS is absolutely not based on BSD - it is a proprietary kernel, and such that it even has a “userland”, a proprietary userland.

IOS XE is based on Linux.

Most of the voice stuff is Linux.

Perhaps you are thinking of Juniper’s JunOS, which is based on FreeBSD?

I don't know. But if so, what?

Have you caught anyone deciding to go with Cisco instead of BSDs on their servers or their laptop?

I'm serious here: Open source isn't a zero sum game.

Partially thanks to the permissive license of BSD we now have both Mac OS and JunOS (edited: it said Cisco first), which is a good thing, not a bad thing.

The problem with Chrome isn't that it exist but that it has been forced upon us and the fact that we know they have used questionable methods to establish it as the dominant browser.

There are very simple game theoretic-esque arguments that many fans of BSD/MIT dogmatically refuse to acknowledge, I've never gotten a straight answer from them, zero actual data when asked for any against my argument and just try to weasel out of the debate somehow.

Its a religious thing unfortunately for some developers. They don't seem to understand the concept of all entities esp large companies acting in their self interest unless forced to. They are building the noose by which themselves will be hanged, and I think it'd be hilarious to see once we finally see the current crop of MIT/BSD being used to completely lock down hardware and software. And these developers unable to use their own hobby oses anymore. I don't know if they will still see what their error was, they probably won't, as I said its a religious matter. And religious dogmatism is a strong bulwark against logic and sense.

> Safari is actually part of the solution ...

> Google, like microsoft, <1-3>

If you're going to complain about 1-3 for google and ms, I don't think you can praise safari in the same breath.

Apple's abused their position with the iPhone to make safari relevant, and unlike Chrome and IE, users can't just install another browser.

Apple's behavior is the only reason I can't run my own addons I've written for firefox on iOS (they run _fine_ on android of course), why I can't run uBlock origin on iOS, and so on.

Apple's behavior on iOS is far more egregious than anything microsoft or google has ever done.

I never once had to run IE or Chrome unwillingly since I could always install netscape, or mosaic, or firefox.

I'm forced to run Safari, unable to decently block ads, unable to use the adons I've written, unable to fork and patch my browser to fix bugs, and I've generally had my software freedoms infringed... and if I don't run safari, then I can't talk to my family group chat (no androids allowed, sms breaks the imessage group features too much) or talk to my grandma who only knows how to use facetime.

I wish so much I could use a phone with firefox, but I can't justify having a spare iPhone just to talk to my family, so I'm kinda forced to suffer through safari, held hostage by apple's monopolistic iMessage behavior.

The only thing that comes close to Apple's behavior is Google's campaign to force Chromebooks upon children in classrooms, requiring them to use Chrome, but at least Google isn't holding their grandmother's hostage... and managed work/school devices already are kinda expected to have substantially less freedom than personal devices, so it feels much less egregious.

> Safari has saved Firefox and other browsers by being the only option on iOS for a long time

Amazing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)

I thought the other browsers on IOS were just skins of webkit / safari ?

EU law does force them to advertise alternative search engines. I just updated Chrome on my work laptop and they gave me a slate of search engines. My Chrome defaults to Brave Search now.

My comment was a response. It's a concern for Ladybird not Webkit. It's about the licence. But OP is ok with that so.

A: "Hey the measures we took weren't enough to prevent the abuse?"

B: "Ah I see that means we should just give up all measures, instead of you know advocating for stronger measures or anything else obvious and logical like that."

This only means we must start any projects today with stronger GPL or similar variants such as AGPL.

Better analogy.

You had a security breach, despite using a better set of technologies and techniques.

During the postmortem, you suggest this means we should give up all security or just use the weaker solution, since its all the same, the server would have gotten breached in either case.

Instead of advocating for building a stronger security.