Comment by drakythe
9 months ago
Chromium is upstream of Chrome, not the other way around.
However, Google Chrome is so ubiquitous that any changes Google makes to it are expected to be available in all other browsers and its a kind of defacto control even if it isn't technically control of the upstream Chromium project.
In practical reality, Chromium is a downstream less-googled fork of Chrome. First they decide what they want to put into Chrome, and then they put the less-googled parts of that into Chromium.
While I agree with you, as indicated by my comment about Google having de facto control, the terms upstream or downstream when discussing forking an open source codebase has specific meaning. Chromium is not a downstream forked that has ripped all the google pieces out. It is the upstream codebase that Google then builds all their telemetry and other Google shenanigans into.
If we're discussing someone else forking Chromium because hypothetically Google decided to once again Be Evil it is important to understand, from a technical standpoint, that the fork comes from code before Google does their stuff and not after. Ripping all of google's tendrils out would be a monumental undertaking. Building a similar browser from before Google bakes in their telemetry is infinitely easier and more trustworthy in my opinion.
Some of the "evil" isn't the Google stuff, but rather "standards" that Google is pushing or dropping support for without the support of the other members of the consortium and just as present in Chromium as it is in Chrome.
"upstream" and "downstream" is about the direction changes flow. Changes flow from Chrome into Chromium. The fact they arrive in the Chromium repository before they arrive in a public release of Chrome is not relevant.
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I didn't take them to be suggesting that, and I don't think it makes any difference to the point they're making. Google controls commits to Chromium which then make it into Chrome.
They do have technical control over the upstrean Chromium project. There's an invite only pool of developers who decide what gets committed to Chromium and they are Google employees.