[d3Xt3r]

> Chromium is an industry wide open source project like linux for good reason

That "good" reason is thanks to Google's monopoly. Chromium is only technically opensource, it's still very much a Google project that's steered by them, ocassionally trying to sneak in anti-features like Web Environment Integrity, Manifest V3 etc.

> We're at an interesting point in browser development

Yes but that's only because of projects like LadyBird and Servo, but unfortunately they're still at a very early stage. The best we can do for web diversity is to boycott all Chromium-based browsers and support smaller projects like Ladybird and Servo (and use Gecko-based browsers in the interim).

[Ferret7446]

> That "good" reason is thanks to Google's monopoly. Chromium is only technically opensource

That accusation is instantly disproven by the fact that the parent post literally cites 4 competitors that forked and extended it. Unless you can cite Google illegally shutting down attempts to produce a competing fork, your accusation has no basis. (If you can cite such a thing, I'd rather you bring them to court instead.)

[d3Xt3r]

It's trivial for any Tom, Dick and Harry to fork an opensource project and "extend" it - but none have so far actually extended the engine - have they implemented any new W3C standards or fixed any compliance bugs? Have they made any improvements to the rendering engine? I'm not aware of any of the forks doing anything significant, besides just superficial UI features and preventing merging certain pieces of code (like Manifest V3). If any of the forks have deviated in any significant way (like how Blink deviated from Webkit), please do enlighten me, because otherwise they're just copies dependent largely on Google for all the core improvements.

[Ferret7446]

More than half of the committers on Chromium aren't Google employees. I assume the reason they haven't gone off and forked it is because they have no reason to.

[d3Xt3r]

They probably haven't forked it because they know it's a futile effort to maintain and develop something as complex as Blink. Anyone who's ever worked on a large project like that knows very well it's easier to start from scratch, even if it's going to take a herculean effort.

[Yizahi]

There is letter of the law and there is spirit of the law in the legal space.

Same here - technically there are "forks" of the Chrome browser. Just like technically when I press a button on GitHub page, I've created a Doom 3 "fork". Yay, look at me, I'm the next Carmack! Behold my programming skills! Then I click another button, and now I've "forked" Servo. Now I get to be a browser creator too!

The fact is that I did no work in forking that code and as soon as real Doom 3 or Servo code changes, I would need to either accept all those changes or abandon this silly notion. Same with so called Chrome "forks". They all accept anything that Google pushes into the original Chrome, regardless of the change. Google wants some new protocol they have invented to be put in Chrome? All Chrome "forks" accept it. Google wants to limit adblocking? All Chrome clones accept it of course. And so on. Any real fundamental changes to the Chrome are pushed to all so called "forks".

So yeah, there are countless "forks" of Chrome in the letter of the word, just like I have a Doom 3 "fork" too. But there are no real forks of Chrome in the spirit of the word.