Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Status of google chrome and chromium

[Brett Smith]

On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 08:48 +0200, A.J. Venter wrote:
> Some of you may have noticed the news that google-chrome released an
> official GNU/Linux beta yesterday.  Chromium (the community project
> it's built on) is BSD-licensed and obviously then free software
> (though we may
> raise queries about it's plugins/extensions at least the code is free
> there) but the download page for google-chrome shows this agreement:
> http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?hl=en&platform=linux&brand=CHFK
> 
> Which is most certainly not compliant with most of the four freedoms.
> My feeling at this stage, is that chrome is probably non-free and
> chromium is free but problematic - but since I'm rather a fan of the
> technology in it, I thought
> I would seek some opinions about this understanding.

RMS asked me about this recently and here are the notes I shared with
him then:

There are two different things: Google Chrome and Google Chromium.

Google Chrome is the name that Google gives to the browser that they
build, test, and release.  It is under a nonfree license that prohibits
all distribution and modification.

Google Chromium is the name that Google gives to the source code that
they release for their browser.  It's a large collection of source code,
mostly because Google forks and incorporates various free software
libraries into it, but I believe it is all free software.  I do not
believe any of the components they use released under the GNU GPL or GNU
LGPL.  It does include ffmpeg, and *parts* of that are released under
the GNU GPL, but Google claims that they are not using the GPL-covered
portions of the library and nobody has contested that claim.

It is unclear what, if any, technical differences exist between Google
Chrome and a built version of Google Chromium.  Possibilities include:

* Google Chrome includes support for video codecs that Google has
obtained patent licenses for, and that support is either not included
with Google Chromium, or not included by default during the build
process.

* The Google Chrome EULA makes reference to various features that would
be odious to free software users: the browser automatically updates
itself without warning the user or allowing them to intervene.  It also
automatically downloads a blacklist of extensions from Google; if the
user has installed extensions on that blacklist, they will automatically
be uninstalled.  I'm guessing these features aren't in Google Chromium
-- again, either by being absent from the source code or not included in
a default build.

Searching the web for confirmation on any of this hasn't yielded any
success, unfortunately.  [This might be easier to find now that Chrome
has been released for GNU/Linux.]

-- 
Brett Smith
Licensing Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation

Support the FSF by becoming an Associate Member: http://fsf.org/jf