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

[Sam Geeraerts]

A.J. Venter schreef:
> > * 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.
> I can at least offer some new comment on this - I investigated the
> release to see what it actually does. The autoupdate feature is fairly
> non-malicious and easy to disable, it just installs a script into
> /etc/cron.daily that updates the package from a tree for your
> distribution. This was probably the only way they could find to
> auto-update something installed by a packaging system since updating
> will require root access, and the program is usually never run that
> way.

Updates to Chromium would be handled by the OS, of course.

> The EULA is utterly non-free. The google-code for chromium is BSD
> licensed and fully free as far as I can ascertain - as are all the
> third-party components that are actually used, however it also has

Omar said that the EULA doesn't apply to Chromium, so no problem there. 
I'm not sure that all third party software licenses are free, though. 
The list of software [1] says that bsdiff and bspatch fall under the 
"BSD Protection License" [2]. Clause 3c says:

"The license under which the derivative work is distributed must 
expressly prohibit the distribution of further derivative works."

So if I understand correctly this means that any derivatives would have 
to fall under a non-free license. I would have thought that this is also 
not DFSG-compliant, but package python-bsdiff is available in main [3] 
(and in Ubuntu universe). I'm not sure where bspatch comes from.

> extension and plugin support - and in this scenario it may face the
> same problems as firefox does. The extension site doesn't give any
> indication of the license of any particular extension
> (https://chrome.google.com/extensions). So unless there is some sort
> of requirement by google that only free extensions go there, it's a
> possible problem for free distros.

Does Chromium contain a link or any other reference to the extensions 
website?

> There is a third-party extensions list at
> http://www.chromeextensions.org/ it likewise does not prevent non-free
> extensions, but it does at least provide a field for licensing
> information so users can make an informed decision (which is better
> than not knowing at all I guess).

This seems unofficial, so not referenced from within Chromium, I'd guess.

> I'm not aware of any branding issues as with firefox on chromium so
> that at least is clean.
> > 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.]
> Let's hope my initial investigations is just the first of many. As it
> stands, we can be pretty sure the chrome-OS will not be a free
> distribution, so in fact this could become more important soon if
> somebody decides to do a fully free competing distro.

[1] http://code.google.com/intl/en/chromium/terms.html
[2] http://python.net/crew/atuining/cx_bsdiff/LICENSE.txt
[3] http://packages.debian.org/lenny/python-bsdiff