We're not trying to support a browser for every platform. We're not planning on supporting Amiga, OS/2 Warp, Windows 95/98/ME, or Sun Solaris. We're planning on supporting Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008, Mac OS X, and Linux. Marc-Antoine has already given plenty of reasons why we don't want to support Windows 2000. We can't test on it, which is a huge issue. (You can't honestly expect us to support something we can't test.) Besides that, we have hacks for W2K that we would love to get rid of. SafeBrowsing can't use MACing on W2K because of a lack of support for certain required functions (WinCrypt API was not updated on windows 2000 to support everything we used on XP/Vista). There are certain APIs that we want to use that we can't. Supporting W2K would cause us extra work, not just to get it working but to keep the tree W2K friendly (if we could even test that.) I don't understand where you are going with free as in beer. It's released under the BSD license. That's about as free as you can get. You are free to take the source code and make it work on Windows 2000 - nothing is preventing you there. We are just saying that we don't want to take on the burden of supporting that in our tree. (You can take your beer and do what you want, but don't expect the brewer to take your modified recipe and start distributing it when the brewer thinks it's going to hurt him to do so. </bad beer analogy>)
I'm sorry you're not happy, but please just let this thread die. We've done our best to explain the reasons that we are not supporting Win2K, and I don't think that it's reasonable to expect us to do something that we don't feel is in the best interest of the project. Thanks. On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Ken Berry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Peter, > > Your analysis does not make sense, if Google is really going to > support many platforms, particularly Linux. There is little > difference between the W2K and XP kernels. There is a substantial > difference between the XP and Linux kernels. > > To make sense of your argument, it must be supposed that there will be > large differences between the versions for each platform, with the > Windows version continuing to depend on proprietary Microsoft > libraries. > > That leads to a question of whether Google is at all sincere in > developing a platform-independent browser. If you were, you would > maximize the amount of common code and minimize the amount of code > that depended on a particular platform. But basing Chrome on > proprietary Microsoft libraries is doing just the opposite. You will > have to create the functionality of those libraries under Linux. If > you did base the functionality on the kernel, there would not be a > significant difference between W2K and XP. > > I would like the ability to look at the dependancies to understand > what the common code needs from the host OS, but I have to interpret > your excuse as indicating that Chrome is heavily dependent on > proprietary features Microsoft has built into XP and Vista, and that > is precisely what I want to avoid. > > I have taken your advice, and in spite of your refusal to help, I did > find Kent Walker's email address. I hope he takes copyright > infringement and misrepresentation more seriously than you. > > I hope there is truly an open source version available that works on a > platform other than Windows. I'll take another look then. > > Ken > > On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:56:39 -0700, you wrote: > > >On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:44 PM, burgersoft777 <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >wrote: > > > >> When you take account of the size of > >> the 2k user base I would have thought goggle would have bent over > >> backwards to help. Its not to late to change direction and do > >> something for the users rather than act as an agent of MS effectively > >> attempting to fool users into changing an OS that remains more than up > >> to the task of running your browser. > > > > > >Much as I love a good conspiracy theory, acting as an agent of > >Microsoft wasn't the deciding factor here. Win2k lacks a large number of > >APIs Chromium uses, especially with regard to the sandbox (but also in a > >number of other core and UI functions). We intended to support win2k for > a > >long time and only changed our minds after it became clear that the > >engineering cost would be very large and ongoing (despite your assertions > to > >the contrary). > > > >Also, the size of the win2k user base is not, in fact, particularly > >large, and many of these users are in locked-down corporate environments > >where Chromium will have little penetration. > > > >I don't have a ton of sympathy here. Electing to run an > >eight-year-old operating system is a choice that carries many tradeoffs > with > >it, including no support from the manufacturer and an inability to run > >various newer programs, including Chromium. I think there are more > >impactful changes we can spend our effort on as a development community. > > Obviously, if a fully-working port and an ongoing maintainer are both > >available, the cost of this choice is reduced, and the decision might > >change. > > > >PK > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium-dev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
