Hi all, 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. Considering the likely future popularity of this browser on our platforms, I think we need a consensus on whether we will provide, provide a forked version, or leave it out completely. Seeing as kongoni does not exist in a vacuum - I reckoned this is something the free distro's need a collective decision on. I discussed the matter with RMS about a year ago when Kongoni launched, but at the stage this was a purely theoretical discussion (since neither chrome nor chromium had gnu/linux versions available yet). He raised a concern about potential privacy issues in chrome which I believed at the time did not apply to chromium - I cannot say at this stage that this is still the case because frankly - I don't know. When I first launched kongoni, it was in the design spec that it would include chromium as default browser when it comes out. This decision may need to be reconsidered - and with the release of the beta smack in the middle of a major kongoni development cycle (e.g. a perfect time to add it) this is the time to do so. I am CC'ing Richard on this mail, though I know we don't usually do that, but I think this one has some complexities we haven't really dealt with before and don't have ready answers to, so we could probably use his insights on this one - and since he'll probably be asked, whatever conclusions we come to, he should probably be aware off :) Ciao A.J. -- A.J. Venter Founder and lead developer, Kongoni GNU/Linux www.kongoni.co.za www.silentcoder.co.za - Blog
