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

[A.J. Venter]

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