[Dev] Is Iridium safe to use?

Josh Branning lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com
Wed Nov 15 19:26:54 GMT 2017


On 15/11/17 16:42, Adonay Felipe Nogueira wrote:
> I also have contributed to that thread on directory-discuss mailing
> list.
>
> I hope it helps somehow. ;)
>
> bill-auger <bill-auger at peers.community> writes:
>
>> there is an open issue about this on the parabola bug tracker that you
>> can watch if you like
>>
>> https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1167
>>
>> i asked donaldr about this last week and he asked that i post to the FSD
>> mailing list so hopefully that will re-kindle some discussion -
>> unfortunately no one from the FSF has commented on it so that's still
>> where it stands today
>>
>> this issue is almost 10 years old now and it seems highly doubtful that
>> it will be resolved ever - if parabola is waiting for the FSF to declare
>> chromium to be free then parabola will probably be blacklisting chromium
>> and all qtwebengine-based and electron-based programs forever
>>
>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2017-11/msg00001.html
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> Dev at lists.parabola.nu
>> https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo/dev
>

I think the main problem with chromium was that the licenses were/are 
not clear enough for some of the files - in that it didn't pass the 
ubuntu license checker [1]. What's also concerning, is that it's 
suggested on the linked thread, that they are mixing GPL code with other 
licenses. I don't think the GPL permits that (even if the code is only 
distributed in source form). This may have changed since ... and I am 
not a lawyer.

Licenses aside, chromium apparently links with non-free plugins (not 
sure if this is fixed in Iridium).

But long and short is it may be worth attempting to run the license 
checker on Iridium and QTWebengine. I'm speculating that QTWebengine 
probably has a higher chance of passing (if either of them actually do), 
as there is some confusion over whether the whole engine is included in 
the software [or not] ... it has been stated both ways.

I can see why it's difficult, because if code with unknown licenses were 
accepted and then found to be non-free, it may subsequently effect lots 
of derivative projects and code (inc. QTWebengine). I guess this is why 
some people are nervous about giving chromium the benefit over the doubt 
and including it on the basis of good faith.

Finally the bug in the link below has been closed, if it's a problem 
that can be fixed I suggest someone attempts to "re-triage the issue" if 
at-all possible.

[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=28291




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