Some people don't want to use browsers based on #Chromium. And it is a choice as valid as any other. But one thing is clear: building a #browser engine from scratch is not a simple task.
Our team maintains and modifies the Chromium code constantly, both to add features and to get rid of #datacollection tools and other stuff added by #Google. And this is already complex enough.
On top of that, we also have to modify WebKit on #iOS - at least for the time being.
Here's a recent interview where CEO @jon talks about our choices and the challenge of going against #BigTech as a small company:
https://www.kode24.no/artikkel/kritiserer-google-men-bruker-chromium-urealistisk-a-lage-egen-motor/80646397
(It's in Norwegian but don't let that scare you! 😉)
The only clown here is you, for not doing any research.
At the time, we found that the Chromium engine was secure and the most widely used – that was important to us. Moreover, Chromium was becoming the de facto web standard meaning that if we wanted web pages to not break, we’d have to fork Chromium.
Other pieces of code were either unavailable or undergoing significant re-writes (think Gecko).
And before you say what I know you’re going to say next: No, Vivaldi cannot afford to cease development for one or multiple years just to switch to Gecko now.
I’m not saying it wasn’t a good decision at the time, but why propose building a browser engine from scratch -which takes more work- instead of forking a different browser? It would still take a lot of work, but certainly less than the alternative.
To clarify: I’m not saying it’s viable for them to do this, but it’s more viable than what they’re proposing.
Switching the engine in a browser IS developing the browser from scratch, the team had worked over 4 Years in Vivaldi for iOS, because it needed to work with WebKit, due the restrictions of Apple, and this despite WebKit is way more related to Blink than Gecko.
Vivaldi is a small Emloyee owned cooperative, with less than 40 devs for 6 different OS (Windows, Linux,MacOS, iOS, Androit and Android Auto). apart the activism for a free internet, together with DDG, Proton, different consumer organizations and legislators, recently also with Mozilla, which until now has remained somewhat passive due to its relationship with Google.
The only clown here is you, for not doing any research.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-vs-google-chrome/
And before you say what I know you’re going to say next: No, Vivaldi cannot afford to cease development for one or multiple years just to switch to Gecko now.
I’m not saying it wasn’t a good decision at the time, but why propose building a browser engine from scratch -which takes more work- instead of forking a different browser? It would still take a lot of work, but certainly less than the alternative.
To clarify: I’m not saying it’s viable for them to do this, but it’s more viable than what they’re proposing.
Where did anyone propose to build a browser engine from scratch?
Did you actually read the post you’re commenting on?
Switching the engine in a browser IS developing the browser from scratch, the team had worked over 4 Years in Vivaldi for iOS, because it needed to work with WebKit, due the restrictions of Apple, and this despite WebKit is way more related to Blink than Gecko. Vivaldi is a small Emloyee owned cooperative, with less than 40 devs for 6 different OS (Windows, Linux,MacOS, iOS, Androit and Android Auto). apart the activism for a free internet, together with DDG, Proton, different consumer organizations and legislators, recently also with Mozilla, which until now has remained somewhat passive due to its relationship with Google.
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