[ExI] New Browser: Google Chrome

Emlyn emlynoregan at gmail.com
Sat Sep 6 02:11:26 UTC 2008


2008/9/5 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 4:13 AM, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Really totally off topic for anything, but Google's new open source
>> browser, Chrome, is awesome. I would normally find a new browser to be
>> a very dull thing, but this one is major cool. Noticeably faster than
>> IE and Firefox, very slick, everything seems to work well, cool new
>> geek tools hiding away in there.
>
> Haven't tried it yet (a Linux version is not available yet), but in
> fact the "vision" espounded in the comic sounds way cool indeed.
>
> And... is it *totally* off-topic? After a fashion, it suggests that
> one's "connectedness" experience can actually evolve even without
> major breakthroughs,
>
> Stefano Vaj

Yeah it's really on topic, as is anything on extros :-)

It'll be interesting to see if this accelerates innovation in the open
source browser community (ie: mozilla + chrome). The V8 javascript
engine is an interesting innovation, you'd think Mozilla could pretty
much slap it in and go.

I can see the point of the GPL vs BSD arguments here. I tend to veer
toward the BSD licensing world (in fact I like public domain even
better), but Chrome would have been a great chance to release a bunch
of really great, innovative new stuff under the GPL, and give the open
source camp an edge. As it stands, the BSD licensed Chrome can be used
by the closed source people, primarily I'm thinking Microsoft with
Internet Explorer.

Perhaps this is a subtle indicator of focus at Google? Google is happy
to open source stuff, but they don't really seem to be about free
software per se. Rather, they seem to want to accelerate things; I
think they'd like to see V8 go into every browser out there, so they'd
know their javascript based apps would work dependably and quickly
everywhere.

There are a lot of different motivations out there in the land of
making the big stuff, it's interesting to see the chaotic dynamics in
their interplay.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com - my home
http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting
http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks
on eCulture



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list