Clarifications around Ubuntu using “Google Chrome”
I’d like to clarify some things about our session on default applications and Chromium. I’m about to get on a plane so I will be short before the confusion spreads.
- Chrome and Chromium are not the same thing. Chrome is a non-free build of the Chromium project.
- It is impossible for us to ship Google Chrome as a default web browser without compromising our beliefs. You can read more about our licensing and how that relates here.
- However we have a section in the software center where people can opt-in to have things like Skype, Adobe Reader, and possibly Google Chrome.
- The distribution models of Chromium and Ubuntu/Debian couldn’t be more different, but since Evan Martin from upstream Chromium attended the Ubuntu Development Summit we have begun to identify how we can make this work. Expect more progress here in the future.
- The switch to Chromium has only been identified as possible choice on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition.
- WE LOVE FIREFOX. Mozilla is one of our most important upstreams and we will continue to work with them as we have in the past. Improving Chromium in Ubuntu helps Firefox because they both believe that competition is the best way to drive the web forward. For example we use CouchDB as our default for “sqlless databases”, but work (or plan to work) with MongoDB and Cassandra as well. We ship and integrate puppet by default but that doesn’t stop us from making sure Chef is well supported. No sane operating system vendor would want to artificially limit what developers can do on their platform.
- We should be celebrating the choice of excellent browsers pushing the web.
I hope that clears things up, you’ll be hearing more updates in the usual development channels from the Desktop team as the cycle progresses.
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