Just so you know, chromium exists now as an open source project because KDE developers used GPL.
"Ah that means we must remove all security protections, instead of you know further strengthening security."
If older GPL failed, this means we needed a stronger license...such as AGPL, or in future something even better, instead of giving up and saying we should have just given them shit on a platter.
The browser: Chrome. could be kept closed because the LGPL allow the integration of libre libraries in closed products as long as the library itself remains "libre". In this case the library is the renering engine: Chromium.
As a counter example MacOS was built on top of decades of work on the BSD operating system and Apple is under no obligation to give the code back to the BSD project... and it doesn't.
So the most valuable company in the planet took from the community and it doesn't bother to give back.
For some of us that is unacceptabme.
Let me see if I have this right:
>For some of us that is unacceptabme.
1. So, Apple, creator of macOS, "the most valuable company on the planet", followed the rules of the BSD licence,and that is unacceptable?
But, Google, a company that is also highly valuable, and the creator of Chrome, also followed the rules of the LGPL licence, but that is acceptable?
ANd give very little back. Like Apple on top of BSD or AWS on top Riak.
For people like me that find that unacceptable exist the GPL licenses.
No you couldn't. What would happen is your project would be a complete non-starter for many companies; either in use of, or developing for.
With BSD companies are under no obligation to release their changes, and like any self interested party, most don't.
Although... this still doesn't explain why the other parts of the browser besides the rendering engine are open source? i.e. if the license was the reason, then presumably Google would've made the rest of the browser closed source, but that wasn't the case for most parts.