I don’t disagree with that. It’s just that most browsers are built that way, unfortunately. Nothing is free, not even Firefox. If you want to sell it, it’s hard to maintain reasonable expectations that people won’t just build it from source instead of buying it. Something 100% free can’t maintain itself over long time.
Firefox is open source, and while it takes some shady practices to fund it (it sure isn’t cheap to run your own damn engine alongside everything on top), I take it as a more tenable compromise. It’s not about free as in beer freedom, it’s about basic security.
You can also have degoogled Chromium which is open-source if you’re into it.
Even EDGE is a ungoogled Chromium (but containing M$ tracking APIs instead).
Vivaldi IS a degoogled Chromium, a small part of the UI (by far the most advanced one of any other browser) is proprietary, but not really obfuscated, they show even in the support forum how the user can modding it, if for him isn’t enough what he can do in the most complete setting page ever, the only thing is, you can’t use it for other browser projects. It’s certainly not a privacy or security issue.
Chromium as is, is 100% FLOSS but because of this isn’t more private or secure as a proprietary soft, FLOSS isn’t automaticly synonym of privacy and security, a lot of people confuse it, it’s not the propósit of OpenSource, privacy and security of an soft depends only of the intentions of the developer or company, not if their soft is OSS or not. The user can audit the soft, which in any case is needed if he don’t want or be able to check millons of lines in the code which a complex soft like a browser engine has.
Of course I mean pure ungoogled Chromium, without bloat on top.
Not only browser code consists of millions of lines, it is also audited by thousands of people, and, importantly, changes can be highlighted, which doesn’t allow for them to go unnoticed.
Successful mass attacks with OSS typically require much more skill and resources as you need for you malicious code to be written in a way that stays unnoticed (and eventually, rather soon, it will be discovered, with all consequences).
With closed source programs, integrating malicious code is easy, and this code can stay there unnoticed for ages, so they are 100% “trust me bro, I don’t do anything bad”.
Agree, it’s the problem with closed source, but also easy with FOSS with bad maintenance, even more, because also the hacker can see the source code, without the need to desensamble it. In Vivaldi some of the UI part (5%) is proprietary, but not really closed source in it’s sense of meaning, apart it has a continuous maintenance, with snapshot releases and frequent updates, a great community with the participation of the team and beta-testers. Very transparent all this, no space for fishy or shady things.
Vivaldi (a employee owned cooperative from Norway) was since years active against the shady practices of US companies and one of the promotors, along with the Consumer Organisation from Norway and some others, which caused the current EU GDPR law.
Nowadays it’s needed to promoting European products and services to gain sovereignty from the US hegemony of big corporations. but sadly in browsers there are only three from Europe: Vivaldi (Norway), Mullvad (Sweden) and Konqueror (KDE, Germany), the other one, UR (France) is dead since a lot of years.
Mullvad is maybe the most private browser after TOR, but apart of this not much more, Sync with Mozilla account which is a no-go for me. Konqueror, based on the KHTML engine (Grandfather of Blink and WebKit) is Linux desktop only, interesting features, but few extensions and somewhat limited.
Well, end of the choices.
I understand the concern with locally made software. However, I’d rather see something open-source come from the US than something closed source come from my own country.
Speaking of Konqueror, what about Falkon? It is the newer option by KDE team, and works on a more modern engine. And, it works on Windows.
I’ve also concerns over closed source apps, but as said, the small proprietary part of Vivaldi’s UI is irrelevant, there is nothing shady in it, it is full auditable and can even be modded by the user (at own risk, logically)
FLOSS isn’t always synonymous of privacy, security and trust and proprietary soft also not always spyware and risky crap.Always is needed to read PP and TOS of the software you want use, it’s features, support, and compare it with others, independent if it is FOSS or not.
Eg. In Windows since a lot of years, one of the best and most valued tools is IrfanView, free proprietary closed source, but nobody bother because of this, knowing that there is nothing shady or fishy in it, Photoshop is also full trustworth, but there are FOSS alternatives (Gimp, Krita) which in the case of IrfanView not really exist with similar features. Even used by Linux fans with Wine, (IrfanView is Windows only)
Falcon, well, not bad, but too basic for me. The Qt engine is a minimized Blink fork, also used by the Otter Browser (Qt5), same as Goanna respect of Gecko.
Valid for users with an old PC or with few resources, who needs a small browser for basic tasks.
I don’t disagree with that. It’s just that most browsers are built that way, unfortunately. Nothing is free, not even Firefox. If you want to sell it, it’s hard to maintain reasonable expectations that people won’t just build it from source instead of buying it. Something 100% free can’t maintain itself over long time.
Firefox is open source, and while it takes some shady practices to fund it (it sure isn’t cheap to run your own damn engine alongside everything on top), I take it as a more tenable compromise. It’s not about free as in beer freedom, it’s about basic security.
You can also have degoogled Chromium which is open-source if you’re into it.
Even EDGE is a ungoogled Chromium (but containing M$ tracking APIs instead). Vivaldi IS a degoogled Chromium, a small part of the UI (by far the most advanced one of any other browser) is proprietary, but not really obfuscated, they show even in the support forum how the user can modding it, if for him isn’t enough what he can do in the most complete setting page ever, the only thing is, you can’t use it for other browser projects. It’s certainly not a privacy or security issue.
Chromium as is, is 100% FLOSS but because of this isn’t more private or secure as a proprietary soft, FLOSS isn’t automaticly synonym of privacy and security, a lot of people confuse it, it’s not the propósit of OpenSource, privacy and security of an soft depends only of the intentions of the developer or company, not if their soft is OSS or not. The user can audit the soft, which in any case is needed if he don’t want or be able to check millons of lines in the code which a complex soft like a browser engine has.
Of course I mean pure ungoogled Chromium, without bloat on top.
Not only browser code consists of millions of lines, it is also audited by thousands of people, and, importantly, changes can be highlighted, which doesn’t allow for them to go unnoticed.
Successful mass attacks with OSS typically require much more skill and resources as you need for you malicious code to be written in a way that stays unnoticed (and eventually, rather soon, it will be discovered, with all consequences).
With closed source programs, integrating malicious code is easy, and this code can stay there unnoticed for ages, so they are 100% “trust me bro, I don’t do anything bad”.
So, yes, OSS is more secure.
Agree, it’s the problem with closed source, but also easy with FOSS with bad maintenance, even more, because also the hacker can see the source code, without the need to desensamble it. In Vivaldi some of the UI part (5%) is proprietary, but not really closed source in it’s sense of meaning, apart it has a continuous maintenance, with snapshot releases and frequent updates, a great community with the participation of the team and beta-testers. Very transparent all this, no space for fishy or shady things.
Vivaldi (a employee owned cooperative from Norway) was since years active against the shady practices of US companies and one of the promotors, along with the Consumer Organisation from Norway and some others, which caused the current EU GDPR law. Nowadays it’s needed to promoting European products and services to gain sovereignty from the US hegemony of big corporations. but sadly in browsers there are only three from Europe: Vivaldi (Norway), Mullvad (Sweden) and Konqueror (KDE, Germany), the other one, UR (France) is dead since a lot of years.
Mullvad is maybe the most private browser after TOR, but apart of this not much more, Sync with Mozilla account which is a no-go for me. Konqueror, based on the KHTML engine (Grandfather of Blink and WebKit) is Linux desktop only, interesting features, but few extensions and somewhat limited. Well, end of the choices.
(not me downvoting)
I understand the concern with locally made software. However, I’d rather see something open-source come from the US than something closed source come from my own country.
Speaking of Konqueror, what about Falkon? It is the newer option by KDE team, and works on a more modern engine. And, it works on Windows.
I’ve also concerns over closed source apps, but as said, the small proprietary part of Vivaldi’s UI is irrelevant, there is nothing shady in it, it is full auditable and can even be modded by the user (at own risk, logically)
FLOSS isn’t always synonymous of privacy, security and trust and proprietary soft also not always spyware and risky crap.Always is needed to read PP and TOS of the software you want use, it’s features, support, and compare it with others, independent if it is FOSS or not. Eg. In Windows since a lot of years, one of the best and most valued tools is IrfanView, free proprietary closed source, but nobody bother because of this, knowing that there is nothing shady or fishy in it, Photoshop is also full trustworth, but there are FOSS alternatives (Gimp, Krita) which in the case of IrfanView not really exist with similar features. Even used by Linux fans with Wine, (IrfanView is Windows only)
Falcon, well, not bad, but too basic for me. The Qt engine is a minimized Blink fork, also used by the Otter Browser (Qt5), same as Goanna respect of Gecko. Valid for users with an old PC or with few resources, who needs a small browser for basic tasks.