GPLv3 makes a company publish the source under the same license. That means no Vivaldi, Chrome, Edge or any other spyware ad ridden browsers. I don't think we need more lock in.
I'm normally in the camp that copyleft prevents enterprise adoption, and therefore limits users/contributors... but in this case I agree. I'd like browsers to be copyleft. I'd like to be able to see what kind of sketchy shit Edge and Chrome are throwing on top of Chromium and have it out in the open.
Question for the free software community...
If I used a headless version of a copyleft browser as part of an automated testing suite for proprietary enterprise software, does that violate the copyleft license?
It takes time to start from the ground up. There are a huge amount of web standards and to do it right takes time. It took a long time from Chromium to become usable.
I mean... considering that firefox is still kind of a clusterfuck for a surprising number of websites...
I am glad this exists but I see no practical use for it for... anyone. And the cynic in me thinks this will be even more ammunition for "just use chromium, it actually works" akin to the crowd who insist on telling every single person who is considering trying out linux to use arch or gentoo.
I genuinely haven't encountered anything broken using it, short of Youtube. And that's less Firefox and more all the extensions trying to make it usable, I think. There are a couple of bits of functionality missing, but in terms of sites working, it seems perfectly fine.
I've also encountered a few issues with Firefox on mobile, but not enough to stop using it as my daily driver.
I don't really blame Firefox though, I'd guess that their implementation is closer to the spec than Chrome's but that companies are cheaping out on testing in multiple browsers.
The search function of the Walmart site was broken for a year or two on mobile but it seems it's been fixed. A few webpages I needed for school explicitly weren't supported in non-chromium browers.
I think either this will die soon or more likely it will be noticed my companies that have been screwed by Google. Google has made lots of unpopular choices with Chromium and I wouldn't be surprised if at least a few companies started funding it in hopes that it might be viable in 5 years. It took a long time to create Chromium.
If they aren't funding Mozilla, which is a far more significant company with a long history of browser development, the chances they're gonna fund a brand-new browser that very few people have even heard about is next to none.