What Is It?
Chromium is an open-source browser maintained by Google. Many browsers are based on Chromium, with Google Chrome being the obvious one, and many other notable browsers like Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave also being built on top of Chromium.
The Supporters Of Chromium-Based Browsers initiative aims to be a neutral space to contribute to the Chromium ecosystem.
Is Chromium Being Freed From The Clutches Of Google?
Not at all. Chromium's governance remains as before, with Google. This initiative is a place to support projects that are dependent on Chromium, and perhaps give to provide some support to the upstream Chromium project as well.
Who Are All Involved?
This initiative exists under the Linux Foundation. Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Opera are essentially founding members, having pledged their support prior to the initiative going public. More members can join in under two conditions - they must be existing corporate members of the Linux Foundation, and they have to pay an additional membership fee for being part of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers.
General Members (membership fee USD 100k) as a whole will have between 1 and 3 representatives on the Governing Board, while Premier Members (membership fee USD 1M) will have free rein to appoint as many representatives to the Governing Board as they like.
In addition, all members are entitled to appoint representatives to the Steering Committee and any working groups.
What Do The Members Hope For The Initiative
This initiative aims to fund open development and enhance projects within the Chromium ecosystem, ensuring broad support and sustainability for open source contributions that will drive technological advancement.
The goal of this initiative is to foster a sustainable environment of open-source contributions towards the health of the Chromium ecosystem and financially support a community of developers who want to contribute to the project, encouraging widespread support and continued technological progress for Chromium embedders... We welcome this additional investment into Chromium’s commons and we’re looking forward to working with the other members of the Supporters of Chromium-based Browsers to ensure that it meets the needs of the wider Chromium community. At the same time, we remain committed to being the responsible steward of the Chromium project and to the massive investment necessary to keep Chromium working well for the entire web industry.
The Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers initiative aligns with our commitment to the web platform through meaningful community engagements, engineering collaborations, and code contributions to achieve the best outcome for everyone using the web. By joining the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers, we’re furthering our commitment to the project and to the web platform and believe that this initiative will help in the following ways: (a) Increase the diversity in Chromium contributions by acting as a neutral channel for third-party organizations, and (b) Provide clear and open governance that directs funds towards community-driven needs.
For us, being part of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers from the get-go represents an opportunity to take an even more active role in Chromium’s development and future direction. While we will continue improving our own products and processes, joining this initiative also allows us to take the lessons we’ve learned from our 30-year experience developing great browsers and share them with the broader community. In this way, we are hoping to keep contributing to a better web for all users.
My Thoughts
The Chromium browser and, more importantly, the Blink web engine, are critical components to every Chromium-based project. While this is open-source, developing a browser engine is a huge task, so much so that only three browser engines have any sort of presence. Google has near-monopolistic control over this, and it would be far better to support Firefox-based browsers instead of furthering Chromium as a de-facto standard.