Como ativistas de software livre, nos todos desfrutamos de usar a mais recente e melhor software livre, mas nos temos de ter a certeza de que o software que usamos realmente respeita a nossa liberdade. Vários usuários tem nos expressado o seu desejo de correr o web browser Chromium, visto que parece ser software livre, mas ainda apresenta lacunas em variadas formas.

Na nossa investigacao, discubrimos que a situacao esta a melhorar. Somemte a alguns anos atras, existiam um milhar de ficheiros sem licenca que sao considerados nao -livres. Gracas ao projeto Debian, aos seus relatorios Lintian e aos seus esforcos, parece que esses problemas estao resolvidos.

Contudo, por padrao, Chromium, ainda contem uma data de problemas, que sao motivo de preocupacao para usuarios de software livre - mesmo que todo o codigo source esteja licenciado propriamente.

Por padrao, O codigo source Chromium ainda verifica muitas partes que estao em constante comunicacao pela internet com os servicos Google. A quando a construccao dos binarios de software ?!!“unpatched”!!? , grande parte da sua experiencia neste browser esta ainda sobre o controlo dos servicos de web da Google. Como mencionado no artigo A Quem Aquele Servidor Realmente Serve?,

Software livre e somente livre, quando o usuario esta em controlo e na deveria estar dependente de servicos web the uma terceira entidade. Algum trabalho ja tem sido feito para libertar Chromium deste problema, incluindo a remocao de “Google OK”, um webservice plugin Google usado para reconhecimento de voz, depois de descontentamento por parte dos usuarios.

By default, Chromium still includes some pre-built binaries to aid in faster compiling. In order to have fully free software, we require all software to be built from source. Packagers should not use “use_prebuilt” as a compile option.

Chromium supports the use of Widevine DRM, Adobe Pepper Flash, and third-party codecs which are nonfree. Packagers must ensure that these are removed from the source code prior to compiling in order to be free software. To disable them is not enough. It required to remove (support and references about it) from the source as per the FSDG.

While not specific to free software, we would like for users to have control over their private information. Chromium has a number of reported privacy concerns which made it ineligible for use with Tor. Issues include outstanding proxy bugs which leak an user's IP address, fingerprinting issues that leak the computers hostname and hardware, and timing issues that enable timing attacks even in the browser's “Incognitio” mode. Free software users should be aware of these issues and work to patch them upstream and in their packages as needed.

There is work being done to remove queries to Google and pre-built binaries, as well as strengthen user-privacy.

The patch-set called ungoogled-chromium, which itself is a combination of Inox, Iridium, and Debian patches is one such effort. Free software advocates are advised to use these patchsets and help contribute to their maintenance, while pushing for a self-contained version of Chromium with these fixes built-in. With each consecutive Chromium release a new patchset must be created to remove Google specific code and binaries which affect your freedom. Having a self-contained version ensures that no one will be forced to accidentally use nonfree software during these updates.

Chromium is also being used as an embedded framework in various projects.

Users should be aware that Qt WebEngine is based on Chromium and therefore contains many of the same flaws. Proprietary codecs and other anti-features must be removed at compile time to ensure user's freedom is respected. Due to Qt being a primary component of KDE and many applications, ensuring it is compiled correctly and removing nonfree software is of even greater importance to the Free Software Movement.

For our freedom's sake, free software projects should take care about all kinds of freedom issues when deciding what components to depend on.

We are hopeful that the various projects currently working with Chromium source code will make Chromium fully respect both users' freedom and users' privacy, making the internet safer, as well as more freedom respecting, for everyone.

Esta e uma obra livre, voce pode redistribuir e/ou modificar, perante os termos de:

A Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License como publicada pela CC (Creative Commons); ou a versao 4.0, ou (a vossa escolha) qualquer versao posterior, ou

A GNU Free Documentation License como publicada pela FSF (Free Software Foundation); ou a versao 1.3, ou (a vossa escolha) qualquer versao posterior; sem secoes nao Invariantes, texto nao Front-Cover, e texto nao Back-Cover.

A grande parte deste artigo foi originalmente escrita por Luke .R.