How difficult would it be to fork and mantain a chromium version that still supports Manifest V2?
As Google tries to hinder ad-block extensions with their new platform Manifest V3, it seems to me Chrome or any Chromium derivatives are no longer a viable way to browse the web safely. So it got me wondering, how much big of a task would it be to still suport Manifest V2 on newer releases of Chromium?
Maybe implement some legacy option for backwards compatibility with older extensions. I think it would be a great alternative to have, but I haven't seen anyone coming up with something similar.
If it does, we can worry about it then, but at present there's no reason for them to do so. Chrome is deprecating v2 because it conflicts with their advertising mandate. Firefox's goals are vastly different.
that only reinforces that you should use firefox… forcing google to pay more money to mozilla and giving mozilla more power to negotiate is a good thing
sure google has some power over them with the money they give, but by using chromium that power is absolute - no need to pay, ask, influence when you just get
Right now - easy, with the difficulty going up over time as the main Chromium codebase continues to change (and especially as it gets security updates). I think I’ve read that some variants (Brave?) have committed to supporting ManifestV2 for as long as possible, for instance with their own fork.
I think that using gecko based browsers like Firefox is the best thing to do in the short term. But having no competition is a bad thing. So supporting new web engines, like Ladybird, is important too: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird
yes and no… competition is good, but we do already have blink, webkit, and gecko… browser engines are biiiiig, complex beasts, and we do have competition already… more competition, at some point, becomes redundant
Don't think so, competition is good most of the time. Since Mozilla can be criticize with their browser and do not have the best engine, it could be good to have something else to compete with