[arch-dev-public] Potential removal of Chromium in ~2 months

Dave Reisner d at falconindy.com
Sat Feb 22 19:00:53 UTC 2020


On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 09:59:00AM -0500, Santiago Torres-Arias via arch-dev-public wrote:
> > > To make a long story short, I consider broken geolocation sufficient
> > > reason for removal. I don't mind it being broken for my own use, but
> > > shipping a package with broken functionality due to lack of upstream
> > > support does not sit well with me.
> > 
> > The short story doesn't accurately reflect reality. There's still upstream
> > support, you've just not been willing to conform to the new officially
> > supported process.
> > 
> > > To protect against systems with outdated Chromium (following the stable
> > > release of version 82), at the beginning of April I intend to post a
> > > news item about the need to switch to another browser. That is assuming
> > > no solution is found and nobody objects to the removal or wishes to
> > > continue maintenance of the package with reduced functionality.
> > 
> > If anyone wants help in getting Geolocation working again, please let me
> > know.
> > 
> I'm curious, do you have a reference on how the process has changed? I
> think it'd be easier for people to gauge interest if they know what the
> new process entails. I'm also wondering if the billing requirement could
> be handled by SPI or some other organization-level approach....

The old process was essentially "know someone on the inside". Billing
and access for Maps-based APIs has a loooooooong history. It existed
before Google was really in the business of selling other APIs. Thus,
it's gone through multiple iterations and a somewhat independent
evolution. Lately, that's changed and it's now using standard internal
infrastructure. As a side effect, the backdoor that Chrome developers
used to be able to provide to distros is no longer available

The new process is well-described here:

https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/3367237?hl=en

dR


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