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

[Geo Kozey]

On Saturday, February 22, 2020 5:50 AM, Evangelos Foutras via arch-dev-public <arch-dev-public at archlinux.org> wrote:

> Just a quick heads up that I am considering dropping Chromium from
> [extra] a week or two before the Chromium 82 stable release (~April 28).
> The reason for this is that our API keys no longer work for geolocation
> requests and there is no clear upstream guidance on how to resolve this
> issue. [1]
> 
> When I created these API keys back in 2013, there was a semi-official
> effort by the Chrome Team to support distro builds of Chromium in regard
> to accessing Google APIs; a few minor hiccups along the way were quickly
> resolved. I feel this arrangement is starting to fall apart (in spite of
> some upstream Chrome developers' best efforts).
> 
> 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.
> 
> To protect against systems with outdated Chromium (following the stable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.
> 
> [1]
> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-packagers/ZytNtRam5II

Hi,

First of all let me thank you for high quality maintainership of chromium package in Arch.

This post was really surprising for me and sad but also quite confusing because I don't understand how lack of some minor feature can involve nuclear option of removing dominant and most tech-advanced browser on the market from Arch repos.

I bet most users won't even notice lack of it and some may even welcome removal of so called "spyware".

Those who treat geolocation as critical feature may choose different browser but forcing everyone out of they beloved one for this particular reason seems like overreaction to me.

Yours sincerely

G. K.