I don't know, I think there's a couple examples of these open source projects gaining non-Google traction:

- The new Edge, Opera, and Brave are based on Chromium

- China has a huge ecosystem of non-Google Android devices

Google does exert strong control of their open source code, and Google is clearly the prime beneficiary of them, but the external world has still leveraged these projects nonetheless

>The new Edge, Opera, and Brave are based on Chromium

Largely because Google has pushed enough complexity into the browser that maintaining a browser engine is unaffordable, so you use Chrome as is.

Have any of these projects successfully managed to contribute meaningfully, or are they just adding alternative window trimming to chrome?

And the Android in China example doesn't really say much because because the only way that was possible was through the forceful intervention of the Chinese government.

Nowhere else in the world is there a market where Android is free from Google's iron grip, outside of tech enthusiast/hacker circles.

Amazon and their line of Fire and Echo devices.

Those aren't phones or general purpose computing devices (except maybe the tablets)

You could count those, but I don't consider them relevant the same way I don't consider those cheap chinese TV boxes, smart watches, fridges, and other appliances to be relevant here (they could just as well be using Windows 98)

Amazon Fire tablets and Fire TV use Android without the Google parts and seem to be pretty successful.

I think we should still give them credit for being the most open among their peers. MacOS, iOS, Safari and Windows are not open source at all. Edge is of course just another Chromium based browser.

They aren’t really. Safari is based on WebKit, which is very much open. Chromium is based on blink which is a fork of WebKit.

WebKit is open source but Safari isn't meanwhile Chromium is. WebKit is sometimes a bit closed until it reaches embargo that Apple sets. But anyway Safari is good to web diversity.

I never said Safari was open source.

What I did say is that Chromium was based on WebKit and then a fork of WebKit, blink.

Let’s not credit Google for Chromium without recognizing that it was Apple’s open source work that made it possible.

To suggest that WebKit isn’t open makes no sense at all. It may not have a governance model or development processes people like, but the fact that the source is open and has been used to build competitor products and has been forked means that it is unquestionably open source.

Nobody suggested that Webkit isn't open. You have a nasty habit of putting words into other people's mouths.

It seems like you agree with the person you originally responded to, who noted that Chromium is an open source browser, and Safari is not.

“Nobody suggested that Webkit isn't open.”

Yes, they did:

“WebKit is sometimes a bit closed until it reaches embargo that Apple sets.”

> Make chromium opensource but add spyware that phones home on every second

Chromium homes every second? That seems interesting. It has been a long time since I last used Chromium. Does it also come with Google auth now?

> Make tip of iceberg opensource but force every vendor to use Service and lock down whole ecosystem around it.

If they add Google specific services into core Android is it not worse? Companies like Amazon and a lot of Chinese companies seem to be fine with using just the core Android.

> If they add Google specific services into core Android is it not worse?

Not necessarily. Take for example push notifications - the push notification client could be part of the OS, with build configurations to specify a server or disable this altogether.

Or, given OS update issues, Google Play Services could be a separate open source project with the Google URLs and keys supplied as build configs.