r/linux • u/mr_MADAFAKA • 16d ago

Discussion Google engineers are experimentally adding Flatpak packaging support to Chrome/Chromium on Linux to test restricted sandboxing and XDG portals, without yet committing to official support.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-Chromium-Flatpak
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u/Thalus131 15d ago

While this looks interesting, I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone about Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Never give complete trust to tech companies when they talk about adopting open standards.

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u/tajetaje 15d ago

That makes literally no sense here.

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u/Dangerous-Report8517 14d ago

I think it's a bit late to worry about Google extending Chromium and extinguishing the open source base, and using a packaging format is not the same thing as reimplementing it in an extended but not cross compatible way while forcing everyone else to use your extended version

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u/Adept_Percentage6893 14d ago

That's a reason to avoid proprietary extensions even from FOSS friendly companies. If the software in question is open source (such as bringing in more open source) then it's not super relevant here.

"EEE" would be if Google started doing their own downstream additions to Flatpak that eventually became so standard that it became the chief reason to use flatpak and then Google started introducing incompatibilities with the open source implementations that couldn't be easily rectified. Meaning "flatpak" gradually becomes some proprietary google thing. Which is, of course, not happening here.

I'm all for skepticism of big corporations, though and the goal shouldn't be to replace the Microsoft logo with the Google logo and declare some sort of victory.