Replies (1)

• @p@fsebugoutzone.org 2026-02-19 22:11

  @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net > you're probably aware of our reasons Well, I wasn't when you said that; it's a UA string¹ I have seen a few times in the logs. But I see, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser)#cite_note-11 , that the explanation is at https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser-open-source/ , and the explanation says, apparently: > Note that, of the three layers above, only the UI layer is closed-source. Roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open source coming from Chromium, 3% is open source coming from us, which leaves only 5% for our UI closed-source code. > [...] > It comes down to protecting the heart and soul of our browser. For it’s Vivaldi’s UI that truly makes the browser unique. In terms of code, it is our most valuable asset. > We don’t publish it under an open-source license and only release obfuscated versions of it. The latter is there to improve performance, but also to serve as a first line of defense. Otherwise other parties could take the code and build an equivalent browser (essentially a fork) more easily. It reads a lot like there's an investor or similar higher-up that doesn't like opening the code. > But, the way we see it, Vivaldi is more than just its code. It is our brand, with associated trademarks we have to protect. This means any fork needs to be branded as a different product. Trademarks and copyrights are different and a license grant doesn't assign copyright but grant a license to use it; there's also no obligation to license logos or whatever along with the code. I mean, there's no way that you've never heard why "IceWeasel" exists. > but you can still find it here https://vivaldi.com/source/ Hard to find that link from the front page, and there's no mention of the code-obfuscation. You didn't mention it. The blog post is five years old, I don't know if it's still the case. I mean, I use stuff that's not licensed permissively but I don't use *anything* that I can't read or hack, like, I am running a patched Firefox and a patched Seamonkey. I remember like, "Hey, how is Netscape gonna make any money if they're just giving people their source code?" and then decades later it's like, "I can't grep the code to kill off shit I don't like, I ain't using that". ¹ So, this what I've got: $ mawk -F'\t' '$8~/Vivaldi/{x++}END{print x "/" NR}' /var/log/nginx/access.log 12/1848582 And that's gonna skew, right, the bunker is a little small, right, and a niche browser on a niche fedi site and fedi itself is ~19m accounts, but if I run it on media.fse (which is a much larger sample and probably a better representative, but you have to account for the very large volume of scrapers I've been getting (seriously, like, long story, but I had to kill off 1.5m IPs) and media proxies on fedi, I get a similar ratio: $ mawk -F'\t' '$8~/Vivaldi/{x++}END{print x "/" NR}' /var/log/nginx/access.log 210/75334051 Like, I see it sometimes. I'm not familiar with your licensing concerns; I figure you've got a usual list of agitators, right, slow trickle on a good day? I just saw this post on TWKN and I was like, "Ha, maybe these guys are okay" and then there was a "Download link" but not a git repo link and *dang*.

  Open ##3166802