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Does it matter to you where your browser company is located and where your browser is made?
@Vivaldi is a Norwegian & Icelandic company. Team is in Norway and Iceland for the most part with some team members working from home as well across Europe.
@zstg @jon @Vivaldi, yes it's important, a lot of FOSS also use Google, Facebook, Amazon and other US tracking APIs or depends directly on GOOGLE Code, even Mozilla-Firefox in the US, somewhat less in the EU, but even there phones to Alphabet.
FOSS is fine, but isn't synonym of privacy and independence from big corporations.
@NewDay14 You shouldn't discount Chromium forks. I'm rooting for alternatives, too, but consider that all 3 major browser engines are funded directly by Google. Firefox's lifeline depends on Google's search deal, and they also pay Apple something like 20 billion per year, which is obscene.
Chromium is also open-source, and while controlled by Google, it has other contributors that could fork it should stewardship go awry. It should matter as there's not much choice left.
@jon @Vivaldi
It might if there was several good browsers to choose from. But with most browsers being spyware and not having half the features I use every day, it's not like I have a lot of choice.
So even if I had something against Norway and Iceland (I don't), it's not like there's any browsers that can truly compete with Vivaldi.
But what if we were talking about Trumpistan? Honestly, I have a hard time imagining a US made browser that isn't spyware, AI infested and enshittified in every possible way.
@jon @Vivaldi It matters more that I can trust the coding.
It's great that most of Vivaldi is built on open source but the UI is not FOSS.
It appears to me it's taking from the FOSS world but only giving back absolutely the least needed.
FOSS needs good UI work & it's something that can be contributed but often is not.
The scary core bit of a browser is not the UI but the underlying security and honesty.
When Google nobble further funding/development in chromium, what then for Vivaldi?
@christianschwaegerl @jon @Vivaldi Opera has its own engine. And used to be Norwegian. But then Chinese bought them 
@sorenladegaard @christianschwaegerl @Vivaldi
Opera used to have its own engine, but it got abandoned after I left them.
@jon @christianschwaegerl @Vivaldi I was wondering if you might be interested in writing about your choice of engine for Vivaldi? Why Chromium? And how associated wirh Google and “big tech” is it?
@sorenladegaard @christianschwaegerl @Vivaldi
We have the experience of having built our own engine at Opera. It was called Presto and it was great. Best engine out there, IMHO, but we ran into issues where we were being blocked from accessing content. Often by competitor sites, but also others.
I would have loved to build another engine, but there is a reason why Apple, Google, Microsoft and others decided not to do that and use an open source browser core. Thus we did the same. Building another engine from scratch is just not feasible for us.
Given our experience with Opera, it would also be important to go with what most are using, so going with Chromium made sense. Less compatibility issues.
The other option would have been Gecko, but at the time that we made our decision, Gecko was going through significant rewrites.
I have also understood, that Mozilla is not always thrilled with competitors using their code. They are a highly competitive company.
There are a lot of issues with using Chromium, but we still believe it was the right choice. We have made a lot of patches, 2000 files, and we have added a lot of our own code on top.
Vivaldi is unique. We have a lot of functionality you find nowhere else and plenty that we originated. I hope you enjoy it.
@Dutchie61 @jon @Vivaldi Same. There are some awesome features in Firefox that just aren't in Vivaldi or aren't implemented as well. I also feel like the Vivaldi forums aren't a friendly place because a lot of die hard fans gate keep and respond in a hostile manner. It puts me off of Vivaldi.
@cynical13 @Dutchie61 @jon @Vivaldi
This hostility is a major issue for the free / open source software community, one bad experience with a single project can really impact how the whole community is perceived.
@jon @Vivaldi Sort of, but being fully Free/Libre #OpenSource #FOSS / #FLOSS is way more important : )
@jon@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net I think EU is better focused on privacy than US or Australia.
I use Vivaldi but all browsers have their faults.
