[geeks] Browser licensing?

[Alois Hammer]

Because answers about Chrome (Chromium?) licensing seem to be in short
supply today, I've done a smidge of detective work-- and I'm more
confused than I started.

Chrom[ium] is based on WebKit.  WebKit is licensed under BSD.  The only
two *components* of WebKit are licensed under LGPL.  This doesn't sound
like dual-licensing.  This sounds more like "legally impossible."  Or
maybe "purposefully confusing."  This is all according to
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/internet/webkit.html. 
http://webkit.org/coding/lgpl-license.html has a tiny note about BSD in
the left sidebar, and seems to suggest that certain bits are BSD, like
the infamous? Linux PPP compression code.  I'm too tired to RTFS right
now, as they suggest.

But, anyhow, Google's modified WebKit (and the "V8" JIT engine?) are
licensed under BSD.  Except that they're not.  Wikipedia claims BSD, but
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/ says "Code License: Multiple
Licenses."  What's that mean?  Is that the default for when there's no
registered license yet?  Does it mean LGPL/BSD?  No one's said anything
about any part of Chrom[ium] being licensed under the LGPL, which sounds
like either a license violation, or else "we rewrote those parts
ourselves so everything could be BSD."

...and there's no CODE at the site.  So, unless Google's chosen to
distribute the source via some other means than their mighty
project-hosting site, no code's been released to anyone outside Google. 
If there's no code release, it hasn't been licensed.  To anyone.  As
anything.

Ignoring the impossible performance claims,[1] the 0.2xx version
numbering (which, from reviews, I'm taking at face value), the
catfighting on full-disclosure, and OSNews pointing out that this looks
very suspiciously like IE8b2 but not as good-- this is not an auspicious
start.

---
[1] I can't wait until people figure out that instantiating an entire
JSVM for anything other than, oh, Google Reader is actually a
performance *loss*, especially compared to Gecko JS tracing or WebKit's
SquirrelFish. (Or SpiderBaboon or DolphinElephant.  Whateveritis.  These
names are getting tiresome.)