[geeks] Browser licensing?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 06:11:18PM -0400, Alois Hammer wrote:

> 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.

What is so hard about:
wget http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/archives/chromium.tgz 
Be prepared to wait a long time though because it is 458 megs of
source and the server seems to be a bit slammed.  They helpfully mention
that it expands to over a gig and that you'll need 10 gigs free to
actually build it.

Also, numerous pieces are available individually via SVN, such a V8 and
the Skia graphics engine.

FWIW worth, it is obviously multiple licenses for Chrome.  V8 alone
has multiple licenses.
 
> 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.)

Why must instansing a new VM be slow?  How is it impossible for someone
to figure out how to do it quickly?