How difficult would it be to fork and mantain a chromium version that still supports Manifest V2? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by tomatoely@sh.itjust.works to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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As Google tries to hinder ad-block extensions with their new platform Manifest V3, it seems to me Chrome or any Chromium derivatives are no longer a viable way to browse the web safely. So it got me wondering, how much big of a task would it be to still suport Manifest V2 on newer releases of Chromium? Maybe implement some legacy option for backwards compatibility with older extensions. I think it would be a great alternative to have, but I haven't seen anyone coming up with something similar.

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[-] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 65 points 4 months ago

Just use Firefox already.

[+] Nomecks@lemmy.ca -15 points 4 months ago

Remind me: who provides most of the funding that FF has?

[-] pupbiru@aussie.zone 32 points 4 months ago

that only reinforces that you should use firefox… forcing google to pay more money to mozilla and giving mozilla more power to negotiate is a good thing

sure google has some power over them with the money they give, but by using chromium that power is absolute - no need to pay, ask, influence when you just get

[-] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

Your point?

[-] jet@hackertalks.com -5 points 4 months ago

Because of incentives it's not impossible for the Mozilla foundation to drop support for manifest V2 eventually. If Google's paying 90% of their bills, it's not unreasonable to assume they also have a say in the direction of the browser

[-] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 4 months ago

I've never seen any reason to believe Google has any say in the direction of Firefox. Google pays to be the default search engine, not more, not less.

This same argument could be brought up about Safari. All other browsers are based on Chromium anyway, so they are directly developed by Google themselves.

[-] CondorWonder@lemmy.ca 44 points 4 months ago

Right now - easy, with the difficulty going up over time as the main Chromium codebase continues to change (and especially as it gets security updates). I think I’ve read that some variants (Brave?) have committed to supporting ManifestV2 for as long as possible, for instance with their own fork.

[-] Fake4000@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago

For a year, but it will be extremely difficult for them to maintain mv2 after jun 2025.

[-] bizarroland@fedia.io 5 points 4 months ago

Why that date specifically?

[-] Fake4000@lemmy.world 22 points 4 months ago

Most of these browsers use the enterprise policy of chromium.

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline

[-] bizarroland@fedia.io 2 points 4 months ago

Thank you for the clarification

[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone -2 points 4 months ago

Just wait for July 2025

[-] bizarroland@fedia.io 3 points 4 months ago

Why. What happens during that time?

[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 5 points 4 months ago

I have no idea. Another month passes

[-] Shamot@jlai.lu 34 points 4 months ago

I think that using gecko based browsers like Firefox is the best thing to do in the short term. But having no competition is a bad thing. So supporting new web engines, like Ladybird, is important too: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird