Shortly after Google Chrome was released, I was excited to find out that Ben Laurie was porting Google Chrome/Chromium to FreeBSD. This is in my opinion the best web browser available (I know, it’s subjective). It’s light-weight, secure and extendible.
The only thing that has cast a bit of a shadow on the Chromium porting project was thehybrid licensing model, where paying subscribers have access to the latest builds, and non-paying individuals can download an older/out-of-date version.
In itself there’s nothing wrong with this licensing model, but you’d expect that more with closed source and proprietary software. Chrome/Chromium is free and therefore any ported versions should be free too, IMO, as long as Google’s EULA is adhered to.
Due to some issues a new port (www/ports/chromium) maintainer has been appointed, i.e. Rene Ladan.
“However complete and obstinate disregard to the security vulnerabilities of the version in the ports tree, including refusal to even document them contradicts the idea of maintainership as the community understands it and as it is documented.” (source)
We wish Rene the best and we hope to see Chromium 8 that was released last week ported to FreeBSD (current version in ports is version 6).
Glad to hear someone is taking on an open porting effort. It’d be nice if you’d been clearer that the subscription model you describe is not mine: my port was (and is) completely freely available. The port you refer to was run by someone else who completed my work.