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There is letter of the law and there is spirit of the law in the legal space.

Same here - technically there are "forks" of the Chrome browser. Just like technically when I press a button on GitHub page, I've created a Doom 3 "fork". Yay, look at me, I'm the next Carmack! Behold my programming skills! Then I click another button, and now I've "forked" Servo. Now I get to be a browser creator too!

The fact is that I did no work in forking that code and as soon as real Doom 3 or Servo code changes, I would need to either accept all those changes or abandon this silly notion. Same with so called Chrome "forks". They all accept anything that Google pushes into the original Chrome, regardless of the change. Google wants some new protocol they have invented to be put in Chrome? All Chrome "forks" accept it. Google wants to limit adblocking? All Chrome clones accept it of course. And so on. Any real fundamental changes to the Chrome are pushed to all so called "forks".

So yeah, there are countless "forks" of Chrome in the letter of the word, just like I have a Doom 3 "fork" too. But there are no real forks of Chrome in the spirit of the word.



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