That is not quite correct (and what's correct is just repeating what I just wrote).
If you download source code, you can build these browsers. If you go to their release pages, you can download these browsers. If you apt-get install chromium-browser, you'll get one of those browsers.
You're correct that Chrome and Safari both contain large chunks of closed source code, but they are the "other" to the source code. The source code builds just fine.
And yes, the open source versions aren't what users usually download, which is exactly what I said. The largest users of Chromium are from Linux distros that use it and people building from source themselves. I'm not aware of any major users of Webkit builds directly, but there are many smaller browsers that are themselves open source and using Webkit or embedding Chromium (and I imagine a handful now using Blink).
People tend to use the concept of a "grandmother" who downloads what the site offers her, which in Google's case is the closed-source non-verifiable Chrome. However, people usually counter these grandmother arguments noting that the grandma has no big understanding of privacy and so Chrome is fine for her.
However, in this case, a more apt concept of a "mother" should be applied -- i.e. somebody who understands the values of privacy on the internet, but still gets influenced by what the website offers her.
So me, you and the hypothetical mother all want a browser that's supposed to be as safe from intrusions by the NSA as possible, but unlike the two of us who will understand Google's claims like "Get a fast, free web browser" in the proper context, the mother would not.
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My point is that I believe we should strive to make it very clear, for this particular group of "mothers", which browser is as secure to intrusions as possible and which is only "fast and free" according to the corporation that issues it (and has a harder-to-find open-source variant).
If you download source code, you can build these browsers. If you go to their release pages, you can download these browsers. If you apt-get install chromium-browser, you'll get one of those browsers.
You're correct that Chrome and Safari both contain large chunks of closed source code, but they are the "other" to the source code. The source code builds just fine.
And yes, the open source versions aren't what users usually download, which is exactly what I said. The largest users of Chromium are from Linux distros that use it and people building from source themselves. I'm not aware of any major users of Webkit builds directly, but there are many smaller browsers that are themselves open source and using Webkit or embedding Chromium (and I imagine a handful now using Blink).