Is the Vivaldi browser open source?

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Let's continue this review on Browsers desktop, after telling you about Firefox and of Brave today it was the turn of Vivaldi. What it makes Vivaldi so special and above all, a question we often read, The Browsers Vivaldi it is Open source?

Let's immediately answer the question in the title by saying: no, not completely unfortunately. Vivaldi in fact it is only partially Open source ¹ and that's mainly why we put it at the bottom of the alternatives to Chrome. According to their authors in fact Vivaldi it is Open source for the code 95%. The 92% From Chromium, The 3% And open code written by them while the remaining 5% it is closed code.

Chromium, we always remember, is the motor (it's a simplification, the actual engine is called Blink) Open source ² which is behind Browsers as Chrome, Brave, Edge And many others. Basically anyone can create a Browsers starting from Chromium and then he can make his changes. These changes can be a open code how does Brave. Or closed code as they do Chrome ³, Edge and, precisely, Vivaldi.

The Browsers Vivaldi it is Open source?

What they decided to make closed source, they say to protect their work and avoid Fork, is the user interface part. Their motivation is simple: they are a very small company that has done a great job at the user interface level. One of their fears is that someone could take all their work and use it. This seems to be the main reason, you can have other reasons read them here.

It's an attitude that doesn't drive us crazy they didn't start from scratch either but theirs is a Fork of the project itself Chromium.

However, it is understandable (and compatible with the license Chromium) on a human level and we cannot help but feel the right amount of empathy. Vivaldi in fact it is a serious company and has always stood out for its ethics attentive to human rights and the protection of the environment. And this is why we don't recommend it among the first Browsers but we still mention it when we talk about alternatives to Chrome.

Vivaldi and Opera

The Browsers Vivaldi was in fact founded by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner who was the co-founder and CEO of the Browsers Opera before it was acquired by a Chinese holding company ⁴, as opposed to just what Opera He was becoming.

Vivaldi it was created precisely to be aimed at users Opera unhappy with the change of motor of the Browsers passed by Soon to Chromium. However now also Vivaldi, as we said, is Chromium. Their goal, however, is to try to revive the characteristics that made them Opera a Browsers unique. Vivaldi in fact it offers many exclusive features: for example, it allows you to hibernate tabs, create notes of what you are reading and dozens of other really interesting options.

The Browsers Vivaldi it is not Open source, but what is its business model?

The business model of Vivaldi ⁵ it is not the profiling of users but they make partnership agreements with search engine, as it does for example Firefox with Google ⁶.

Vivaldi instead it has a partnership with almost all search engines except with Google. In fact, they will currently receive a percentage every time you use one of these search engines: DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia, Startpage, Yahoo, Bing And Yandex.

Other than that, when you install Vivaldi you will find some sites like in your bookmarks Booking And eBay, for example. If you use these sites through those bookmarks they earn something.

Vivaldi Mail, Calendar, Feed Reader and much more

The Browsers Vivaldi over time has become full of interesting and almost unique features. For example it incorporates a real email client, can be used as personal calendar and even how reader for RSS. He has also recently integrated a personal application for follow any Mastodon server (they also have a their Mastodon server) and we are surely forgetting something.

We hope to have clarified better why we never include among the first alternatives Vivaldi but why do we include it among the anyway Browsers to take a look at in case you were dissatisfied with all the others tried. It's true that some of his code isn't Open source, however, it is a company that has always shown itself to be particularly attentive to ethics and the environment and there have never been any scandals that could make us particularly doubt their intentions.

1. Vivaldi Browsers and open-source[↩]
2. source code Of Chromium[↩]
3. Chrome is based on Chromium, but Google adds a number of proprietary, closed-source bits[↩]
4. Works on Wikipedia[↩]
5. What's Vivaldi's business model?[↩]
6. Mozilla Signs Lucrative 3-Year Google Search Deal for Firefox[↩]

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