Google Criticized For ‘Opaque’ Audio-Listening Binary In Debian Chromium (source Slashdot): Debian, mother of Ubuntu, a major player in the software Libre world always required to have access to the sources of the programs they distribute¹, especially in web-browsers. I’m not surprised to read this.

I do not use proprietary browser for this very reason, you can’t be sure what it really does, so I avoided Internet Explorer, Opera but also Google’s Chrome which is based on a libera (italian adjective for free-as-in-freedom) version named Chromium which I seldom use as my main browser is Firefox.

An opaque, binary-only module is by all mean of definition proprietary, so I think I’ll try to avoid Chromium too, or to use it silencing my microphone….

You smart reader may already be complaining that most web-applications are proprietary too and although coded in an interpreted language such as JavaScript they are nevertheless proprietary. Yes, you’re right, but that’s another issue. Quite big actually and quite bigger than me.