GNOME Epiphany -> Web package branding and default inclusion in Debian GNOME

[Laurent Bigonville]

Le 26/12/16 à 04:26, Frederique a écrit :
> Dear enthusiasts,
Hello Frederique,

> First of all, it seems the Epiphany name has disappeared entirely out
> of the application. The packages should be rebranded to gnome-web?

The tarballs distributed by upstream (as well as the executable) are 
still named epiphany. So we are just following what upstream is doing here.

> Second, why is this browser no longer installed by default in the
> Debian GNOME environment?  I recall both Iceweasel (Firefox) and
> Epiphany being installed on Debian in the past, now it is just Firefox.
>
> Firefox is no longer just a browser, it is pretty much trying to be an
> operating system within an application (14,045,424 lines of code) and I
> would really like to see more devotion to browsers that try to be a
> browser like GNOME Web (50,611 lines of code) and Midori (62,852 lines
> of code).

You need to add to that count all the LOC from webkit2gtk library (the 
engine doing the rendering), so in the end it's not that small in the end.

The problem actually comes from webkit2gtk that is/was not providing 
stable security updates (this might have changed recently) and the 
debian security team is not happy with that situation especially with 
that kind of project.

On the other hand firefox/mozilla have a firefox-esr (extended support 
release) release which provides security fixes for a longer time.

This is the reason why we are installing firefox-esr by default and not 
epiphany.

> Can we please make GNOME Web installed by default when using the GNOME
> environment?

We'll have to see the kind guarantee upstream (I added Alberto who is 
taking care of webkitgtk in debian) can offer regarding the security 
updates and also discuss with the release and security teams in debian 
before this could happen. To that we also need to take into account that 
the freeze will happen soon.

And IMHO, we should also look at the features parity and quality of the 
rendering between firefox and epiphany.

Best regards,

Laurent Bigonville