What is Vivaldi?
Vivaldi is a Chromium-based browser that appears to support privacy, full customization, performance, and productivity. It is a browser that is commonly used as a privacy alternative to Chrome (and it is far superior to Chrome).
However, in this post, I’ll explain why I don’t recommend Vivaldi as a truly privacy-friendly browser and why I personally think it’s kind of suspicious. Let’s talk about it!
Vivaldi claims to be a privacy-friendly browser, and some of its features sound promising! It has tracking & ad protection and some privacy protections turned on by default. It’s also one of the most customizable browsers I’ve ever used, with a smooth, stable, and feature-rich interface. I appreciate the concept of Vivaldi, and in terms of stability, the Vivaldi developers have done an excellent job with it.
However, there are some drawbacks to Vivaldi. You see, Vivaldi is only officially “partially” open source; things like the UI and specific features of Vivaldi are not open source, and I believe that for it to claim to be a privacy browser, it should be completely open source. Vivaldi states that the reason they aren’t fully open source is because they are afraid of “forks” and that their brand would be overwhelmed by forks of their product.
Personally, I don’t think Vivaldi would be overshadowed at all, given that it’s very popular, and browsers like Firefox and Chromium are open source, with plenty of forks revolving around the two. Some of these are well-known, such as Librewolf, Floorp (which will be discussed later during this post), and Waterfox, but they do not completely overshadow Mozilla. Vivaldi when it comes to Privacy is kind of fishy and don’t get me wrong their privacy policy and some of the privacy features they offer by default are great but because of it not being completely open source, I just simply wouldn’t recommend it as a privacy respecting browser and I can’t trust something that isn’t fully open source.
If you wouldn’t recommend Vivaldi, what would you recommend?
Floorp
I know this project has a strange name, but let me explain what it is first lmao. Floorp is a well-known Firefox fork that is very customizable and closely resembles Vivaldi. It has many similar features to Vivaldi, including customizable design, a flexible layout, and much more. Because it uses Firefox, it is completely open source, so you won’t have to worry about anything and you can easily check it’s source code. It comes with several security features activated by default, such as strong tracking protection, and it is regularly updated.
I would honestly recommend this over Vivaldi because it is completely open source, has many privacy features enabled by default, is just as customizable, and allows you to do so much more with it.
Vivaldi is honestly mediocre in terms of privacy, and if you want something similar, you should probably go with Floorp. If you just want a simple privacy browser, you should go with Librewolf. Mozilla has been doing some strange things lately, but that is a discussion for another day.
If you have any questions or if I have stated any incorrect information, please let me know, and I will gladly change it.
All the important parts of vivaldi are source available not open source. You’re welcome to read through them.
The UI isn’t an important part of Vivaldi? Also this still prevents anyone from compiling Vivaldi on their own (not that Vivaldi themselves would make it easy for you to do so). Many distributions like Debian and Fedora require free licenses to be included. It isn’t just a matter of being “source available” but of freedom. As it stands, no one but the Vivaldi team can make meaningful changes to their own Vivaldi program.
Brave Browser, which is also built off of Chromium, still licenses all their modifications under the MPL2.0 license. Brave is also a large company just like Vivaldi with brand deals to make and a userbase to maintain.
Really it’s just very sus hypocrisy all the way down.
It’s deliberate, not “sus”, I used “source available” as does the vivaldi team, precisely because it is different from open source. You can look at it, you can’t modify or redistribute it.
The Ui isn’t important in terms of your privacy. If they’re collecting your data, they’re doing to do it regardless of whether their buttons are blue or black.
Still can’t compile Vivaldi from source though which is something that matters more than whether or not they collect data on their users. I think it is sus because it shows that the Vivaldi team are either detached from reality (I have never seen downstream forks overtake upstream unless upstream is literally abandonware) or have something they need to hide so they restrict their users from having full freedom.
Privacy is just a buzzword, whether the software respects your four freedoms is more important, because without freedom you cannot negotiate your privacy.
Thank you for telling me! To be honest, this makes Vivaldi increasingly more suspicious