The desktop browser wars have claimed another casualty.
Camino, a free, open source Web browser specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system, will no longer be developed going forward.
Apparently, if you’re not Mozilla, it’s getting harder and harder to compete for even a slice of meaningful market share against big corporations such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Opera Software. Still, Camino had a good run since its humble beginnings in the early 2000s.
The following note was posted to the project’s website yesterday:
After a decade-long run, Camino is no longer being developed, and we encourage all users to upgrade to a more modern browser. Camino is increasingly lagging behind the fast pace of changes on the web, and more importantly it is not receiving security updates, making it increasingly unsafe to use.
Fortunately, Mac users have many more browsers to choose from than they did when Camino started ten years ago.
Former Camino developers have helped build the three most popular – Chrome, Firefox, and Safari – so while this is the end of Camino itself, the community that helped build it is still making the web better for Mac users.
Samuel Sidler, a former Mozilla team member who was involved with the Camino project in several ways going as far back as early 2005, also blogged about the browser’s end-of-life, writing:
Of course, anyone observing Camino will note that it’s not a surprising change given we last released an update in March 2012. Our previous attempts to breathe life into the project and switch to Webkit didn’t succeed.
It was back in February 2005 that I first started helping the Camino project, first setting up a domain, then working to get their new website published. Camino got me involved in the Mozilla community, which eventually got me my job at Mozilla.
It’s sad to think this browser that gave me so much is finally being laid to rest. But here we are, more than a decade after it was first created, saying goodbye.
Were you a Camino user? Are you sad to see it get kicked to the curb?
Image credit: Thinkstock
