maintain what? they just use chromium, all development is made by others
The Brave browser is built on top of Chromium, an open-source web browser project led by Google and supported by a wide community of contributors. This means that Brave inherits a massive codebase from Chromium and then modifies or adds to it to create its unique features, like enhanced privacy, ad-blocking, and the Basic Attention Token (BAT) system. Let’s break it down.Chromium is a huge project, with its codebase estimated at around 35 million lines of code, though this can vary depending on how you count it (e.g., including comments, libraries, or specific components). This code is the result of years of work by the Chromium team, which includes Google engineers and external contributors. It handles everything from rendering web pages to managing browser tabs, security, and networking.The Brave team, on the other hand, doesn’t start from scratch. They take Chromium as a foundation and customize it. Brave’s contributions are split into two main parts: the “brave-core” repository, which contains their custom code and patches, and the modifications they apply to Chromium itself. The brave-core repository is where most of Brave’s unique features live—like the ad-blocker, privacy tools, and BAT integration. While exact line counts for brave-core aren’t publicly detailed in a simple number, it’s a much smaller codebase compared to Chromium, likely in the range of hundreds of thousands to a couple million lines of code, based on similar browser fork projects.Brave also applies patches to Chromium to remove Google-specific features (like telemetry) and tweak behavior. These patches modify existing Chromium code rather than adding massive new sections, so they’re more about altering what’s already there than writing from the ground up. The patching process is well-documented by Brave, but it’s not a complete rewrite—it’s a strategic edit.So, in rough terms:
- Chromium Team: Responsible for the vast majority of the code—think 95% or more of the total lines in Brave. This is the core engine that Brave relies on.
- Brave Team: Contributes a smaller but critical portion—maybe 5% or less of the total codebase—focused on differentiating features and privacy enhancements. Their work is more about quality and impact than sheer volume.
This split makes sense when you consider Brave’s goal: they’re not trying to reinvent the browser wheel but to refine it for privacy and user control. The exact numbers could shift depending on how you measure (e.g., active lines vs. total, or how much of Chromium’s code Brave actually uses), but the Chromium foundation dominates the raw code volume, while Brave’s additions are what give the browser its identity.
