You have to license it from Google. And they don't always say yes: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/03/googles_widevine_dr...

That's only if you are making a browser and want to distribute it. There's no way that Google is going to mail howlers to end-users who use widevine with chromium forks.

Because you would need to get a widevine license from google. Mozilla was able to do that, but I know at least one chromium fork had it's application for a license rejected. It technically is possible to copy the widevine library from a chrome install to use with chromium, but non technical people won't know how to do that.

Widevine works with chromium just fine - by which I mean that like with everything chromium it gets broken without apparent reason every now and then, but after some time they fix it.

I'm sure it could, but who would implement it?

Apparently someone has, because I was using Chromium on Linux to watch Netflix several years ago without any trouble (this was before Firefox got it working).

Are you sure it wasn't using Chrome's implementation?

Actually, you're right, it was Chrome now that I think about it. It's been a while.

Before I canceled my Netflix subscription (due to lack of use), I was using Firefox to view it.

The same people who were motivated enough to get it into Firefox?