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Google ?Google ?Posted May 23, 2007 11:07 UTC (Wed) by hpp (guest, #4756)In reply to: Google ? by xoddam Parent article: A day at the Open Source Business Conference
GoogleFS is developed and used only within Google, but do we have any evidence that it includes GPL'ed components? The same questions applies to other pieces of the Google world (map/reduce, monitoring code, search code) - it may run on Linux but I am not aware of it including GPL'ed components.
As such, there shoud be no pressure on Google to release any of this...
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Google, yes Posted May 23, 2007 14:41 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] As such, there shoud be no pressure on Google to release any of this...Why not? At least the same pressure as on all other proprietary vendors that "do not get it". Maybe even more: other companies are openly "evil" and do not care about doing things right. Google does care, or at least that is the public line.
Google, yes Posted May 23, 2007 17:51 UTC (Wed) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] I don't think it is the vendors who don't get it in this case. Nobody owes me a thing. I'm grateful when given a gift but I do not mistake it for anything else other than a gift.
This overly developed sense of entitlement by certain people in the free software community is just annoying and very counter productive.
Free software has gained the ground it has because it is a superior model. Odds are reasonably good it will continue to gain ground for the same reason.
Just to be clear, I'm not painting Moglen with this brush. He may in fact have a legitimate point in this case. I don't know enough to say at this juncture.
Following a superior model Posted May 23, 2007 19:46 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Sure, and it is out of the pure kindness of our hearts that we want Google to release their own software as free software. Mind you, we want Google to succeed, and the easiest way to success for such a good friend of free software is surely to free their own software. Since it is such a superior model, it is odd that they themselves have not seen the light, but whatever. A slight prodding is probably all they need to do it, lest something bad (following an inferior model) befalls them.:P Now seriously. You are right in most things, but even Linus thinks that "GPLv2 is about tit-for-tat", and he is not suspect of ideological purity. Now let's zoom out a bit. In a general sense you could say that Google is what it is because of free software, so asking them to give some of their own back would not be so outrageous. All xoddam and others are saying is that freeing their own software would be what separates "good" citizens from "outstanding" citizens. Meanwhile Moglen only speaks about modifications to software which is already free. Pure tit-for-tat, probably even Linus would be with him in that.
Following a superior model Posted May 23, 2007 22:41 UTC (Wed) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] > asking them to give some of their own back would not be so outrageous.
Following the same logic, you could ask writers who use open source for their work to release their books under a free license.
Distributing local modifications to free software used is of course something different and a very good thing, but still not something that should be forced. Just imagine the pain when using a LGPL library with your own buggy program that arbitrarily scribbles memory!
Following a superior model Posted May 31, 2007 12:06 UTC (Thu) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] "Following the same logic, you could ask writers who use open source for their work to release their books under a free license."
OK. Here you go:
http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145
If we can figure out a way for people to make a decent living using Free Licenses, why not seek to promote such?
all the best,
drew
Superior model ? Hardly... Posted May 23, 2007 23:24 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I often see this screams about "the superior model" and how everyone should only ever write free software. While free software clearly wins when moral and ethic is included when we are talking about practical viewpoint everything is not so easy. I think Craig A. James said it best: There is a natural "lifecycle" to software technology, which includes both commercial periods and FOSS periods.. If you'll think about successful FOSS projects - they are either converted former proprietary projects (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, etc) or reimplementation of proprietary projects (Linux, GCC, MySQL, etc). In rare cases FOSS dominates the niche from the start to finish (web-servers: from NCSA httpd to Apache), but it only happens when initial design is simple enough and can be done without massive efffort. Otherwise proprietary leads for a while but eventually FOSS overcomes it - and looks like that is natural lifecycle of software... I suspect most of Google's software is at the beginning of this cycle. But some are already at the middle and may be even closer to the end (whoever uses Picasa for Linux ? what for ?).
Superior model ? Hardly... Posted May 24, 2007 7:20 UTC (Thu) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] The vast majority of popular proprietary software is also reimplementation of other proprietary products; I think it's just a matter of luck depending on who is in the right place at the right time. But indeed, free software seems to be winning in the long run (or at least that's what I would like to think).
Superior model ? Hardly... Posted May 24, 2007 8:00 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Some proprietary products are also reimplementations of free products; like IIS from Apache or the Windows NT networking layer (some say directly ripped off BSD). Or version control software from CVS. Or even all Unices from the original AT&T Unix, which followed a model closer in many respects to free software than to proprietary products (patches and distributions) and which resulted in the free BSD.
Superior model ? Hardly... Posted May 24, 2007 17:34 UTC (Thu) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link] Proprietary software does seem to be better are opening up markets, though -- look at, oh, say, video editing software right now. The commercial development houses looked around at the market and could see that consumer video was coming down the pike and going to be a big thing, so they invested the capital up-front to build video editing suites, and it's partly the existence of cheap and usable editing suites that's making it possible for ordinary people to start playing with video and grow the market.
Traditional FOSS development is not at all forward-looking (and it's even a point of pride, for good technical reasons, YAGNI and all that). It wasn't until lots of people had access to hardware and were playing around with it that the itch grew to create free editing software, and so now the free stuff is still way behind the proprietary stuff. It's not clear that the free stuff would exist at all without the proprietary stuff having enabled hardware sales and development.
No reason that commercial investment on speculative markets has equate to proprietary software, though -- they could just as well invest capital up-front in developing a GPLed hunk of software, make money on support, and then when the market picked up ride the influx up new developers right past their competitors. Until that happens, though, this is a particular niche situation where FOSS development has fewer than usual competitive advantages over proprietary stuff.
Superior model ? Hardly... Posted May 24, 2007 20:12 UTC (Thu) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] > If you'll think about successful FOSS projects - they are eitherconverted former proprietary projects (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, etc) or reimplementation of proprietary projects (Linux, GCC, MySQL, etc). In rare cases FOSS dominates the niche from the start to finish (web-servers: from NCSA httpd to Apache), but it only happens when initial design is simple enough and can be done without massive effort.
These are the new FOSS projects. There are a couple of good examples of
I'm personally still using X daily and TeX weekly, and both are also
Google ? Posted Jun 8, 2007 10:58 UTC (Fri) by hozelda (guest, #19341) [Link] >> As such, there shoud be no pressure on Google to release any of this...
The pressure is not on Google to release something it won't have to under an Affero type license. The pressure is on every company (with special focus on one of the wealthiest businesses in the world) to make sure that if they are not using GPL, that they continue not to if they want to keep things secret. Otherwise, they are legal today, but things may change so (eg) Google should plan now. They would then need to open up or else reimplement the GPL components (that become GPL3,4,etc) to keep their secrets.
It's called "advanced notice -- just in case."
Google ? Posted Jun 8, 2007 11:05 UTC (Fri) by hozelda (guest, #19341) [Link] I forgot to mention, I do think Google has contributed. But it does seem it is disproportionate what Google has gotten from its use vs. what it has given back. In such a case, those contributing might want to adjust their future license to make such a disparity less likely.
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