there not similar at all

Posted Mar 28, 2013 16:50 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953)
In reply to: there not similar at all by coriordan
Parent article: Google: Taking a stand on open source and patents

I agree it would be nice if it was as broad as RedHat but my guess is they want to reserve the right with respect to a few critical technologies like their Page Rank patents and such which forms the backbone of their revenue. Google does a lot of good things and a few very evil ones but they aren't an open-source company, they are an advertising company and to remain competitive (particularly with something like Bing ready to eat their lunch) they need to protect their main revenue generators.

there not similar at all

Posted Mar 28, 2013 17:02 UTC (Thu) by tkreagan (subscriber, #4548) [Link] (4 responses)

This really means "we would like some more good press but are not willing to actually do anything meaningful".

Google is not a friend of open-source, Linux, or anyone else. They are a parasite in sheep's clothing.

there not similar at all

Posted Mar 28, 2013 22:48 UTC (Thu) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

I'm not sure such strong language is accurate. Google could do more, certainly, but Android's available source code, the Summer of Code project, and other efforts make Google a decent open source citizen.

there not similar at all

Posted Mar 29, 2013 1:20 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

> Google is not a friend of open-source, Linux, or anyone else. They are a parasite in sheep's clothing.

A great display of trying to abstain from any form of subtlety in your understanding of a situation.

Google, like any large organization has its bad sides. But, as I always say, Google is a many-tentacled beast. And to say none of those tentacles have been good to open source would be a lie.

For one, the Summer of Code programme has over the years put a huge amount of money into open source and helped to garner a lot of new contributors for projects.

there not similar at all

Posted Mar 29, 2013 2:04 UTC (Fri) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (1 responses)

Google is a large company. They're neither a friend of anyone nor an enemy of anyone; that's something that only a single conscious mind can do. Google is a company with thousands upon thousands of people each individually seeking the most profit for the company, and no ability to decide to collectively like or dislike something.

In a lot of cases, a lot of these individual people believe that ensuring a healthy free software ecosystem brings the company profit. It's our job to prove them correct.

there not similar at all

Posted Mar 29, 2013 14:31 UTC (Fri) by fjf33 (guest, #5768) [Link]

A large enough complex structure can show emergent behaviours. Large companies do develop a certain way of doing things. Call it corporate culture, personality, doesn't matter but it isn't far off to do the comparison the OP did.