What? Can’t take a bit of competition?
- 07.10.09
- Linux, OpenSource, chromeos, google, Linux
- 15 Comments
So now the IT media world just went wild over Google’s Chrome OS announcement. Comments are coming in from all over, some overly optimistic, some dismissive. All of these are speculative at best, and none of them carry a lot of weight as Google hasn’t even done a code drop yet, much less a release.
Some of the comments surprise me, however. There seems to be this presumption that having something that’s OpenSource means you must “work with the community”. The GPL or any other OpenSource license defines the usage of the code. As long as you abide by the terms set in the licenses, you’re safe. Nowhere in the licenses do I see that you have to be part of a particular community to be OpenSource. The nature of OpenSource licenses are such that they encourage community-building (share and share alike) and a community is about the most efficient distribution model as well (especially with the lack of an official sales distribution channel). But it sure ain’t a prerequisite to join the club.
And there’s that word “community”. The word sounds warm and fuzzy, like everybody lives in a nudist colony and exchange kisses and hugs every time we meet. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a brutal world out there. I’ve been tracking flame wars between KDE and Gnome since someone decided that GPL wasn’t a liberal enough license for them and started writing a new widget library (corrected by Rahul on this). RMS poking his nose the Linux mailing lists every once in a while correcting everyone on the actual name “GNU/Linux” was pretty nice flame fodder for a while, and then it got old. Recently, there’s this whole tempest about including Mono into Linux distros by default. Debate is good, and coming to blows after a pint too many build stronger bonds, but it sure doesn’t mean that one has to take part in it.
Google has plenty of money / resources and may think that it can go solo with this one. And they are free to do so if they wish. They will still need to release the source code when they release regardless. Fine, they may decide to create a permanent fork of certain components or even use their own versioning system, making it hard for the rest of the “community” to take advantage of improvements. That goes both ways; it’ll be difficult for them to gain improvements from the other contributors as well. Apple did that with their WebKit fork of KHTML, where they did a periodic code dump into the original KDE source tree making it difficult for anybody to comprehend what enhancements were made. Yeah, it was grating on the rest of the KDE developers, but completely legal. But let’s take a step back now. Has Google been pulling a lot of this shit often? I really don’t think so. They maintain Google Code, which is being used for exactly what the “community” wants: community-based development. They announced Google Wave, and the next thing you know the Wave Protocol site is up for all to see. As far as being part of the community for development purposes is concerned, I think they’ve been doing that all this while and doing it better than most large companies.
So, what else do these communities want from Google?
It’s disappointing that they’ve chosen to go it alone this far rather than working with the existing communities – Joe Brockmeier
I think Intel made the right call with Moblin to put the effort in the hands of the Linux Foundation and try to work with the larger community – Joe BrockMeier
So, they want Google to work with “existing communities”. Well, it’s an OS they’re working on, and unless they start a complete new branch of the Linux kernel, I’m pretty sure they’d be working with the kernel team and submitting patches and all that. What other “existing communities” does Joe want them to work with? Ubuntu? His own Novell / OpenSuSE? As in, ride on your own product and endorse your product as “the preferred distro for Google’s OS”?
So let me get this straight: It’s not enough that you get the direct results of Google’s development effort, you want them to park themselves behind you and help you market your product as well?
Wake up, guys, this is competition. The distro stakeholders might be all pally when it comes to talking down the competition (Microsoft, in this case) and sharing code, but apart from that, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Chrome OS, as another Linux distro, would be operating at the same level with Red Hat/Ubuntu/Debian/Slackware/ad infinitum. And apart from the common code that they share with each other, the only other thing that they should share is the common desire to rip each other to pieces.
Now that’s capitalism.
Thanks! You saved me from writing a similar article. The negative press about chrome is so full of holes.
I couldn’t agree with you more. The whole concept of “working with an existing community” is kind of stupid given what their stated goals are. It sounds a great deal like they are going for a completely web based interface. Currently there is no good interface project to tackle that goal. GNOME and KDE are both way too big, and along with all the small desktops focus on the complete desktop paradigm. Even if KDE is trying to reshape it, it’s still the next gen of what we’ve always had. It sounds like Google wants to go off in a totally different direction. We won’t know for sure if that’s true till we see code drop, but if it is what they are doing then it makes complete sense that they would go it alone. I personally hope they at least use the existing infrastructure beyond the linux kernel like X.org and CUUPS and existing Linux audio infrastructures. Then whatever work they do on their technical groundwork will benefit other projects, but in terms of their overall OS goal it just doesn’t seem like a good “work with existing community” fit.
Man, I wholeheartedly agree. Google is in no way obligated to let the entire “community”, which barely comes together for the benefit of all without a lot of sniping and back biting, to participate in their venture. Google is going to benefit from the community by using code build on the backs of giants, and will return the benefit by releasing improvements to the same code once they are done.
Since this will be a so-called commercial distro (versus a community distro like Debian), they will probably want more autonomy so they can focus on the features they want to include in their own distro, not have a ton of people pulling developers every which way with their own pet features they wish Google would include.
This reminds me of the story of the miller, the young boy, and the donkey:
http://rickwalton.com/folktale/50fabl46.htm
I think some critics come from the fear of a failure if Google plan is to fight alone against Microsoft and Apple.
Look at Android for example. This OS is so far from any standard Linux that nobody care about porting their code on this platform. The contributions of Android are almost inexistent compared to other (much smaller) project. Today, Android is totally ignored by most Linux developers.
In a sense, Intel is doing the same mistakes with Moblin. Instead of capitalize on the success of Qt, they have decided to go on their own with Clutter. They are now paying the price with slow development cycles and high costs.
If the strategy of Google is to use a Linux Kernel, but not to take advantage of the thousand of Linux applications, their project will not be any better than Android
Google brings cubic dollars to fight. No one else can. Well, except maybe IBM, but I can’t see where they care.
Things will be interesting.
*sign* feicipet, if you are unable to speak of “community” without drawing the worst possible stereotype of hippies, I believe you should shut up. And if you cannot find a second person to quote on, you should make your post a direct reply. Your way of writing is just too insulting, you think?
Furthermore, about Google Chrome OS, yes, they do break with current “communities”, however you define that. The only thing gets reused is Linux kernel. It seems that they want to write an alternative to Xorg. From Android, I suspect that they would also replace libc and other GNU components. From there, they may also work out a new scheme for sound and everything else. This means reinvent the wheel! Of course, not like I hate people implementing new things, but this means that majority of GNU/Linux software will not work. Nay, this means majority of GUI Unix programs will not work. This is, of course, really bad, since we will need to rewrite everything from scratch, except for the kernel.
Now, does that clarify your doubt? Thank you for being respectful next time.
Finally some one with some business sense talking about this
There’s capitalism, and then there’s democracy. The GPL and other copyleft licenses ensure that there will always be competition, a free market, _always_. Public access to the development branch, the revision control system, and a willingness, nay eagerness, to accept code contributions is the mark of an open development process. Without those a project is just somebody’s private playground, no matter how big. An open development process is what ensures vibrancy and the ability to keep up with the cutting edge. The network effect of having the whole Internet available as a code contribution resource is unmatched. The history of the XFree86 project serves to illustrate the point. The project owners were a closed circle and development was slow. Now that Xorg has forked the code contributions come pouring in and the new features just keep on coming. It’s the difference between a staid tyrannical bureaucracy, something Soviet block, and a modern, transparent democratic society. Which would you bet on?
License alone doth not a vivacious project make.
Friendly competition is good. But the keyword here is friendly. As long as it’s friendly (friendly as in no unnecessary back-stabbing, and not burning all bridges for cooperation down the line) it’s all good.
Unfriendly competition on the other hands is called war, which only creates minefields, barbed-wire-coated walls and suffering for the losers and innocent alike.
> There seems to be this presumption that having something that’s OpenSource means
> you must “work with the community”. The GPL or any other OpenSource license
> defines the usage of the code. As long as you abide by the terms set in the licenses,
> you’re safe.
No. but for those companies that make use of OpenSource for their products and/or services, we at lest expect some level of RESPECT from them (are you listening eBay, et al?). We don’t expect them to take from the community, then turn around and spit upon the same community as something beneath contempt.
@Magice:
1) Apologies for the insulting tone;
2) However, your arguments towards reinventing the wheel can be abstracted at several different levels. KDE/Gnome apps have never worked well with each other and they represent redundancies / reinventing the wheel as well. Yet, they exist to provide competition to each other and it’s fine. My point is, it’s impossible to pinpoint the yardstick against which all Linux developers must code against for the simple reason that there will never be any consensus. Some might even point to the LSB as the standard to measure against and see how successful that is(n’t), even on the Linux desktop track.
Yes, if Google were to go their own way for most of the OS stack, it would probably isolate themselves from the rest of the Linux world. That may be what they wanted, or it may be to their detriment as well. The knife cuts both ways . All that remains to be seen is whose bet is on the winning horse.
@James:
I agree with that. And that’s what the license is supposed to enforce. The letter of the law as opposed to the spirit. It’s really less easy to fudge around on specific legalities.
But in this case, even if Google does not use the full Linux stack and instead cherry-picks the components they want while adding its own implementation of what it deems to be right, it just adds on more choices to our already rich stack as long as those components are released under similar licenses. I really can’t see this as abuse.
@Karl:
Yes, agreed. Google is just placing its own bets in this case. They’re free to fail if they want to. The rest of us will just vote on which we think is better.
“I’ve been tracking flame wars between KDE and Gnome since someone decided that GPL wasn’t a liberal enough license for them and started writing a new widget library.”
Qt was a proprietary toolkit and not under GPL when GTK was created. So you got that bit of history wrong. Capitalism isn’t really the opposite of working with the community. In fact, it might save them quite some money to work with the community.
[...] What? Can’t take a bit of competition? So now the IT media world just went wild over Google’s Chrome OS announcement. Comments are coming in from all over, some overly optimistic, some dismissive. All of these are speculative at best, and none of them carry a lot of weight as Google hasn’t even done a code drop yet, much less a release. [...]