Slashdot Mirror
Google Gives Reason Why it is Built on Linux
Rob writes "A common reason why more governments and enterprises around the world are moving to
open source software is unhappiness, it was revealed during a panel discussion at the
LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco yesterday. Google Inc open source programs
manager Chris DiBona said the search giant has stuck with Linux throughout the company's
life, in part, because it
was unhappy with the terms of another software company. Which borgware company is he referring to?"
He was refering to Microsoft!
Which borgware company is he referring to?
It's Apple.
Surprise.
SCO OpenServer!
Seriously-- yeah it is MS, but the problem exists with any proprietary technology. The company doesn't need to be borg-like, just closed.
I've had plenty of jobs where we got locked in on the O.S. or on applications and it sucks. It is a rotten feeling when you want something changed but it is either impossible or it will cost you an arm and a leg. (Then you have to wait on their timing too)
I know throwing apple out there is a bit inflammatory around here but it proves the point. There are plenty of bad options out there without even pointing out Microsoft.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Google does a lot of things differently than most OSes are meant for. It's only logical that they'd choose one that they can customize to their needs...
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
He was refering to Microsoft!
The article seems to imply that. But on closer reading, it indicates that Microsoft was just used as an example. The same would have been equally true of Sun, SGI, IBM, etc. And when you really look at what they were doing with Google, I think that Sun is actually more likely to have been the target than Microsoft.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why can't I run the really cool stuff like Google Earth on my Debian machine
I had a circuits professor who had either done some contract work or worked at Google back in 2000. He told me and a couple other students that they used Salckware and ran the entire site from RAM, OS and all. Before that talk I never new you could run entire systems directly from RAM. Wild.
Also, the freedom to change the bits that you need changed. Don't like that particular piece of software? Change it. Don't ask any other company - just do it.
You can't do that with most commercial products. All you can do is put in a feature request, and hope that it is implemented before the sun goes cold. (Yes, I know that some companies do, but some do not.)
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
if they've relied on it so much, it would be nice if some of their apps would run on linux.
When you look at copyrights like a government regulation that controlls how people use information, rather than some kind of "property" right. Then it becomes clear that Linux is truely more accountable to free market paradigms, and in the information age - as information becomes commoditized, that will be even more so - as the companies that treat unrestricted copying over the internet like a threat will loose, and those that treat it like an advantage will win.
It's good to see some company finally step up to the plate and publicly admits that free/open source software provides independence and freedom. IBM, Novell, HP always put out the "cheaper" argument which is seen as "less value".
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
This is offtopic, but because it didn't survive the submission I did I thought it would be best to post it attached to another Google story.
A few days ago I noticed several websites which are linked by default in the Google Personalized Homepage show staggering increases in web traffic and page views. According to Alexa.com Wired more than doubled and also Slashdot , the NY Times and the Washington Post show remarkable growth at the end of july.
Is this a redefinition of 'slashdotting' or is there something else going on?
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Google can't pay $90 a CPU for Windows XP Professional Global Oppression Server or whatever. (I'm a Mac guy so I don't know exactly what Windows is calling itself now.) I bet both Microsoft and Sun are kicking themselves for not cutting Google a deal. Imagine the PR Sun could have gotten by using Google as a reference customer.
Tristan Yates
Even if he is referring to MS, it's not as if google can be considered impartial. They must have known they'd be competing with redmond on one level or another. How would it sound if someone said to them, yeah but doesn't your search technology run on Windows? Not horrible but not great either. Especially if the competition becomes even more heated.
Besides being customizable, Google uses oodles of servers. At $300 / seat for something proprietary, they are saving ungodly amounts of money.
In the end though, it is always about control.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Open source can never be very easy to use and easy to run
Ever hear of a product called Tivo? Runs Linux. Or maybe a linksys router...
I guess those products are beyond your ability to use or run...
Amiga?
No, no wait... DEC. Yeah! Google is so fast because it does NOT run on a PDP-10.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Linux is successful many say because of Google- Google being the free 24/7 searchable customer support for your Linux problem. Somewhat ironic that Google's success is in part from using Linux.
When a popular web site links to another web site, the link target gets a lot of hits.
Slashdot is one example of this. Fark is another. SomethingAwful's Awful Links of the Day are another. Netscape's "What's Cool" is one of the first. I don't see what the big deal is. Google could start soliciting payments to link more sites -- oh wait, as a company that makes nearly all its money from advertising, that's what Google always does!
For more information, click here.
In my 50-node-and-smaller networks, it's just so much nicer to be able to install the OS on the machines and not have to mess with licensing. I think that goodness would be that much sweeter on a 500-node network.
:-).
They could have used *BSD, but that would have been like Harvard boys using Yale locks. A bunch of Stanford grads use Berkeley-derived stuff? Get real
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
And the price of OSS is not its main draw. I chose to develop a number of projects with Java rather than Visual Studio because VS was expensive to buy, while Java cost nothing. But then I was frustrated by my dependence on Sun to fix problems in the closed VM and class libraries. So I'm now developing on an OSS language and framework.
This was at the bottom of the article when I read it:
/CBRincludes/related_news.asp, line 137
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error '80040e31'
Timeout expired
But! You would have the comfort of knowing that you are running a Certified Microsoft(R) Product!
Article mirror:
http://firepacket.net/mirror/unhappy.html
That one tripped me up. A communist nazi would be a very conflicted person indeed.
Let me help you out with some terms:
Communism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
Fascism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Nazism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
Stalinism -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism
All very similar but not all the same thing.
I agree... 100% Google has a huge database of user info.
:)
The thing is, this is one time were I AGREE to it. Their services are good, and make me lower my walls a bit. I am generally very anal about companies collecting information, but this is one time were I am a hypocrite.
Google is just another company to me and their "Do no evil" policy is meaningless (I mean do other companies actually sit around in high backed chairs and think of how to "do evil"?) Unfortunately the provide great services, and their "spying" has little impact on me... so if they need to do it to survive and provide good things, then they can have it.
This once... period... you other fuckers be warned
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
It's a little more thana kernel really. Only the OSX GUI is really closed.
But Google would not need that part for a million headless boxes in a rack. Being able to modify Darwin would let them do as much customizing as they have done with Linix.
However of course when you have a million boxes any licencing fee is too much, so they are really better off with Linux anyway as it's been hammered on a lot more, even though they could have just grabbed Darwin and gone with it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like whoever moderated your comment as Insightful?
If you take away your flamebait tone and your off-topic remarks about graphic and media software support which are not relevant for Google's server farm it sounds like the point you're making is to "use the right tool for the job". From this article for Google it looks like the right tool for their purposes is an OS that lets them make their own customizations.
If that is an annoying poke at Microsoft and other proprietary vendors then so be it. For this particular job they aren't the right tool.
Transmitting energy without a license.
Perhaps the whole reason Google was created in the first place was someone sick of trying to find how to change resolutions in X-Windows for Linux using only AltaVista wanted a batter way.
I could see that being possible...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First, do you have some magic method you want to share for automatically logging into, and staying logged onto, an account-based service w/o cookies?
Wow! The 1K max size cookie on my computer stores the IP and info of every single search that is done on google?
Forget search revenues, they need to patent and sell that compression algorithm!
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I don't think "$300 / seat for something proprietary" really matters that much. Even if they re-bought that license every single year, it is less than $1/day to match whatever they are paying the butt that sits in the seat.
I think you are missing a couple of things. First off, Google wasn't always a multibillion dollar company. They were a startup first, and when you are a startup with no revenue, capital is damn scarce. In that environment, avoiding the cost of software licenses is an obvious way to economize.
Fast forward to the day you start earning some revenue, and maybe even an operating profit. You have lots of demands for reinvesting the money for further growth. You could put some of it into software licenses for a commercial OS, and the costs of converting your infrastructure and porting your code, or you could put it into more hardware (for the cost of OS licenses, google could probably have bought 20-30% more capacity), to handle more customers, and more engineers, to improve your product, and marketing/sales to keep stoking your growth.
The biggest reason to go with a commercial vendor is that you can take advantage of the investment they are amortizing over a large sales volume. This can be a good thing if you have rather ordinary problems you are trying to solve, but someone like google (or amazon, etc) doesn't have ordinary problems, so they are forced to create their own solutions (which also gives them a competitive advantage). Overtime, the rest of the world might catch up to the point that commercial vendors now offer solutions, but again, the value you gain from replacing your existing solutions has to be weighed against the other things you could do with the money.
People *think* that when you type in a search and the previous search history comes up is a cookie. We know better of course :)
I had a mate who I convinced to use firefox and he complained that these "cookies" were staying there even when he told FF to remove them! Heh, the public have no idea sometimes :)
Can your karma go above being Excellent?
Furthermore, Market Cap != Liquid Assets. Market Capitalization is the sum of the current value of all outstanding shares, not what they sold the shares to the brokers for.
Imagine a small company that sells 50000 shares to the IPO brokers at $10. Due to buzz, rumours, or manipulation, the shares go up to $1000 per share. The company's market capitalization is now 50 million, but the company only has 1/2 million in the bank.
Is this why Google Earth, Google Desktop Bar, Google Web Accelerator all support Windoze only ? Google might be harnessing the power of Linux behind the scenes, but all of its innovations for desktop users are on M$ only. Granted, that they are Beta/Preview versions .. but Linux could be a great candidate too !
I believe that it's different because they're not trying to hide what they collect, and why, from anyone.
Remember that Microsoft sites have to reboot at least once every month after installing patches.
Linux sites often can avoid this (at least as far as Netcraft is concerned; restarting Apache does not cut the uptime), however there have been so many kernel updates last year that a Linux system with a year of uptime is a bit questionable as well.
(of course most kernel updates are for local exploits only; one could decide a properly firewalled system does not need them)
I almost got my ass kicked for using the word "borgware" today.
Prior to my getting hired by the company I presently work for, there was a painful BSA audit. I can say with 100$ certainty that the BSA is the main reason for our migration to Linux.
What is this gmail system? You mean you don't have your own email system on your own website? What, has Slashdot been taken over by a herd of little old ladies in flower hats?
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."