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Android's Success a Threat To Free Software?
Glyn Moody writes "Two years after its launch, Google's Linux-based Android platform is finally making its presence felt in the world of smartphones. Around 20,000 apps have been written for it. Although well behind the iPhone's tally, that's significantly more than just a few months ago. But there's a problem: few of these Android apps are free software. Instead, we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack — open source underneath, and proprietary on top. If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem. So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"
I don't see the problem.
> So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?
Ummm... writing good, foss apps to do the things you need/want to do? Seems obvious.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Gonna go out on a limb here and say "Develop apps for Android."
I suppose it isn't that simple. In any case if the platform becomes popular people with write the open free software, won't they?
It all starts at 0
Worse, ifeffortsto enable Android apps to run on distros like Ubuntu succeed, then we may see closed-source software being used on the free software stack there, too. Ironically, Android's success could harm not just open source's chances in the world of mobile phones, but even on the desktop.
Huh, that's a really funny statement. I thought one of the biggest barriers to Linux on the desktop was the fact that we couldn't entice proprietary manufacturers (from device drivers to bulky enterprise solutions) to also release and thoroughly support a Linux distribution of their software. Hell, every other week we're bitching about the sad state of gaming on Linux or sound on Linux and let's just face it: you need to improve that before people will buy Linux for that purpose. And now we're concerned that proprietary will be released on Android? And it might challenge Linux? Good. If it can manage that, good for it. I assure you that if proprietary manufacturers see Android as a viable release alternative to Windows CE, Symbian, etc, that is when you're going to see everyone embrace an open source product.
And really, what's wrong with that? The people who wanted to release their open source software still are but now the people that want to release their closed source software still are and can. And the best part about it is everyone's using an open source stack to support their application.
I don't know about you but if you could replace Windows with Linux on the desktop even though 99% of the apps running on it were proprietary, I would be much more happy with the state of things.
We need both FOSS and proprietary software. Give both of them what they want like options to achieve their goals and then you will have a truly great product that helps the community and humanity as a whole in utilizing computers.
My work here is dung.
"The community" could come up with a very restrictive license that doesn't allow that sort of thing, which Google et. al. will just not use anyway.
The point of open source and free software is that it's supposed to be better than proprietary. It's supposed to win on merit, not restrictive licensing or "the community" trying to force things.
This is not news in any way. Apple's platforms (Mac and iPhone) have been successful for precisely the same reason. They exploit open source for the infrastructure (OS and developer tool chain) and layer proprietary applications on top for profitability.
Fix it. Write equivalent open source apps. There's nothing wrong (in my book) with running proprietary on top of open source (so long as this isn't a violation of the license). Value for the platform is value for the platform.
If the platform succeeds, the open source equivalents will be there eventually.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Its like saying that Linux is a threat to feee software because you can run commercial applications. Surley the key to it taking off is having a mix of free and commercial applications.
That's no different from desktops, where 98% run Windows or OSX, and 2% run Linux or FreeBSD or some other open environment.
What does the Android license say as compared to other licenses, the GPL, Apache, BSD, Apple and Microsoft for instance ?
It still means that more people is using open source. Maybe more important, is what is underneath, you can easily switch propietary "front" apps for open alternatives, but not so easily change whats running below them. And the advantages that give you that basement (probably more secure, auditable, even you could modify it, etc) will increase trust in open source to the ones still reticent to use it.
Could be nice that all Android apps to be open source, but buiding a mixed ecosystem around it brings more people to the party anyway.
I'm sick of those fundamentalists. What could be healthier than an open source platform without vendor lock-in, that anybody can use to generate some income. I love what has been produced in the spirit of open source and nobody won't take this away. But the everything must be free mentality is a bigger threat than people making money by selling software in binary form for a living. Good software means months of work and pizza and coffee need to be paid for. And experience has shown that at max 0.5% of people pay for something that they can get for free easily and legally.
There is a disconnect between open source proponents and the way open source software is actually used.
The reason that Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP is so successful is that it eliminates a cost and provides a standardized platform that is easy to maintain and replicate.
There are billions of dollars' worth of proprietary software running on top of that stack.
Part of the reason for the complete and utter failure of Affero GPL is that it gives an implicit right of audit and can result in what the UK calls an "Anton Pillar" order which could literally result in a team of bailiffs seizing and searching your servers in case you modified some AGPL software.
The point is, that while there is public consensus on the use of open source for infrastructure, there is no similar enthusiasm for viral obligations nor is there any interest in opening up the value-add/secret sauce on the top of the stack.
Vote with your wallets. Maemo, the most open internet-tablet/smartphone platform currently on the market (assuming OpenMoko is dead). Not perfectly open, but a lot better than the Android.
From the 770 in 2005, to the N800 and N810 in 2007 to the latest release of the N900 this year.
There's even third-party clone which the platform needs to become truely mainstream.
If he gets me an android-enabled phone this christmas.
Then i'll start writing free, open source, apps for it....but 'till then...my phone is too old for even thinking about writing apps for it.
Celebrating. Now we have a program that we can point to, showing how an open-source program can be better than their closed counterparts.
Also, we need to be wary. If Android fails (gets a ton of viruses and spyware), it could be a large black mark on the open-source community.
mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world
No!. phones won't be the main computing platform. They're far too small, limited, have terrible human-input interfaces, too small screens and puny batteries. What we probably will see is devices that incorporate phones, storage, decent screens and the like. These will just use the phone as another networking interface and will be "proper" computers in their own right (probably running "Linux-mobile" or somesuch). There will be no reason why these devices can't or won't run paid-for or free applications - provided someone writes them ...
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The old PalmOS has by far the most "apps" and they don't have to be approved by anyone:
http://www.freewarepalm.com/
http://www.handango.com/
http://www.pocketgear.com/
http://www.mobihand.com/
http://www.pdastreet.com/
and also: http://sf.net/
I never understand why everyone is so amazed by the iPhone's "Apps". Handheld apps have been around for over 10 years.
Commercial software is what leads to open source software in many cases. When someone makes an app that you have to pay for, someone else will write one that you don't. MySQL was not first, it was the answer for those that couldn't afford Oracle, DB2, etc.
Most open source programmers enjoy programming. One will see a need and fill it with their own project. The more people that want that need filled, the more projects and higher quality projects we will see.
And nothing of value was lost?
If I'm a developer trying to write a major app - say a wordprocessor or an operating system - I have a huge job ahead of me and hence, a good incentive to recruit the help of the FOSS community by opening my code. Likewise, the community has a stronmg incentive to help.
A lot of "Apps", however, tend to be fairly simple, verging on the trivial, single-purpose applications, and a good one might owe more to being a cool idea rather than a clever and intricate bit of coding. There's less incentive to share (and less incentive for the community to help).
Of course, the community still gains from the increasing popularity of the underlying, open source OS and the "big tools" (like WebKit).
I suspect that open source will continue to be better at systems & infrastructure stuff (where the target audience is programmers or other nerds) than user-facing apps. Nerds aren't good at writing software for non-nerds.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Listen, nobody is going to write commercial quality games and release them for free.
That's what this is about. I have a Droid, and the games are the only thing in the Market costing any money.
The Droid does more than the iPhone out of the box, and it does it all free and Free. Quit your damn bitching.
For fuck sakes, maybe Google could pay out to some developers for some free games, to enhance the sales pitch, but short of that - it's not happening.
Every iteration of the playstation has had an official 'free' development environment for homebrew. And yet, all PSX, PS2, and PS3 software out there is not free. How can this be? Where are all the quality Free titles on XBox marketplace, or Wii-ware? HOW CAN THIS BE! How could Valve not release Left 4 Dead 2 for free, don't they know that they owe the whole entire world!
Articles like this are why slashdot is irrelevant.
>So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"
Support open hardware platforms like Neo. Buy the kit, or donate to people working on it.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
With all due respect to Richard Stallman and others who agree with that philosophy, to expect that people are not going to write commercial software for free platforms is just plain daffy. Is it so unreasonable to expect a combination of the software?
I mean, if it has major uses to it, it doesn't need to be free. You can charge a low reasonable price for it.
- PC
Look, as much as all this Cathedral and Bazaar/Chaos crap sounds good in some righteous fight against the man, I've been using and helping to build Linux since 1995 and what we have sorely needed is some form of direction and vision. OS X has made such massive leaps and bounds with a relatively small number of developers because they have a solid vision and goal steering their efforts. We just flail about and continually eschew any sort of cohesive goal. It shows. Linus doesn't want to take control and everyone wants to claim that it is not needed, but amazingly the Kernel itself requires this type of management and oversight... and it is always the most progressive part of the whole. But what good is the best kernel without a supporting structure? It's time to either take the bull by the horns, or step back and allow a company like Google or Canonical to do it. Canonical and Ubuntu have floundered and have not come out as that entity even with the success in interest they garnered (like Red Hat before it), so it's time for another to try. I could care less who finally does it, just get it done!
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Wrong.
I went and clicked the links (I know, I am new here) and if you look at the actual data in AndroidLib (http://www.androlib.com/appstatsfreepaid.aspx), you will see that 60% of the apps are free apps.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Would you rather the entire phone system remain proprietary?
Is this really a terrible situation that atleast the phone's core OS is FOSS, and that there is a nice framework for open development?
This is a good thing.
Please don't bother insisting that you're either 100% "free" or not at all. True freedom is choice. Telling people that they shouldn't have the freedom to run proprietary apps on top of FOSS under-pinnings really doesn't sound like freedom to me.
Linux is making more and more in-roads. I'd rather avoid the zealotry that gives FOSS a bad name. It really is counter-productive. If you care about FOSS and truly want to advocate for the growth and adoption of FOSS, then please tone it down just a little bit. Instead of attacking companies like Google which really push FOSS (releasing MySQL and Wine patches, paying for Summer of Code, constantly opening up the source to a number of projects, creating Android, creating Chrome browser, creating Chrome OS, funding Mozilla, etc), how about we support them.
This was the EXACT same argument with Firefox. Stallman and the FSF attacked Firefox because it allowed proprietary extensions. I wouldn't be shocked if the majority of Firefox extensions are proprietary. He encouraged people to boycott Firefox. Doing so would only benefit IE. Adopting Firefox has done wonders for FOSS. It was a gateway to FOSS for many people who had never heard of it before, or would never consider it before.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
How is this different from running proprietary PHP & MySQL code on a Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP server?
The platform underneath is FOSS, but what developers choose to do with the open source tools is their business.
I don't have to show you my PHP & MySQL code running on my website which runs either advertisements or subscription-based models.
Why does proprietary software for sale on the Android pose a threat to FOSS?
On the contrary, I say this is a good thing as more people will use the platform as more software is made available to it.
Moreover, Just because software is free doesn't make it good. GIMP is no substitute for Photoshop as any professional graphic designer will attest. I've used GIMP, and it's rather clunky and not enough for my professional needs. And Tremulous/Saurbaten is no Left 4 Dead/Modern Warfare/Crysis. Now back to the topic of free platforms:
I fell in love with the newest versions of Ubuntu/Linux Mint and with a few customizations and enabling of the Compiz/Fusion desktop eye-candy, my mind was blown away and found 'em even better than Mac desktop interfaces.
When I switched back to WinXP, I felt really, really limited as a lot of features on GNOME + Compiz Fusion were amazing for productivity and VERY VERY pretty.
Anyway, long story short, although I really prefer Linux Mint + GNOME + Compiz Fusion over WinXP, unfortunately, my professional tools of Adobe Photoshop CS4 + Flash CS4 IDE only run on WinXP and don't run on Linux (and don't forget my games! most of them don't run on linux!)
As much as I love the FOSS platform I mentioned above, the stuff I use to make a living and for entertainment doesn't run on it, so tough beans.
If anything, proprietary software should be welcomed with very very open arms on Android as it enriches the ecosystem. What good is a platform if there are not enough decent apps for it?
And PLEASE, people need to make a living from creating software. You can't expect everything to be free so pony up and reward developers for creating good apps by buying their products.
And also, notice that a lot of people developing games for mobile phones now are indie developers. Reward indie developers! Buy their games if they are good and are decently priced!
That is all.
http://www.object404.com
The primary reason Linux developed is Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies. The market wants competition. I see no indication that Android prevents competition among apps.
Linux has always had proprietary aps as far as I know. My first experience with Linux (not very long ago) was, after compiling level 1 Gentoo (ug... not a good intro IMO, I really wish I could get those 2 days back), was putting MatLab on it, and getting the site license linked properly (as well as setting up a local copy of the license to work when the net was down and setting a cron job to sync the two when up, not sure if that was technically legal, but it sure worked better).
I developed software (at university) on linux, in MatLab. There is nothing wrong IMO with prop. software on a Free OS.
In a seriously ironic twist the software developed was GPL, so we made Free software that ran in a proprietary interpreter on a Free OS. /sigh at that.
My adviser also ran Cygwin in Windows running in a VM under Gentoo, I still have to
Huh, that's a really funny statement. I thought one of the biggest barriers to Linux on the desktop was the fact that we couldn't entice proprietary manufacturers (from device drivers to bulky enterprise solutions) to also release and thoroughly support a Linux distribution of their software. Hell, every other week we're bitching about the sad state of gaming on Linux or sound on Linux and let's just face it: you need to improve that before people will buy Linux for that purpose. And now we're concerned that proprietary will be released on Android? .
Completely agree. The trick is to win the developers, and Android is successfully doing this. The more developers work on Android applications, the more popular Linux will become. More power to Android developers!
Instead, we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack — open source underneath, and proprietary on top.
Maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet, but HUH? When did this become new? I've been running Opera on my Kubuntu box since day one (back in '06). I also do believe Lotus Symphony is closed source (or was at one point). Irregardless, it's not new.
And I also want to echo what other people have said: They're developing closed-source apps to run on an open-source system. Bravo! Good on them. In the end, as long as they respect the licensing contraints, it's all good in my book.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Amen, if Peachtree and Quicken were on Linux, and maybe AutoCAD, ...what business would need Vista for much of anything? Bring on the proprietary apps alongside the free ones!
Don't kid yourself. Without Stallman and his supporters there would have been no FSF, no GCC to compile free programmes, no utilities to facilitate the creation of the Linux Kernel and you would be paying top dollar for your Microsoft OS and applications. Before the Linux Kernel came along if you wanted in to UNIX you had to fork out serious money. Stallman, the FSF and Linux (that's why he wants you to call it GNU/Linux see, so that you get to know the history) changed all that in a fundamental way.
So sure, go ahead and say you are sick of those fundamentalists. What have you done to make it all happen? Nothing.
And incidentally, nobody is saying you shouldn't charge for software you write.
Microsoft is evil because they want to enforce vendor lock in! How dare they try to push an all Microsoft ecosystem! Microsoft is evil because they aren't very interoperable!
What? You want to run proprietary apps on FOSS? We can't have that. We want to enforce a lock in strategy where you have to have this entire ecosystem of 100% free apps, or nothing else! And if someone dares suggest interoperability with Microsoft products (such as when OpenOffice contraversally added support for MS Office 2007 documents) I'll blast them for it! How dare they!
(If you think I'm exaggerating, read the Boycott Novell blog, which does in fact blast Novell for working on interoperability with Microsoft,)
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
As I see it, there is nothing to worry so much about this division, open source OS and not open source apps. After all, forcing the apps to be open source because the OS is open source, is not the way to go. What the OS does is it manages the hardware and paves the way for the apps to do what they were designed to do. What the designers decide to do with their designed apps is something else. There exist proprietary and commercial software in Linux/BSD as well. How I see it is indeed like an ecosystem, a sort of evolutive selection. Just as new species develop in nature, the same is happening in software and in development. The software models change based on the same principles of selection which is not dictated by some regulation or legislation or SelectionsGodForce.
What the comunity can do is continue to do what it has historically demonstrated to do best: develop software of quality using its own mechanism, as we all know how open source development process works. Ultimately in the end, the most balanced software will remain. ('balanced' meaning combinations of whatever criteria the users will deem either valuable or not worthy)
Fix it. Write equivalent open source apps.
Development by a free software community works for some kinds of apps, where the requirements are well defined. But it doesn't work for other kinds of apps:
I'm glad that there is at least some competition out there to drive innovation, but perhaps the one thing that might just be dying here is software that is given away for free? There is a new generation of programmers and developers out there that are brought into this market with the idea of actually making money for their efforts. Think 10 or 15 years ago when you appreciated getting your name (or 'nym) out there as credit for free software and not much more. No offense, but the debt-riddled entitlement generation has to be able to pay the bills.
I'm not faulting anyone for that, but just don't sit back here and act all "shocky" when someone wants to actually charge money for their efforts. Capitalism done right isn't a bad thing. It got the market where it is today. Besides, as least it's the base layer that is open source with proprietary apps on top, and not the other way around.
And please, let's drop this whole mentality of the "phone" being the platform of the future. It's not a "phone" anymore, it's damn computer that happens to have a wireless network connection built in. Stop calling it a "phone" already. It stopped being a "phone" about 5 years, three browsers, two touch screens, 512MB,400mhz, and 75,000 apps ago.
If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world [...]
Aside from sheer numbers, I'm not sure that actually means anything. Of the twenty or so applications I use most commonly on my PC, none of them would translate to a phone in any useful way, mostly because of the lack of a full-sized monitor and keyboard. How much gets done on mobile phones -- other than talking and texting -- that would materially affect anything of consequence if it suddenly stopped?
The main threat to FOSS is a broad failure to capitalize on its potential strengths because too much FOSS development is devoted to playing a rather childish game of imitating commercial software development -- a curious choice, considering that the shoddiness of commercial software was one of the driving forces behind the emergence of FOSS. What people are using on their phones has about as much importance as what's running inside the control box for your HVAC system.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
There is a distinct threat to FOSS in smartphones; but it isn't android, or even the largely proprietary apps running on top of it. Heck, on the software side, having a FOSS OS as a rapidly rising contender is at least as good, if not better, than things have ever been on the PC side. Especially since, if the underlying OS is FOSS, and that is what commercial applications are developed on, it is quite easy to compromise only as much as needed in order to run particular proprietary applications(compare to say, the situation with Linux, where most proprietary apps are for windows, so if you need to use just one, you either have to pray it works with Wine, or dual boot, or virtualize.) If both proprietary and FOSS apps are running on a FOSS base, you can freely pick and chose.
The problem is the hardware, and the carriers.
With PCs, there is nothing(aside from certain driver issues) stopping you from running whatever you want on your hardware. And, with a bit of informed shopping, you can usually get a desirable hardware configuration without too much trouble. With phones, though, the manufacturers and carriers have their hooks into the process much more deeply. While the implementations have often been pretty weak, allowing a variety of hacks, proprietary components explicitly targeted against the user are ubiquitous(SIM locks, anyone?) and even the FOSS components are apt to be more or less tivoized on most handsets that you can actually buy.
I'd say that smartphone software is shaping up to be freer than PC software; but smartphone hardware is far closer to dystopian trusted computing/Palladium/NGSCB stuff than PC hardware is.
"So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"
Which community are you referring too? the business community or the open source community? I suppose google being a bussiness doing quite well in other areas can afford to donate to the open source community, but the developers of these apps have to make a living. What would one expect?
If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world
Citation please?
I strongly disagree. Open Source has mainly been brought forward by pragmatists as Linus with a sense to attract high level software industry supporters. The fundamentalists were, the last time I checked, still working on GNU/Hurd. ;)
"witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack -- open source underneath, and proprietary on top"
I believe we already have this stack and call it the internet.
I'd rather have a open source OS with proprietary apps on top than a proprietary OS with free apps on top.
"If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem."
Yeah, and if I go to the bathroom, the moon might be made of green cheese. But it's not, and I have no support, thus making such a claim ridiculous.
... development.
As far as I am concerned, FOSS isn't essential in all niche markets. It's essential wherever the health of my data is concerned - that is, for document importers/exporters, filesystems, and for networking. It's very useful in relation to programming languages - compilers, interpreters, and runtimes should be FOSS.
With those two categories, you've almost (but not quite) covered operating systems. Filesystems, networking and to an extent language runtimes (libc) are essential elements of an operating system (not just the kernel, I'm talking about the whole package). So let's extend the argument to all aspects of an OS... and you can pretty much lump everything I mentioned together under the "infrastructure" tag.
For "infrastructure" software, FOSS is useful or even essential. It'll let programmers work with few restrictions on how software interacts.
When it comes to the display and manipulation of my data, I'm less fussed. If a non-free software is the best software for that task, and it's edge over the free competitors is great enough to warrant paying, I'll gladly pay for it. If not, I'll stick to free software.
Every iteration of the playstation has had an official 'free' development environment for homebrew. And yet, all PSX, PS2, and PS3 software out there is not free. How can this be?
The homebrew-capable versions of the PS1, PS2, and PS3 were all discontinued long before the proprietary-software-only console was.
Where are all the quality Free titles on XBox marketplace, or Wii-ware?
Sure, Internet Channel uses a lot of permissively licensed Free libraries, but Nintendo explicitly prohibits marketing copylefted software for the hardware that it sells. Remember the Pajama Sam incident?
Really? Why?
There are a massive number of paid apps developed for these phones because developers have noticed that these users have no qualms about paying $500 for a cell phone. Chances are these people are willing to pay cash for an app along with it. It's money chasing and there's nothing wrong with that.
lack of a full-sized monitor
Until touch-screen phones start to follow the Zune HD in including an HDMI port.
materially affect anything of consequence
Was this stipulation intended to specifically exclude video games?
a curious choice, considering that the shoddiness of commercial software was one of the driving forces behind the emergence of FOSS.
It wasn't the shoddiness of concept of proprietary commercial software but the shoddiness of implementation. The GNU project sprang from a defect in a printer driver that the manufacturer refused to let university students correct.
What else do yo expect when you essentially give away source code to commercial players with traditional "intellectual property" morale?
It was bound to happen sooner or later. When you give food to wolves, don't expect them to return the favor. A wolf is a wolf, it is born a wolf, lives a wolf, and in most cases dies a wolf.
A smart idea would be to have a license that restricts not just mixing open source code with propritary (something GPL now handles well, restricting it, that is) but also bundling open source software with proprietary components. There should be minimal and weakest link between parts where some components are open-source and others are proprietary. That would teach those vultures a lesson. Because what they do now is that they eat from the table, but do not give anything back - they use the open source that thousands of people helped debug and release, and then think of it as something ready to be used and stack their own oldschool products on top of it, if slightly modified to both work on top of the underlying open source tech and give impression as if they are part of open-source ecosystem, when in reality their fingers are still twitching in fear someone else might steal their "proprietary" technology.
The reasons to write an OSS app for Andriod or iPhone are the same as any other open source software.
I developed an Open Source game for the iPhone called Dark Nova. We're looking at porting it to Andriod right now. The game is based off Space Trader for the Palm which is itself GPL.
Dark Nova is open source. We build the retail app from the Google Code repo. We charge $1 for the game in the App Store. So far this has worked out pretty well. We've had an OSS developer contribute some helpful code. Starting with a port instead of from scratch lowered the initial risk/investment for a 1st time app developer.
Our game is for sale and we're making money on it. The code is under the Apache License. The graphics and music are copyrighted and the name is trademarked. I think it's a great model and holds true to the path laid out by Red Hat and others. If someone wants to take the trouble the "roll-their-own" they can have the game for free. Most folks just pay the dollar. If someone wants to use the code. It's up there. If someone wants to help, they can.
Of course the motivation of this post is a shameless plug. This is my first OSS project and I could use any help/advice I can get with development or management of the project. The Dark Nova Google Code site is here
Birth, huh? I'll try to remember that risk before I allow it to infect my Linux computer (with a few Loki games installed) that runs Netscape 4 with the Flash and Acrobat plugins, displayed on my screen thanks to Nvidia's driver.
I think the birth you're talking about, happened in the mid 1990s at the latest. I remember running a proprietary Linux in 1996 from Caldera which had some weird Caldera-only extension for mounting a Netware fileserver. (Yes, other dists could talk to Netware too, but Caldera had some "special" stuff for that.) And the reason I was running Linux, was that I was trying out a proprietary compiler&libraries that was going to help me port a legacy (MSDOS) app to Unixes. [Though that project ended up getting canceled after I showed we could do it :( ]
We've been through all this bullshit before. And if it makes you feel any better, Free Software not only survived but has only gained marketshare since then. Free Software can survive Android proprietary apps.
The same thing you've always done. If you want maintainable software, then Just Say No to the proprietary single-vendor stuff. Vote with your wallet.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Duh... all that and I don't include the code link. CODE IS HERE!!! aka https://code.google.com/p/darknova-iphone/
Did you read the GP's post? Stallman and the FSF laid the entire framework for getting to where we are today. No Stallman and no FSF means no GCC, no GPL, no concept of free (as in freedom) software. We may have had something come along later on, but it certainly wouldn't have been as soon as it did, if it came at all. This has nothing to do with the 'pragmatist' vs. 'idealist' split that many people see when comparing 'open source' to 'free' -- it just has to do with who setup the groundwork for all of that to possibly happen at the time it did in the way it did.
Say anything you wish to about the idealism/'fundamentalism' of Stallman (and some other people involved with the FSF), but don't disregard or disrespect their enormous contributions.
There's a self identification happening here with the "open source community" for a number of reasons, and it's a common occurrence among a lot of open source advocates. What usually happens is that fans end up with a binary view of the software production system... specifically the idea that there exists an "us and them" conflict between open source and commercial software, and between the authors of same. It's kind of the same impulse that makes people identify with a sports team based in their city or state as "their" team, or advocating their own brand of computer for emotional rather than rational reasons.
Humans want to belong to groups, they get a good feeling from it. So even in cases where clear "us and them" groups don't exist, they perceive them, since without a group they have nowhere to belong.
There are a lot of reasons for this both biological and social. The phenomenon seems to be a human universal, though.
To make things more complicated, once a person identifies his or herself with a group, then they personalize attacks on or praise for that group themselves.. it's a major reason they want to belong in the first place, since it can provide immense positive feelings with little effort, and can provide them more often than a single person's efforts alone would.
This personalization usually means whomever is involved can no longer be effectively reasoned with where the group, it's attributes, or goals are concerned. This is because either consciously or subconsciously that person feels threatened by any suggestion that the group is "wrong" or incorrect, or even worse that the perceived group doesn't exist.
So, in this case the submitter is assuming that the rest of the folks here on Slashdot are A) Aware of the "us and them" groups, B) Part of the "us" group, and C) Also concerned about this "issue" which has been brought to light (probably only partly for advocacy reasons... another large burst of good emotional feelings comes from actively representing the group to which one belongs, and warning of impending doom is a good way to represent. See also the football fans that paint themselves and wear their team's colors.
The truth in this case is that there are many more parties involved than just two, and that the assumed conflict doesn't exist. If one looks back to the origins of the free software movement, there were no restrictions placed on commercial use of the GPL software (or its predecessors). In fact, the GPL allows commercial use of licensed software without fee or restriction except for the provision to distribute source code.
The hard thing for a lot of people who are concerned about this "conflict" to wrap their head around is that there's no conflict, and in fact commercial software stacked on top of open source is a very good thing for any open source platform... it means everyone wins. People can make money off of their work, other people can get commercially supported apps they need, and no one is held hostage to a closed source operating system or distribution method.
Imagine what the iPhone would be like if Apple didn't control the OS, and wasn't able to control the software written for the device... there'd be far fewer $9 apps that are crap since someone would immediately write something better, and having no one to say "no" would get it published.
Erik
There are already phones with open source software. They are somewhat limited to what thy can do and rough on edges, but its pnly begining.
I see no reason why you "have to" use phone for that.
Author is concerned with mobile phones, while mobile phone technology is getting simply out of date. As simple as that. There will be computers in size comparable to mobile phones with all sort of wireless connectivity and connection to internet, which will make cellular networks obsolete. Why call and waste money when u have relatively cheap wireless connection with same range as mobile phones(GPRS and similar stuff), which is capable of sending receiving phone calls or able to use VOIP?
...of course, what else could be expected from Slashdot?
No, I doubt this is a "threat to free software." Author and Slashdot editor highly overestimate the impact of smartphone software on the vast universe of computing platforms for which F/OSS software is written. Given the trivial aspect of most smartphone software, I seriously doubt the trends as mentioned by the author will even have a ripple effect on the larger picture.
I long for the days for real geek news on Slashdot, not the random rantings of a nobody who somehow sneak conjecture and fallacy by the editors on a daily basis.
"...we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack — open source underneath, and proprietary on top. If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem...."
This has been going on for years and is one of the main drivers of OS. Many - not all - companies know the importance of contributing to source, making fixes public, and are even willing to give charitable contributions. If they can't *use* OS in their products - or can't modify OS for their own needs, then OS would become a "cute" offshoot of program development.
What we are really witnessing is a whole new generation of tech reporters who must now come to terms with what "open source" really is. It's a constant, tiring, education process.....
-CF
I don't care if the phone makers want to rebirth the shareware market of the early '90s; eventually people will get tired of paying per feature and expect the good ones to be rolled into the core functionality of the OS or the larger applications they use, ala winzip.
What worries me about android is how all the phones they sell with it still need to be jail broken before you can make use of the freedoms in the free operating system. Surely that's a greater threat to your control over the software in your life than the fact that people are also willing to sell you closed software.
Most FOSS a user runs is a FOSS derivative of an already existing proprietary product. Linux was only written years after it was well understood how to develop a modern OS. It was well understood how to develop a desktop environment when Gnome and KDE came along. This is the pattern followed by most end-user FOSS software.
And why shouldn't it be that way on new mobile platforms? How else do you propose to reward the innovation and labor of those developing software for these platforms? That's not a rhetorical question. If you have a viable alternative, I'd like to hear it. The people who develop these mass market applications need to eat and pay their bills. All the more so the case in the present economic climate. Time is money, and skilled professionals are much less willing to give their time away for free.
Once the economy recovers, and once the best apps and the best ways of doing things on these new platforms begins to solidify, then we will see FOSS replacements come along for them.
Would the author rather that device vendors increase the cost of their devices by 1000% in order to subsidize app developers? Would the author rather that the government tax him in order to subsidize app developers? No? Well in that case he gets to wait until the apps become commoditized and have FOSS replacements.
Didn't your mother ever tell you that beggars can't be choosers?
This reminds me of all those years of people complaining that linux was too divided, and now that Ubuntu is the only Free desktop anybody cares about, the 'community' can't take it. I love being able to choose proprietary apps in the market, it's one of the things that makes Android Market superior to the Ubuntu Software Center, and I hope to see the latter gain such functionality soon.
Take a look in the app market. MANY of the apps are free, and there is usually a "just as good" free option for most pay apps.
Don't Tread on Me
Developers that want their open source projects to only be used in other open source projects can just make it a part of their license. Then you're either paying for software written by the people selling it, or your running the open source and free apps that the developer's had in mind. This also lays the ground for developers that want to contribute components to open and closed source projects.
Broad problems that have software solutions will tend to have a lot of people who need the solution, and will tend to be cheap and/or free. Either the market base will be so large that developers can recoup costs by charging only a small amount per license, or else the industry or community will fund them in some other way. Such as companies that hire developers to work on open source projects for some application which the company uses as a tool rather than sells as a product.The OSS project gets professional developers working on it, and their contributions are shared with the OSS community, and then everyone benefits.
Narrow problems that have software solutions will tend to have fewer people who need (or merely want) the solution, and will tend to cost more.
My take on this is this:
I love open source, and I love free software. But to me, so long as there's a solution to the problem, that's what matters most of all. It's better from my perspective if that solution is free/Free. It's acceptable, if no free solution exists, to pay for something, in the sense that economically supporting a good solution is a good thing. I'd rather provide economic support to open source projects than to closed source projects, but really, I want solutions to my problems, and I'll support economically any solution if I need to, as long as I feel it's a good, worthwhile solution.
Due to the nature of open source projects, it's almost always optional to provide that support, and by contrast it's usually not optional to pay for closed-source software solutions ("pirating" notwithstanding). So for the most part, my economic contributions to software projects tend to skew toward closed source, even thought the amount of closed source software I use is pretty low. Which, I think, is unfortunate, given that I would prefer to support open projects. I don't contribute monetarily to most OSS projects, because I'm not required to. I pretty much only pay for software if I absolutely have to (I need the solution, and the only viable solutions require you to pay for them.)
My point in all this is that, it's OK for small projects to charge for the solution if that's the best way for them to fund themselves. I wouldn't expect independent game developer to create FOSS games just to share them with the Android community for nothing. I don't need to play a game on my cell phone, but if I decide I want to, and there's a particular game that I really like the look of, I'll gladly pay a reasonable amount to support the project. For software that provides broad solutions to common problems, I'd expect that to be built in to the phone already, or implemented by a community of OSS developers who probably get funding in some way other than direct sales of software licenses.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Instead, we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack -- open source underneath, and proprietary on top.
Gee, it's not like anyone's done that before...
There's nothing at all wrong with proprietary layers somewhere in the next - in theory all open source is preferable for a lot of reasons, but there's no denying a dedicated force of people can add a really polished layer that OS projects may take much longer to come up with, if ever.
Did you seriously expect most Android apps to be open source? Come on!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I seem to recall quite a few articles or discussions for app stores for iphone and android that basically said that piracy was brutal for applications.
Android:http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/11/20/1558259/
iPhone: http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/11/21/0011222/
These apps just seem no different than music was in the napster era. People often ask me why they should pay for these apps when they can just pirate them for free.
Also does anybody audit android apps to make sure there are no backdoors or parts of the app which email all your data to some website?
>> open source underneath, and proprietary on top.
OMG! What a calamity!! We'll have to wait for a Simone de Beauvoir or Virginia Woolf of Open Source then, to get FOSS back on top?!!
But seriously, this article is just pontificatory BS. Hasnt this already happened with Apple (Free as in air BSD inside, Gulag errm "walled garden" outside ? FOSS if anything is *strengthened* by every attempt to proprietarize it!
What the hell is wrong with selling software applications and making a living doing it? Having the bottom layers of the system being free and open is far better than the other way around.
you would be paying top dollar for your Microsoft OS and applications
I do pay top dollar for my Microsoft OS and applications, you insensitive clod! And I'm very happy with my stable software pla@#%[NO CARRIER]
The BSD license was written 1982, long before Stallman's GPL, and the people behind it were no fundamentalists. A lot of very successful projects use BSD or derived licenses until today. There can be strong motivation for a company to contribute its own progress upstream without being forced by a license like the GPL. See this post from above for a nice summary. The is no evidence that it was the GPL that made GNU/Linux so successful. It might just have been the better product than the BSD's or just accomplished to build stronger momentum.
Mobile phones will not ever replace desktop and laptop PCs. The performance is lacking, and the screens are too small. Its more likely that netbooks will evolve into smaller and more powerfull portable PCs, and will include the functions of a cell phone. Also, people need to realize that they don't need to be (nor is it a good thing!) connected to friends and family 24/7/365 via phone and internet! Staying in touch is important, and not a bad thing, but far too many people today take it to an unhealthy extreme! Such as using a cell phone while driving. Doing so has been proved to as dangerous (more so in some cases) than driving drunk. Texting while driving is even worse, and even more stupid.
And I and many others consider use of cell phones in theaters, restaurants, and even stores to be a rude and obnoxious bad habit! Hang up once in a while, and concentrate on what you are doing!
There's no reason to use M$/WinXXX on a convergent mobile device.
Same 'reasons' an iphone does not run an M$ OS.
Same 'reasons' most media players do not run an M$ OS. ...
There's no installed base of .doc oriented apps.
There's no overwhelming majority of users to provide any sort of peer pressure.
There's no library of existing apps/games/utils with which the population of potential users is already familiar.
None of the 'reasons' people use M$ products on PCs apply to the new field of devices.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Or support the N900 instead of the Android. It's not a totally open stack, but it's much more so than Android, and the apps also tend to be direct ports of Linux OSS. And the whole thing is less locked down to begin with.
I'm writing from one.... the "app stores" are just debian repositories, it's really an open platform... and the GUI is awesome...
So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"
Shut up pay your money to the good developers that have decided to hitch their stars to your sacred platform and hope that eventually you get some free stuff later. This is, on it's face, a stupid question actually!
Why bother
2. A lot of the closed stuff is crap, and could be improved to be usable or extended if it was open source.
3. You can actually do both. Maybe include the source with your app, or use a license like .... where when you make changes, they go back to the original author.
4. Maybe of the posts are missing the pointer or don't understand open software. You wouldn't have Linux as-is today without it.
People often ask me why they should pay for these apps when they can just pirate them for free.
You mean other than the obvious moral problems with piracy and theft.
The latest generation's ability to freeload "just because they can" gives me no end of heartburn.
As far as I can tell you are supposed to vette your own apps because there is no app store approval process to make sure that every app in the store is not a Trojan.
Why bother
...get a job?
If the Linux community had taken the necessary steps to promote a proprietary software ecosystem on top of Linux, then Linux would have at least 20% of the desktop market by now. Instead, the job of delivering an OS that doesn't suck that supports software that doesn't suck has fallen to Apple... who have done a damn good job of it, with a software packaging scheme that's perfect for commercial binary software. If not for the high price of Apple hardware, it would be well on its way to wiping Windows from the home desktop.
It's not too late. Let's see a good solid well-supported Linux desktop, using GNUstep or equivalent with NeXT-style application bundles instead of Linux' maze of centralized repositories and tricky packaging schemes. It's far more important to get a free software platform out there on people's desks than to demand they all buy in to the free software ethos for the applications they run on it.
I'm wondering how many people here have android phones. I've got a Droid, and I've paid for exactly 1 app, and I've got more apps on the device than I could possibly need. I saw a market study that shows that iPhone apps are far more likely to be paid apps than on any other platform, and that iPhone users are far more likely to *pay* for apps than on any other platform. This is seen as a *threat* to Android development, as you can't get people to pay for android apps in as significant numbers as on the iPhone.
Additionally, the apps on the Android are indisputably of a lower quality in fit, finish and polish than iPhone apps. Some of that may be the SDK - but I think it is more likely a heritage of the *nix foundations under Android. Ubuntu is a fairly nice looking desktop OS all things considered, but when you start getting into the apps themselves, those grass-roots, DIY ethics start showing through compared to commercial alternatives on OS X and Win32/64. The same thing seems true to me with Android apps. They're just not as highly polished. They look... linuxish.
The same thing open source has always tried to do: write better open source alternatives. If these apps are written open source and free more companies will standardize on them. and again, the whole bazaar development philosophy is supposed to allow the creation of better software, so if OS has the best solution, it should displace inferior proprietary apps.
That's all that can be done and that's all that should be done. Anything else would seem to be admitting OS turns out inferior technology.
It doesn't matter if the developer is using Visual Studio and forking over cash to Microsoft, or if they are using Eclipse and writing "open source" code. Development hours cost money. Just because the tools are free doesn't mean that the end product is. Just because someone else "could" develop the same thing doesn't mean that they will. There is value in someone else doing the work.
There is a perception among too many people that "open source" = cheap/free. At the end of the day, people want to get paid for their work. Beyond that, there are more people who want a solution that works than there are people with the talent, skills or inclination to develop their own solution.
Maybe if we start calling it GNU/Android instead of just Android, people will realize they should be writing Free software for it.
So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"
They should be getting out their Open Moko phones and having a conference call to discuss the problem.
I hate to say it, but I do agree with you here. Had GNU's tools not existed, I doubt development effort on the Linux or Jolitz's 386BSD kernels back in 1991 would have gone even as remotely as far as they have.
I remember when compilers would cost thousands in addition to the OS itself. SunOS's compiler (this was before the Solaris 2.x days) cost a pretty penny. Intel's compiler cost a good chunk of change. Until the late 90s, compiles never came with the OS, and were a chargable extra, usually with nasty licensing (nodelocking on CPU serial numbers, or FlexLM based licensing.)
If it were not for gcc, I'm sure the development of Linux, and the free software movement as a whole would have taken a completely different direction. Without gcc, there would have been no cross platform compiler enabling people to easily get code ported between platforms, and I don't see any group who would have had something similar without some sort of commercial licensing issues.
That's the logical situation. The basics of computing, the foundations, should be served by free, open source software, because they are a general-purpose common ground that can be better served by a standards-compliant infrastructure-oriented infrastructure.
Then the special-purpose applications, with a smaller market or a market more interested in service or immediacy or whatever, should be served by non free (in either of the two senses) apps.
Not everything will be OSS. I, for one, would be happy to reach point when there is a layer of broadly used OSS that guarantees basic freedoms for everybody.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Having FOSS at the bottom will fix the one thing that companies always get into trouble for: cornering a market.
As with Android, being FOSS lowers the cost of entry and keeps it low. This prevents companies from inflating the value of their product, which in turn they get sucked into becoming a monopoly by inflating the cost of entry into their "turf". Lowering the cost of entry will either force the big, more established players a choice of buying out a smaller player (usually good for the owner, maybe not for the customers), or losing market share (competition is good). And of course this is the internet, so these situations can happen overnight, which is a good thing.
As long as Google keeps Android FOSS and yearly updated, this model will become the de facto standard of selling apps.
First, it may be worthwhile to ask what's actually the problem: Is there really a lack of free (as in speech) software for Android or is there just a lack of commercial software for Linux? I don't know the numbers, but there are *many* commercial applications out there for other systems and not so many for Linux. Maybe it's not Android that's special but Linux.
Second, and this is important, the difference between Android and Linux is that with Android there is a *market* for commercial software. If you have a good idea and have written a good piece of software and then have the choice to either give it away for free or (with not so much more effort) *sell* it and get some money for all the time you have put into it, all Free Software enthusiasm suddenly is just one vector among others. And since the times aren't that lush and many developers just like a bit of additional income...
Third (I hate to say this): The FOSS community isn't static. There are veterans now, people who have put much time and effort into code and managing things and some of them would like to make some money now for a change without having to feel guilty about it. There *are* people who suddenly buy a Mac and start to develop iPhone apps and dream of getting rich or code Android apps and hope to make some money on the side. I mean, there *is* such a thing like a burn-out syndrome even with FOSS developers. Thinking "I've started to hate all this stuff a long time ago, now let's just pretend it's business and make some money" is not that rare a thing to happen. Linux can eat you and you may want to eat back.
Fourth: The iPhone started all this. All of a sudden having a great idea for a cool app (or even a killer app) and writing it and making money from coding away in your basement became a meme. And what the hell, everyone does it, so try to sell what you got. With Linux and traditional Unix FOSS sharing was what everyone did. Now it's selling. Don't pretend that you're immune against group pressure or bills piling up on your desk.
Fifth: This is an exploding market and keeping your knowledge to yourself instead of giving your well documented sources away and have others standing on your shoulders is only natural. I mean, only very few of those apps are in any way pushing the state of the art. It's just applied industriousness and having others learn from your code and make money while you don't even get the fame is lame. Linux is a cult, Android is just Google and even if Goggle is not evil, it's about money and not about freedom.
Sixth: All of this is bullshit. FOSS is here to stay and if there are 1000 fart apps for every useful piece of Open Software noone cares a shit. In the worst case it's like with FOSS on Windows just with Linux beneath it instead of Windows. No reason to whine, surely.
But what others here have said about the hardware lock-in is true. This is a very real problem and sooner or later the time will be ripe for Open Hardware. Without that FOSS will be just a service for Google and people thinking "I can't live with this but I can try to live off it" will rule and this is not the dumbest approach.
Oh, and the smart-phone using population is different from PC-users. For one, it's much larger. But it's also much more interested in just using and consuming instead of tinkering and creating. There is a lesson to learn from that: Open Content will become more important than Open Software.
And of course only about 3 people will read all of this and I'll have wasted half an hour of my time (currently worth about $35 if I had been working instead) for free. And still.
I just played around with my Hero and found that underneath is no Linux distribution I would like to have. As soon as you get root access you have a security issue at your hands. In other words I'm still trying to find something like a passwd or shadow file since su lets me get straight to root.
Conversely I keep hearing that the n900 one of my colleagues just got has a debian running underneath -sounds much better to me.
Also the file system has been reorganized into something that doesn't follow the Linux file system standard. I wouldn't mind if they had put android+htc stuff on top of an existing distribution I can recognize, but no they had to do it all differently.
I do find the android stuff nice though. It works straight out of the box together with eclipse and you can use you phone as a target without much effort. I really find this kind of welcoming to new developers.
Now I heard that i can install debian and maybe use it through chroot or something similar, I still wonder whether somebody couldn't come up with a firmware that has android running on top of debian.
Je me souviens.
You do.
Unlike most other mobile devices Android features an on-device security model, an application cannot access your personal data, Phone services, Wifi or mobile internet connection without your express permission. All this is displayed when you install the application.
This system has it's flaws but it is a lot better then Apple's system of "Trust us, we'll control everything and make you safe" security through obscurity system.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
First, who cares if the apps are FOSS or not. I sure don't. I care whether the apps are good.
I'm a die-hard BlackBerry user and have been for years. In the short period of time that the iPhone has been out, a hundred thousand apps have been written for it, far more than exist for BlackBerry, which has been able to run 3rd-party apps for far longer. The problem is, I don't have any desire to buy an iPhone, for a multitude of reasons, but I've been pretty impressed with (and a little jealous of) the selection of available useful applications.
From this post, I was most impressed with the 20,000 figure. Android has not been out very long, and there's already that many apps? I don't know anything about the quality of the apps, but that impresses me. That's a lot of momentum.
Finally, a phone (platform) that has a good selection of apps that isn't the iPhone! Hooray!
Why, no, I haven't meta-moderated lately. Thanks for asking!
A damn slow news day indeed!!
How do people feel about applications that are proprietary for three years and then released under the GPL? Id software did this (after five years) with Doom. I'm thinking of doing that with an application I am writing for Android.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
as this is basically danger 2.0...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I strongly disagree. Open Source has mainly been brought forward by pragmatists as Linus with a sense to attract high level software industry supporters. The fundamentalists were, the last time I checked, still working on GNU/Hurd. ;)
First of all Linus only started a hobby. Not a project to attract high level software industry. Being Open source is what got this far today. How can closed source help that in any way. If you close the source , then how can one make an app any better than it is. you are stuck where, open it , you can change it for the better.
Here's my take on this issue, having developed one Android app and used many:
The real problem is developer education. There are LOTS of free (as in beer), or no cost, applications on the Android Market. Few of them, that I've found, are under a Free/Open Source license, if they even have a license at all. I'd guess that quite a few of those applications aren't intentionally kept closed, but are just written by developers who aren't used to the Open Source world, and aren't educated on why they should open their source (and I'm just thinking about the practical, have-someone-else-write-the-patch-for-you side of things). Google should be making more of an effort to educate developers, or at least point them in the right direction, about license choice.
My thoughts on what Google needs:
1) Add search functionality to the Market app to allow users to search both by price and by license.
2) ***IMPORTANT*** - there's currently a $25 listing fee on the Market. Drop it to $10 or $15 for apps with an open source license.
#2, while many will argue is not a good long-term business strategy, would at least boost app development by lowering the barrier for entry.
One thing people forget is that there is a thing called The Copyright Law. If Linus Torvalds copyrights the Linux kernel, on the condition that anyone who uses the kernel to run software must freely provide the software source code for download on the Internet; THEN PEOPLE ARE NOT LEGALLY ALLOWED TO USE THE LINUX KERNEL IN PROPRIETARY APS and operating systems. And this is exactly the case. Android is stealing a massive amount of development work, selling it, and keeping all the money.
Apache web server is open source, yet it's funded by commercial enterprise. People who need the software support the program . But the source is freely avaialble. I'll sue google myself if I have to. It is a brazen copyright violator. It is legally compelled to make the source code available to the public, OR IT MUST STOP USING THE LINUX KERNEL. If we're going to take copyright law and throw it in the trash, money grubbing scum is going to have their paws all over everything, and Linux development will all be commercial. That will signal the end of open source. Linux will be another Windows.
So if that's what people want, then don't pay any attention to the law. Let everyone do whatever they feel like doing, without regard for the law. The mighty will slay the weak out of arrogance. Google needs to be sued, NOW.