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Chris Dibona On Free Software and Google
dkd903 wrote in with an interview with Chris Dibona in Der Standard. Within, he declares Android as "... the dream come true. It's your Linux desktop, it's the ultimate success story of Linux that I've been working on personally since 1995." There's lots of other good stuff on Google's internal use of GNU/Linux: "If you'd look at laptops it's maybe 70 percent Mac OS X and most of the rest is Linux, we are a huge customer of Apple. Engineering Desktops are overwhelmingly running on Linux. We have our own Ubuntu derivative called 'Goobuntu' internally for that, integrating with our network — we run all our the home directories from a file server — and with some extra tools already built-in for developers."
Can it run linux?
Yes, it's Linux and yet can't run almost any Linux apps. Also, what good is it that you guys use Linux and Goobuntu internally when you horde most of your changes? Sounds like a company who leverages FOSS yet only sends back a few breadcrumbs to placate the masses.
Good summary, but who's this Chris?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Why the focus on Ubuntu from Google? Is it purely marketshare driven? Calling Android a linux desktop is also a stretch. It makes for a fine portable device OS but it is nowhere near a desktop OS. It's barely usable on tablets so far.
It's a great success story for Google, I suppose. But Linux has already had massive, if quiet, successes. And it's not a huge success story for end users, who are left with devices whose drivers rot outside the kernel mainline, dependent on closed source binary blobs for hardware support that never get rebuilt as systems move on.
It's also not a huge success for GNU/Linux (or Free Software) in general, due to the almost total break from it that Google has spearheaded. Instead of a platform that exists regardless of one corporation, you have one whose existence is defined by that corporation. Difficult to fork, hard to steer in ways other than what they want and, until further notice, closed source.
Better can be done.
If you define success fairly narrowly then Android is a Linux success. But I think that most people who hoped for a successful Linux desktop in the 1990s were thinking more along the lines of expanded personal freedom in computing as the goal of "success", more than the simple number of processors running some variant of the Linux kernel. While Android is more open than the alternatives, it's doesn't really (and can't really) ever fulfill the goals of an open and free computing environment that Linux as a Free Software PC/Workstation Desktop Operating System can.
... or at least, not very hard. The profit they'd lose if roughly 21,000 Google employees got pissed off and switched to Linux is no small amount of money, even for Apple. Not to mention the PR nightmare. It totally makes sense now.
Instead of the Chromebooks and the earlier other companies netbooks that ran crippled Linux distributions that only had 2GB storage space. Then Linux might have a better chance if Google is backing up the tech support instead of hobbiests on forums.
The real content uses only around 20% of my screen real state....
The year of Linux is almost here!
I'm a bit sad to see that they're a "huge customer of Apple," considering I see modern-day Apple as lower than 90s Microsoft.
Why don't you talk about how Honeycomb is closed source or how access to the Android code has been severely restricted at Google?
I know some people hate the GNU/Linux remarks of Stallman but he is correct. If you are talking about Linux being more then just a kernel then you got to take GNU into account and all that comes with it. Ubuntu is what it is because it comes with a CD or even DVD full of FREE utilities most of them more then adequate to replace expensive and not so expensive windows applications. I have seen many people compare the cost of windows (comes "free" with the OS) with the cost of Linux, free to download. But they forget the countless tools you are expected to pay for on the Windows platform. No, using free opensource application on Windows does not count, if you want to argue opensource vs closed source costs you cannot lower closed source costs by using opensource.
So, how does this relate to Android? Simple, CHECK the market place vs Ubuntu package manager and see just how much installing applications costs you. Remember that story about the Apple app store netting developers 2.5 billion and Apple itself 1 billion? Where do you think that money came from? That's right, you. Add a billion or so for the credit card companies and that is a lot of money. And for what? Apps that are available on Linux for free and INFINITELY more powerful.
But it is only a few dollars... yes... it is... only a few dollars per app that you don't own and can't modify.
And android is much the same.
So Android is linux because it runs the kernel? Odd that, I can download the source of the kernel from Ubuntu, download the compiler needed from Ubuntu, download the editor from Ubuntu and download the instructions and hints to make it all into a new kernel modified by me. For that matter, I can take Ubuntu and turn it into my own distro (see Mint) or anyone can take all the components and make something else altogether (Gentoo). Do the same with android, I dare you!
Prove me wrong about the price or openess. Download a mplayer equivelant for Android. A media player that plays virtually any codec out there for free. It doesn't exist and the few players that a tiny bit capable, all cost money despite offering less functionality then a free application.
I suppose that for some lucky people, spending a few dollars here, a few dollars there is trivial. It must be or else things like Farmville would never survive. But some of us either are opposed to being nickle and dimed to death or just can't afford it.
Be honest, how many of you got a fully decked out with pay for use software Windows machine? Winzip, payed media player etc etc etc?
I have long considered replacing my netbook with a tablet but when I see the prices charged for apps vs what is available for free on my linux install... it just doesn't make sense. Currently I am just waiting for a decent hardware tablet that I can install linux on myself. Am I a cheap bastard in not wanting to pay developers for their time and effort? Yes, yes I am. Because while I have not contributed code to the opensource effort myself I do test and do bug reports and followups. It may not be much but I prefer to be part of the open effort then the closed sourced android and especially iOS culture of squeeze them for every penny.
But I can develop my own free and opensource apps you say? Indeed I can, except I am web developer so even easier is for me to work on web apps that work on any capable browser (sorry MS) and maybe do something interesting there. Which is what I am doing... when it is finished, it will be free. Why? Because I already got a day job. I am doing okay *breaks into sultans of swing and does NOT pay royalties for it*
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I am indifferent towards open source and "free" software. I admire the cause, but I tend to pick something that works and works well for my needs. I dream of the day I could have OSX, Windows and Linux all booting from the same computer of my choice (legally) so I can pick the best programs for my needs.
* Android is running Linux, technically, but it doesn't support Linux software easily. It might as well not be Linux as an end user. With the Google clamp down it, limiting what is in the market, etc. it seems less an open software like I keep hearing Linux is and more of a standard operating system that is widely used because smart phone hardware companies are using it because it is relatively cheap compared to the alternatives from other companies or developing their own OS.
*"If you'd look at laptops it's maybe 70 percent Mac OS X and most of the rest is Linux, we are a huge customer of Apple.", and Apple in my eyes is even worse than Microsoft in being open. This is coming across to me as more "We hate Microsoft" or "We are a company that wants to look cool" than "We are choosing the most open software".
It looks like Linux and open source is heading for a Pyrrhic victory at this rate. This is a company that trying to become the champion of Open Source. It paved the way for not invading privacy en masse, but turning it into a main stream industry.
It props brags that "at least we aren't using Windows/M$" by stating the chief alternative is a company that is even more closed than Microsoft, requires you to use an OS that is legally only usable on their overpriced hardware if you want to code for their gated garden platforms. A company that is trying to block out any competing products (in the U.S.) by resorting to nearly forgotten and century old rules and laws (http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/07/12/0144237/Apple-Wants-To-Block-Some-HTC-Products-From-US-Under-Tariff-Act-of-1930).
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Screw Ubuntu, now I want Goobuntu!
I8-D
FTA:
If you want to start a new project this kicks of our timeclock where my office, patents and trademarks all have three days to approve it or to say why they can't. If they don' act the project gets automatically approved and you can do the release. Usually we finish all the paper work and all the bureaucracy before the developers are done with the process of engineering for release.
For larger projects - like Android and Chrome - we engage with them years ahead of time. We were talking with the Android guys probably three years before the G1 came out, helping them with their license compliance, selection and strategy.
So you know DAMN good and well Google poured over phone patents, like Microsoft's, and deemed it safe... and had already engaged the lawyers "years ahead of time".
With this knowledge, shouldn't Google rise up and be power flaming MS over suing Motorola and others who use Android? You know every effort was made to avoid a losing legal situation. Having your ducks in a row years ahead of time should scare even a large corporation like MS who probably reacted at even the smallest chance of winning.
I8-D
FFS don't bring this argument up again. You're talking about apps and marketplace. I'll say it slowly... nobody... cares. You can install from totally free 3rd party markets, including GetJar and Amazon and you can download totally open sourced apps.
The same is true of Ubuntu and the Multiverse. You can CHOOSE to run pay software, the same as Android. I can run a commercial server daemon on pure, fully open Linux. Does that cease to be Linux? No.
Why doesn't anyone get the point that it's about choice. I'd go line by line, but honestly, it's a worn out argument with flamebait about credit card processing and other stuff that borderlines on conspiracy theory topics. All I really have to say is, get off your soapbox. Like every other discussion about opensource, I default to "If you don't like it, do better or GTFO." You say you can't. *shrug* Other's do, and I hear them bitching less and coding more.
I don't mean to sound offensive, but I'm REALLY flipping tired of hearing "Andoird is not Linux". That's pure flaimbait and all you talked about was apps and that has NOTHING! NOTHING! to do with the OS.
TL:DR
I8-D
He didn't call it a linux desktop; he called it "the linux desktop dream come true"
It's not "Linux" as most people know it. There's a reason Richard Stallman was always bothered by people referring to the OS underlying Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu and the countless other distributions as "Linux"; it ignores the fact that the vast majority of what makes it tick is the GNU userland.
Android does not have a GNU userland. In fact, they rewrote nearly all of it precisely to avoid it.
Android is an Apache/Linux desktop. It's only vaguely related to what everyone used to refer to as "Linux" or properly GNU/Linux.
No, really. It has to happen sometime, doesn't it?
Yay for all of Android's successes, but it doesn't change the fact that my Nexus One is a piece of garbage (even running 2.3), and I'm going run screaming to Apple (ACK!) soon, if Android devs don't start putting some care and/or thought into their UIs. It's *exactly* the same thing we see on Linux desktop apps: super-powerful, open operating system, running apps whose UIs were designed by people with the aesthetic sense of a 70s shag carpet.
Chris Dibona calls OSX Linux (at least that's what I got from him FTA), and I'd agree. Apple has gone much further away.
I completely agree, it isn't GNU, it's a mixture. The reason FTA has to do with Patents. GNU is not as patent friendly as what they need. On the other hand, their Apache license give free reuse of all patents that touch their Apache licensed software. I mean, damn, there is absolutely nothing more they could do to make it open. This is the very far limit of what any company could ever do. And they are following the lead of other companies that said, "Listen, we have a ton of patents, and we're opening them up. We're keeping the patents so that nobody can ever try to enforce them, and we'll counter-sue the hell out of you if you challenge our patents... but here you go, nonprofits and commercial, have fun with this portion of our patent portfolia."
In that light, I really don't wanna hear objections, cause there are no valid objects to say, "Google is being evil!" That's just false and is what is implied by those objections if they are to have any other real meaning.
That's why the debate is meaningless. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that Google could do to be more open and still be a corporation. I'm environmental, but freakish tree huggers tick me off. I'm all about FOSS, and yes, I do mean capital F, which RMS is all whiny about, but it's the freakish OSS people like Stallman and "Android is not Linux" people that just royally pisses me off. The implications they make is that money is evil and any profiting from code is super evil, nevermind that Google doesn't make a dime directly off the code.
They really need to take the tin foil off or go busy themselves at a G8 summit protest or something. It's anti-corporatism, not OSS, if you really boil it down. For my part, I'm skeptical of all companies. Hell, I spent more than half my life screaming the Hacker Manifesto by The Mentor in IRC chat rooms with my friends, and we were all anti-system. But sweet Jesus, does nobody realize that we were fighting against the technopolies, Ma Bell, Microsoft, and their kind? Google is what we wanted these companies to be!
And now that we have one of the world's largest companies being a proactive, peaceful, and open source as hell, we gotta bitch over the semantics of at what level is something Linux as if they just aren't good enough?
Having come from the community that I have, which was Anonymous before there was an Anonymous... it kinda pisses me off. There is a time to fight, and there are a hell of a lot of things to fight. This is NOT one of them. This is FAR from it.
Sorry for the rant, must be the record heat.
I8-D
Someone below said Android:
does not match what people would define as "Linux"
...but they refused to define who the people are and what their definition of Linux is.I'm going to put this argument not just to bed, but in its damn grave once and for all.
Let me quote someone for you all, Linus Torvalds, you know, the guy who created Linux from scratch and named it after himself (emphasis added):
In a separate incident Linus Torvalds the father of Linux expressed his anger at Google. Linus accused Google of undermining the role of Linux in Android. Due to Google's marketting of Android, apart from the tech-sisterhood, no one knows that Android is Linux. To give Linux its credit Linus is asking Google to call it Linux/Android or Android+Linux.
"I don't care if you put cart in front of horse or horse in front of cart. If you want to go somewhere you have to keep them together." ...
When RMS was asked to further explain his point, he said. "I have maintained from the very beginning that when you refer to whole system you must call it GNU+Linux or GNU/Linux but when you are referring only to the kernel its Linux and not GNU/Linux."
http://www.muktware.com/blogs/01/2011/943/richard-m-stallman-says-its-linux-not-gnulinux-linus-upset-android
Is it GNU/Linux? No. Is it Linux? YES. And going further, And speaking in reference to someone's claim that Google Android violated the GPL (emphasis added):
It seems totally bogus. We've always made it very clear that the kernel system call interfaces do not in any way result in a derived work as per the GPL, and the kernel details are exported through the kernel headers to all the normal glibc interfaces too. The kernel headers contain various definitions for the interfaces to user space, and we even actively try to make sure that the headers can be used by user space (and try to mark which of the headers are expected to be usable in such a way). Exactly because we know user space needs those details in order to interact with the kernel.
So I haven't looked at exactly what Google does with the kernel headers, but I can't see that they'd want to do anything fundamentally different from glibc in this respect.
Of course, we do have our own 'internal' headers too, and we have stuff that is meant to be relevant only for the kernel. But there would be no point for Google to even use those, since they are useless outside of the kernel, so I don't see what the whole brouhaha would be all about. Except if it's somebody politically motivated (or motivated by some need of attention). If it's some desperate cry for attention by somebody, I just wish those people would release their own sex tapes or something, rather than drag the Linux kernel into their sordid world.
http://www.osnews.com/story/24557/Torvalds_Android_GPL_Claims_quot_Totally_Bogus_quot_
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/03/23/014223/Linus-Says-Android-License-Claim-Is-Bogus
So, please, please, if you don't know what what you are talking about, refer to Linus and even RMS (shudder) who BOTH call Android Linux. So much so that RMS clarifies exactly how to call it Linux and Linus is pissed that it isn't named Linux!
DEBATE F%&^ING OVER! QED!
I8-D
And you, Google, have become more evil than Microsoft. At least they were after my money, you're after every detail of my personal life.
If you like Ubuntu so much, then why haven't you put it in your chromebooks, instead of yet another extremely closed userspace with no "upstream" roots?
Or, rather, it wouldn't have much special stuff that would do you any good unless you were on their network. Goobuntu (like the Red Hat-based "grhat" before it) is very close to the regular publicly-available distribution. It looks and feels just like Ubuntu (aside from a Google-ish splash screen and desktop wallpaper). But they've added on tools so that devs can check code in/out, compile apps in the same environment one finds on the linux-based workstations, has some encryption for sensitive stuff, etc.
You'd do just as well with regular old Ubuntu.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
How can a device be dream come true for any Linux fan, when it's non-trivial and tedious (all the libs etc) to even compile "Linux software" for it?
Also, how can a device which always(?) needs to be jailbroken (be it easy or tricky) to get full functionality be any kind of dream of a Linux fan?
It may be best there is. Above points may be necessary evil to have a cool phone. But dream come true, hardly!
Now N9, that looks much more like it! But of course hard to say for sure, as the phone isn't actually available... Fortunately marketing looks like it really will be available soon. I hope it lives up to the hype and early reviews, because if it does, it will be dream come true for Linux users.