Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Yes, it's Linux and yet can't run almost any Linux apps.
Yes, because, if it did, it would fail. Linux has been tried and tried and tried and has never worked for consumers. The last thing FOSS/Linux advocates need is yet another iteration of Gnome/Xorg. Not to mention the fact that with a minimal amount of work, a real techie can run Linux apps on Android. I have an Ubuntu chroot on both my Xoom and my OG Droid with any Linux application just an apt-get away. It's great for command line favorites like vim, elinks, sshfs, rtorrent, etc. And since the applications are compiled for ARM, and are running on the bare metal just with a different root directory, they run at full speed. With my set-up and a few judicious bind mounts, Ubuntu is a 95 percent integrated peer with the rest of the system.
I could run graphical applications like Firefox, OpenOffice, gedit, etc. with the VNC viewer and I do from time to time when I'm bored but when I do, I see why Android is not just another Linux distro. Desktop apps don't work on a touchscreen device. Period. That's why MS has been a dismal failure in tablets for a decade and the iPad has just steamrolled them. So, why would Goog want to repeat that mistake?
Also, what good is it that you guys use Linux and Goobuntu internally when you horde most of your changes?
If they don't ship the code, they don't have to ship the changes. Read the GPL. Now, for the open licensed code they do ship, if you read the article, you will see they have released something like 20+ million lines of source. That is not hording changes.
Sounds like a company who leverages FOSS yet only sends back a few breadcrumbs to placate the masses.
Sounds like you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
He is the Open Source Manager at Google. Former Slashdot editor, I think.
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.
> Calling Android a linux desktop is also a stretch.
Calling it Linux is technically correct in that it does use the Linux kernel down under layers of Google and Java cruft. But it is only used as a place for the OEMs to hang device drivers because they already were familiar with it from their other ARM embedded projects. In the more familiar usage of the word 'Linux' to mean a distribution of familiar UNIXish tools from GNU, X.org, Moz Corp, GNOME/KDE, etc. Android is totally alien and about as closed of a walled garden as OS X or iOS. Yes most of it is technically released under an FSF approved license but there is zero community involvement in what Google tosses over the wall from time to time. And because they keep a couple of key bits closed they can dictate terms to OEMs (almost) exactly like it was a totally closed source environment.
And yes there is the issue that Android is not and probably never will be ready for the desktop. It is a phone OS growing to the tablet space. Kinda hard to envision it scaling to multiple large displays.
So yea, DiBona takes Google's shilling so he has to promote their stuff. But we are free to laugh and call him a silly person for expecting us to believe this line of BS.
Democrat delenda est
O.K., Chris. You prolly don't remember the chat we had at LinuxWorld 2000. You used to be an advocate and supporter in the community. It's too bad you've been captured by the corporate machine of Google. You know this is what they are, right? Despite the image they present as just a big, happy dev-lab with a $450 stock price.
The DREAM that I think we shared for 20 years was of open, free systems, freely available and modifiable. NOT that of a corporation building a successful, billion-dollar division on the promise of such a system. This is SUBVERSION - not SUCCESS.
DiBona FAIL - Google FAIL.
Give me Posix or give me nothing at all. It is demostrably true that the apps that proliferate on the Android platform form a festering cess-pit of useless apps, or borderline trojan-ware.
Now, when do we get to hear Doc Searls cheerlead for Facebook?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."