Now, for my application I cannot use the GPL license because parts of my application are licensed from other people who don't want to GPL their code - it sucks, and I'd rather not deal with it, but when you are in the RF communications business and you have to support CDMA, you HAVE to do business with Qualcomm, and they will NOT change their minds.
This is the key to the whole post. If he could have used GPLed code from Qualcomm, then he could have used the GPL license for QT and for the PyQt bindings.
But as we all know, it's not over until the Fat Gnu sings.
The Qualcomm stuff wasn't GPLed, so that makes me wonder: Why do you have to talk to Qualcomm to deal with CDMA stuff? Do they have patents on the protocols?
If there are patents that Qualcomm is enforcing -- software patents, in this case -- then that rather sucks. It makes me wonder about any licensing hurdles that might exist for GSM and UMTS. Is it much easier to develop Free Software for devices that have GSM/UMTS radios than for CDMA radios?
Name one large company that you'd trust to hold the reigns to your personal computing devices. Just one.
How about i-rootkit-you-Sony, or i-turn-you-in-Yahoo? Plays-for-only-a-limited-amount-of-time-for-sure-Microsoft?
Large companies by necessity will bow to government pressures. Large companies by necessity (and legal duty) will listen to the demands of their stockholders. The users are several steps down on the list.
This leads to such convoluted efforts as Office Open XML, which conveniently sounds like a format that just might have come out of, say, the OpenOffice project.
It's a bit off topic, but I'm still unclear as to how Microsoft wasn't taken to task for using the OOXML name given that OOo had already existed with an original file format called OpenOffice XML. I've personally corrected several people in person, in print, and online -- even on sites of relative technological aptitude such as/. -- for confusing the file formats and the OOo product. Is there just not enough of a legal protection against use of confusingly-similar product names?
The ballot screen would not appear if IE were not installed.
Doesn't that kinda kill the point of the whole project?
Presumably if IE is not installed, then the computer manufacturer would put a different browser in its place and the end user would never see the ballot screen.
This would only lead to problems if one of the non-IE browsers suddenly captured 90%+ of the market share and also used this position to break compatibility, force use of proprietary, patented protocols and formats, and basically f*ck everyone else over. I don't expect Google, Opera, or Mozilla to do this, so it's not really an issue.
Instead of fighting a big company yourself, just direct the weight of a big company to do itself in.
1. Write a paper. A really, really good paper. A research paper. 2. Get it accepted by a big journal. A really, really big journal like Nature. 3. Now somehow get this sucker added to Turn-it-in's database. Maybe you wrote the paper as a thesis and the prof needs to check it. Whatever. 4. Let the journal know that Turn-it-in has your paper. The paper to which they hold exclusive rights. 5. Pop some popcorn and sit back and let Nature do a little "Hulk Smash!". 6. The End.
(of course there would be several key problems in carrying out such a plan, but it would be delightfully amusing if you could pull it off)
Email the lawyer -- they could probably get a court order to do discovery on Turn-it-in's database. If the paper isn't in the database, then no biggie. If the paper is in the database as you surmise, Turn-it-in probably isn't going to get smacked as hard as your teacher, but it's one more chance for a plaintiff to get a judgment against the company.
I challenge you to find cheaper food than the organic produce grown within a few miles of my home.
Local produce, whether organic or mass produced, will almost always be cheaper
Local foods are great, but in my neck of the woods the local, organic veggies are almost always more expensive.
Living in New England, there's nearly no produce for several months out of the year. The small amount that is grown is always more expensive than produce shipped in from points South. During the growing season we can get some beautiful, tasty lettuces, tomatoes, chard, herbs, and so forth, but I believe that even in my local Coop the local, organic prices are more expensive than the shipped-in produce. During the summer there will be weeks when all of the lettuce comes from local farms, but even then it's not all organic.
One of the local produce distributors has an "outlet" store where you can buy all kinds of things. There are a number of local products there, including milk from a nearby dairy in glass bottles, but most of the produce comes from out of state. I mean, who can beat lettuce at $1/ large head? (and we're talking red and green leaf lettuce, not just romaine or iceberg)
One of the reasons I believe that organic food costs more is that a farm has to get certified before they can legally use the term "organic". Because getting certified costs a chunk of change, the system is comically beneficial to large factory farms as it's cheaper per ton of produce for them to get certified than any little, local farm in your area.
Farmer's markets are nice, but I can't remember the last time I found produce at one for less than the local Coop or supermarket. Give the taste and the fact it's locally grown I'd definitely pay at least the same amount, but it's difficult to even find price parity.
From what I've heard, the best boost that could be given to local foods would be to reduce fuel subsidies. That way, the true cost of shipping fruits and veggies up to New England would be reflected in the sticker price.
in the sense that people with pacemakers or cochlear implants aren't "cyborgs"
One of my friends has a pacemaker and I totally think that she's a cyborg. She doesn't deny it -- sometimes she even gets this look in her eye, you know, one of those "one day we're going to rise up and kill all of you meat-only people" looks.
It's hard to draw the line between basic humans and cyborgs, but I'd say that, at the very least, if you are reliant on some kind of electronic tech bound to or inside your body to survive (she'd die if she didn't have the pacemaker), then you're a cyborg.
On the down side, she isn't allowed to play with hard drive magnets. And she told me that she didn't think it was a good idea to try to overclock her pacemaker.
it costs us a lot of money and effort to digitise our 80-100 year old collections
Sure. Digitizing a bunch of stuff can cost a certain chunk of change.
We do want our images in the public domain and we do want them used, but we need to have the cash to keep doing this work as a small charity
There's an initial cost of digitizing all of the materials, and then an additional (but much smaller) cost of keeping the website serving them up and running.
it might jeopardize our ability to add other images on our already shoe-string budget.
How many new images will you add a year? Will all of the new ones be taken with a digital camera?
Doing initial setup and digitizing the huge historical log of data can be an overwhelming task, I agree. But as you state yourself, you've got a valuable resource that makes sense to put in the public domain. Locked-down data will likely restrict science, not push it forward.
One thing you could consider doing is to partner with a group like Archive.org. They can provide the hosting for the images and do all the sysadmin work, and all you have to do is provide the data. Don't worry about the old data at first. Just start out by asking yourself this simple question: If someone else deals with the servers and pays for sysadmins/bandwidth, can we afford the time/money to digitize new images and upload them to the server?"
If your group can afford the time and money required to add new data to this repository, then you're all set. New data will all go into the system. The old set of data is static and not increasing, so slowly over time you'll be able to digitize it yourselves or to find other people or outside funding to make this digitization possible. If other scientists want access to your data, don't charge them access fees, just ask them for a donation to help digitize some of your old collections, and put one of those thermometer-type graphs on your website showing how much of the collection has been digitized and how much remains to be done. You might even be able to get a small grant to do this work.
It takes a lot of mathematical skill to solve certain equations, but I wouldn't call the solution art even if it was the solution to a Millennium Prize problem.
Indeed.
Some math papers or books on math are quite enjoyable to read, not because of the particular methods and theorems they present, but the manner in which they present them. If someone came up with a clever way to solve a Millennium Prize problem, and wrote it up by hand with a red calligraphy pen on creamy-white paper, annotating it with various amusing but somewhat-relevant illustrations in the margins, then *that* would be art.
But the math inside the paper isn't art. It's just documentation of implications and results that we can derive from our original axioms.
All he proved was that the drove the distance, not that the client could have killed anyone. For that he'd have to have killed someone or sometwo.;-}
I think the lawyer is screwed either way. Either he
1) Admits that this guy made the trip in time and pay him $1 million (or perhaps do some out-of-court settlement with him), or
2) Admit that he just offered $1 million dollars for someone to drive between 2 states and kill 4 people.
I think that offering money for someone to kill 4 people is probably way up there in Felony land. Given that he's crossing state lines, you're talking Federal PMITA prison for a long, long time.
The only argument I imagine that the lawyer can make is that his comments were just a joke. But that basically means that anything else that he says in public is going to be perceived as a joke for quite some time. He's going to have to live with this shit for quite a while.
Judges often have a very wry sense of humor. I can see a judge finding some kind of interesting way to censure or otherwise reprimand the lawyer.
Also, kudos on the music choice. The wah-wah pedal in the opening music really gives the tech demo that "porn soundtrack" feel I know you were going for.
Wikimedia Commons does not have high-res scans of it, but the Codex Sinaiticus website has some really high-res images. Unfortunately they're only accessible though a Flash interface, but I'm sure that with a little scripting one could easily suck-out the raw image data. Reproduction of those images on other websites, however, may be illegal according to the Codex Sinaiticus website:
Copyright
This electronic version of Codex Sinaiticus is provided only for non-commercial personal and educational use, by the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monaster at Sinai and the National Library of Russia.
The original item itself is in the public domain in most jurisdictions and therefore not protected by copyright under applicable laws. However rights in the electronic copy and certain associated metadata are owned by the holding institutions. If you wish to make use of this electronic copy or its metadata other than for non-commercial personal or educational use, you must first obtain the written permission of the relevant institution.
Those rules may make sense according to UK copyright law, but as others have pointed out in this thread, mere reproductions of 2D images are not inherently eligible for copyright protection as they are not novel. My friend warned me about trying to copy this data from the Codex site as it might open me up for legal liability in the UK, especially if I ever were to travel there again.
But now I don't have to bother: Someone else is already testing the waters! I eagerly await the results of this case.
Gnash is all fine and good, except that it's a piece of shit and doesn't work. Just like open-source Java.
What isn't working for you? Sure, Gnash doesn't work on every website yet, but the Gnash devs are working this summer on v9 and v10 support for popular websites.
Look, I like open source as much as the next guy (more, probably), but more than anything I like working software. Google can either spend lots of man-hours making Gnash work properly with all the Flash out there on the web today, and then spend more man-hours keeping it up-to-date as Adobe adds new features that various popular websites take advantage of, or they can just partner with Adobe and use real Flash, spending just a few man-hours to integrate it into their system.
Gnash is making large strides towards covering the feature set provided by the Adobe Flash Player. Rob Savoye (lead programmer for the project) has stated that Gnash has actually been ahead of Adobe in several areas, including first with 64bit support, first ARM support, lower CPU usage, and so forth. Gnash is improving much faster than Adobe Flash is introducing new features.
I think it would be worth Google's time to invest in Gnash at this point. Investing in Gnash would mean that they wouldn't be beholden to a company like Adobe, and it seems like one of the main reasons for having Chrome OS is so that Google can get out from under the control of another large company: Microsoft.
being dependent on non-free software that only runs on someone else's machine as a remote service [is bad]
Oh, I totally agree.
The goal of Chrome is to replace customer lock-in to [Microsoft]...with lock-in to Google..."
I see this as one possible goal. The truth is probably somewhere midway between this description and their "Do no evil" motto. Hopefully it leans more towards the latter one!
I am unsure why other free software advocates are supporting this idea, unless the enemy of Microsoft is automatically our friend.
There are several reasons why Chrome OS will help Free Software.
First, Google already has several hardware partners lined up. This means better linux kernel support on all of that hardware.
Second, having Google out there in the OS business means that we're probably going to see better cross-platform support by large players. Right now just about every company/website/service supports Windows. A large subset of those support OSX. And a somewhat smaller subset also support GNU/Linux. If a GNU/Linux-based OS comes along with the might of Google behind it, we're probably going to see a lot more companies stepping up to support that kind of stack.
Third, standards. Google has done a pretty darn good job of supporting them, unlike other big players. More Google software out there will probably mean greater support for standards.
Google is a giant. It partners with other giants, not with little independent reverse-engineering projects.
Google might not "partner" with small groups per se, but it does use a lot of FOSS and contribute a lot of time and patches back to projects. It doesn't need to become best buddies with Gnash; even a tip of the hat in Gnash's direction could mean a lot in terms of acknowledgment and encouraging other Flash producers to work with Gnash on compatibility.
The more I think about the situation, the more I wonder if the fact that Gnash is GPLv3 is part of what's scaring Google away. Google seems to have had a bit of an aversion to GPLv3...
Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way.
First off, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone is teaming up with Adobe to include Adobe web stuff that it's not going to focus on Acrobat but on Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, and that whole ecosystem.
That out of the way, what the Flippety Friggery, Google?
You're building a new OS based on the Linux kernel + Chrome Browser, which is cool because these are both high-quality Free Software projects. But then you wander off and sidle up to Adobe instead of working with Free Software such as Gnash.
This seems like a repeat of the situation with the ARM folks. Gnash has had ARM support for several years, but instead of the ARM people collaborating with Gnash to get full Flash support on their processors, the ARM people worked with Adobe to make a whole new port to ARM, instead.
Now Google is working on a slick new OS and has an amazing opportunity to have the whole thing be Free Software. Gnash is getting very mature, and with support from a organization like Google it could easily become the best Flash player on Free OSes, if not on all OSes.
C'mon Google: Team up with Gnash and other Free Software projects and make Chrome OS one for the history books.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, for my application I cannot use the GPL license because parts of my application are licensed from other people who don't want to GPL their code - it sucks, and I'd rather not deal with it, but when you are in the RF communications business and you have to support CDMA, you HAVE to do business with Qualcomm, and they will NOT change their minds.
This is the key to the whole post. If he could have used GPLed code from Qualcomm, then he could have used the GPL license for QT and for the PyQt bindings.
But as we all know, it's not over until the Fat Gnu sings.
The Qualcomm stuff wasn't GPLed, so that makes me wonder: Why do you have to talk to Qualcomm to deal with CDMA stuff? Do they have patents on the protocols?
If there are patents that Qualcomm is enforcing -- software patents, in this case -- then that rather sucks. It makes me wonder about any licensing hurdles that might exist for GSM and UMTS. Is it much easier to develop Free Software for devices that have GSM/UMTS radios than for CDMA radios?
BUT, other companies are still pedaling their hardware that infringes on Tivo's (still valid) hardware patents.
Is anyone else imagining Tivo as the Wicked Witch of the West, pedaling on a bicycle in a twister, cackling about patents?
Mod parent up!
Name one large company that you'd trust to hold the reigns to your personal computing devices. Just one.
How about i-rootkit-you-Sony, or i-turn-you-in-Yahoo? Plays-for-only-a-limited-amount-of-time-for-sure-Microsoft?
Large companies by necessity will bow to government pressures. Large companies by necessity (and legal duty) will listen to the demands of their stockholders. The users are several steps down on the list.
Slippery phallusy what?
Oh shucks, that's a'nuher one of 'em homophones!
(Not to be confused with a homonym which, at least according to the linguists, must share both the same pronunciation and spelling. Silly linguists!)
This leads to such convoluted efforts as Office Open XML, which conveniently sounds like a format that just might have come out of, say, the OpenOffice project.
It's a bit off topic, but I'm still unclear as to how Microsoft wasn't taken to task for using the OOXML name given that OOo had already existed with an original file format called OpenOffice XML. I've personally corrected several people in person, in print, and online -- even on sites of relative technological aptitude such as /. -- for confusing the file formats and the OOo product. Is there just not enough of a legal protection against use of confusingly-similar product names?
The ballot screen would not appear if IE were not installed.
Doesn't that kinda kill the point of the whole project?
Presumably if IE is not installed, then the computer manufacturer would put a different browser in its place and the end user would never see the ballot screen.
This would only lead to problems if one of the non-IE browsers suddenly captured 90%+ of the market share and also used this position to break compatibility, force use of proprietary, patented protocols and formats, and basically f*ck everyone else over. I don't expect Google, Opera, or Mozilla to do this, so it's not really an issue.
Instead of fighting a big company yourself, just direct the weight of a big company to do itself in.
1. Write a paper. A really, really good paper. A research paper.
2. Get it accepted by a big journal. A really, really big journal like Nature.
3. Now somehow get this sucker added to Turn-it-in's database. Maybe you wrote the paper as a thesis and the prof needs to check it. Whatever.
4. Let the journal know that Turn-it-in has your paper. The paper to which they hold exclusive rights.
5. Pop some popcorn and sit back and let Nature do a little "Hulk Smash!".
6. The End.
(of course there would be several key problems in carrying out such a plan, but it would be delightfully amusing if you could pull it off)
Email the lawyer -- they could probably get a court order to do discovery on Turn-it-in's database. If the paper isn't in the database, then no biggie. If the paper is in the database as you surmise, Turn-it-in probably isn't going to get smacked as hard as your teacher, but it's one more chance for a plaintiff to get a judgment against the company.
As a normal human whose only special power is the random temporary ability to cast ./ mod spells, I feel left out.
What is this current working directory of which you speak?
No, no, that's a quarter note. It's just got a very small head!
I challenge you to find cheaper food than the organic produce grown within a few miles of my home.
Local produce, whether organic or mass produced, will almost always be cheaper
Local foods are great, but in my neck of the woods the local, organic veggies are almost always more expensive.
Living in New England, there's nearly no produce for several months out of the year. The small amount that is grown is always more expensive than produce shipped in from points South. During the growing season we can get some beautiful, tasty lettuces, tomatoes, chard, herbs, and so forth, but I believe that even in my local Coop the local, organic prices are more expensive than the shipped-in produce. During the summer there will be weeks when all of the lettuce comes from local farms, but even then it's not all organic.
One of the local produce distributors has an "outlet" store where you can buy all kinds of things. There are a number of local products there, including milk from a nearby dairy in glass bottles, but most of the produce comes from out of state. I mean, who can beat lettuce at $1/ large head? (and we're talking red and green leaf lettuce, not just romaine or iceberg)
One of the reasons I believe that organic food costs more is that a farm has to get certified before they can legally use the term "organic". Because getting certified costs a chunk of change, the system is comically beneficial to large factory farms as it's cheaper per ton of produce for them to get certified than any little, local farm in your area.
Farmer's markets are nice, but I can't remember the last time I found produce at one for less than the local Coop or supermarket. Give the taste and the fact it's locally grown I'd definitely pay at least the same amount, but it's difficult to even find price parity.
From what I've heard, the best boost that could be given to local foods would be to reduce fuel subsidies. That way, the true cost of shipping fruits and veggies up to New England would be reflected in the sticker price.
in the sense that people with pacemakers or cochlear implants aren't "cyborgs"
One of my friends has a pacemaker and I totally think that she's a cyborg. She doesn't deny it -- sometimes she even gets this look in her eye, you know, one of those "one day we're going to rise up and kill all of you meat-only people" looks.
It's hard to draw the line between basic humans and cyborgs, but I'd say that, at the very least, if you are reliant on some kind of electronic tech bound to or inside your body to survive (she'd die if she didn't have the pacemaker), then you're a cyborg.
On the down side, she isn't allowed to play with hard drive magnets. And she told me that she didn't think it was a good idea to try to overclock her pacemaker.
Call me crazy, but if you actually *read* the rules it says the contest is going until at least October 2nd, 2001.
Actually, yes, I think I will call you crazy.
it costs us a lot of money and effort to digitise our 80-100 year old collections
Sure. Digitizing a bunch of stuff can cost a certain chunk of change.
We do want our images in the public domain and we do want them used, but we need to have the cash to keep doing this work as a small charity
There's an initial cost of digitizing all of the materials, and then an additional (but much smaller) cost of keeping the website serving them up and running.
it might jeopardize our ability to add other images on our already shoe-string budget.
How many new images will you add a year? Will all of the new ones be taken with a digital camera?
Doing initial setup and digitizing the huge historical log of data can be an overwhelming task, I agree. But as you state yourself, you've got a valuable resource that makes sense to put in the public domain. Locked-down data will likely restrict science, not push it forward.
One thing you could consider doing is to partner with a group like Archive.org. They can provide the hosting for the images and do all the sysadmin work, and all you have to do is provide the data. Don't worry about the old data at first. Just start out by asking yourself this simple question: If someone else deals with the servers and pays for sysadmins/bandwidth, can we afford the time/money to digitize new images and upload them to the server?"
If your group can afford the time and money required to add new data to this repository, then you're all set. New data will all go into the system. The old set of data is static and not increasing, so slowly over time you'll be able to digitize it yourselves or to find other people or outside funding to make this digitization possible. If other scientists want access to your data, don't charge them access fees, just ask them for a donation to help digitize some of your old collections, and put one of those thermometer-type graphs on your website showing how much of the collection has been digitized and how much remains to be done. You might even be able to get a small grant to do this work.
Good Luck!
It takes a lot of mathematical skill to solve certain equations, but I wouldn't call the solution art even if it was the solution to a Millennium Prize problem.
Indeed.
Some math papers or books on math are quite enjoyable to read, not because of the particular methods and theorems they present, but the manner in which they present them. If someone came up with a clever way to solve a Millennium Prize problem, and wrote it up by hand with a red calligraphy pen on creamy-white paper, annotating it with various amusing but somewhat-relevant illustrations in the margins, then *that* would be art.
But the math inside the paper isn't art. It's just documentation of implications and results that we can derive from our original axioms.
All he proved was that the drove the distance, not that the client could have killed anyone. For that he'd have to have killed someone or sometwo. ;-}
I think the lawyer is screwed either way. Either he
1) Admits that this guy made the trip in time and pay him $1 million (or perhaps do some out-of-court settlement with him), or
2) Admit that he just offered $1 million dollars for someone to drive between 2 states and kill 4 people.
I think that offering money for someone to kill 4 people is probably way up there in Felony land. Given that he's crossing state lines, you're talking Federal PMITA prison for a long, long time.
The only argument I imagine that the lawyer can make is that his comments were just a joke. But that basically means that anything else that he says in public is going to be perceived as a joke for quite some time. He's going to have to live with this shit for quite a while.
Judges often have a very wry sense of humor. I can see a judge finding some kind of interesting way to censure or otherwise reprimand the lawyer.
The video was hard to find on the given links. One of them even had the audacity to ask me to log in to view it. Yeah, as if.
One Second Linux Boot Demonstration (new version)
Also, kudos on the music choice. The wah-wah pedal in the opening music really gives the tech demo that "porn soundtrack" feel I know you were going for.
Yeah, I agree that we need a new Slashdot category.
Right here:
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2015/youtubeie6.png
Maybe they're getting a number of hits from web developers who are testing in IE6.
At least that's what I want to hope!
I was just talking to a friend about the Codex Sinaiticus which was recently scanned and put online here.
Wikimedia Commons does not have high-res scans of it, but the Codex Sinaiticus website has some really high-res images. Unfortunately they're only accessible though a Flash interface, but I'm sure that with a little scripting one could easily suck-out the raw image data. Reproduction of those images on other websites, however, may be illegal according to the Codex Sinaiticus website:
Copyright
This electronic version of Codex Sinaiticus is provided only for non-commercial personal and educational use, by the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monaster at Sinai and the National Library of Russia.
The original item itself is in the public domain in most jurisdictions and therefore not protected by copyright under applicable laws. However rights in the electronic copy and certain associated metadata are owned by the holding institutions. If you wish to make use of this electronic copy or its metadata other than for non-commercial personal or educational use, you must first obtain the written permission of the relevant institution.
Those rules may make sense according to UK copyright law, but as others have pointed out in this thread, mere reproductions of 2D images are not inherently eligible for copyright protection as they are not novel. My friend warned me about trying to copy this data from the Codex site as it might open me up for legal liability in the UK, especially if I ever were to travel there again.
But now I don't have to bother: Someone else is already testing the waters! I eagerly await the results of this case.
Gnash is all fine and good, except that it's a piece of shit and doesn't work. Just like open-source Java.
What isn't working for you? Sure, Gnash doesn't work on every website yet, but the Gnash devs are working this summer on v9 and v10 support for popular websites.
Look, I like open source as much as the next guy (more, probably), but more than anything I like working software. Google can either spend lots of man-hours making Gnash work properly with all the Flash out there on the web today, and then spend more man-hours keeping it up-to-date as Adobe adds new features that various popular websites take advantage of, or they can just partner with Adobe and use real Flash, spending just a few man-hours to integrate it into their system.
Gnash is making large strides towards covering the feature set provided by the Adobe Flash Player. Rob Savoye (lead programmer for the project) has stated that Gnash has actually been ahead of Adobe in several areas, including first with 64bit support, first ARM support, lower CPU usage, and so forth. Gnash is improving much faster than Adobe Flash is introducing new features.
I think it would be worth Google's time to invest in Gnash at this point. Investing in Gnash would mean that they wouldn't be beholden to a company like Adobe, and it seems like one of the main reasons for having Chrome OS is so that Google can get out from under the control of another large company: Microsoft.
Shameless Plug: If you have some free time or money, please consider donating either one to the project.
If your package manager doesn't provide a build of Gnash for you, read the build instructions for your platform.
being dependent on non-free software that only runs on someone else's machine as a remote service [is bad]
Oh, I totally agree.
The goal of Chrome is to replace customer lock-in to [Microsoft]...with lock-in to Google..."
I see this as one possible goal. The truth is probably somewhere midway between this description and their "Do no evil" motto. Hopefully it leans more towards the latter one!
I am unsure why other free software advocates are supporting this idea, unless the enemy of Microsoft is automatically our friend.
There are several reasons why Chrome OS will help Free Software.
First, Google already has several hardware partners lined up. This means better linux kernel support on all of that hardware.
Second, having Google out there in the OS business means that we're probably going to see better cross-platform support by large players. Right now just about every company/website/service supports Windows. A large subset of those support OSX. And a somewhat smaller subset also support GNU/Linux. If a GNU/Linux-based OS comes along with the might of Google behind it, we're probably going to see a lot more companies stepping up to support that kind of stack.
Third, standards. Google has done a pretty darn good job of supporting them, unlike other big players. More Google software out there will probably mean greater support for standards.
Google is a giant. It partners with other giants, not with little independent reverse-engineering projects.
Google might not "partner" with small groups per se, but it does use a lot of FOSS and contribute a lot of time and patches back to projects. It doesn't need to become best buddies with Gnash; even a tip of the hat in Gnash's direction could mean a lot in terms of acknowledgment and encouraging other Flash producers to work with Gnash on compatibility.
The more I think about the situation, the more I wonder if the fact that Gnash is GPLv3 is part of what's scaring Google away. Google seems to have had a bit of an aversion to GPLv3...
Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way.
First off, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone is teaming up with Adobe to include Adobe web stuff that it's not going to focus on Acrobat but on Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, and that whole ecosystem.
That out of the way, what the Flippety Friggery, Google?
You're building a new OS based on the Linux kernel + Chrome Browser, which is cool because these are both high-quality Free Software projects. But then you wander off and sidle up to Adobe instead of working with Free Software such as Gnash.
This seems like a repeat of the situation with the ARM folks. Gnash has had ARM support for several years, but instead of the ARM people collaborating with Gnash to get full Flash support on their processors, the ARM people worked with Adobe to make a whole new port to ARM, instead.
Now Google is working on a slick new OS and has an amazing opportunity to have the whole thing be Free Software. Gnash is getting very mature, and with support from a organization like Google it could easily become the best Flash player on Free OSes, if not on all OSes.
C'mon Google: Team up with Gnash and other Free Software projects and make Chrome OS one for the history books.