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Comment by ktta | Hacker News Reader

I think most interesting part of all this is that they're offering support for this[1]. So that and it now being a part of G suite is making it an 'official' service/product.

And since Chromium browser is an open source browser which receives many contributions from many developers[2], this will add Google to the list of companies which take contributions from OSS and make money off it.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of any other OSS product which contributes to their revenue in a direct way. Only thing that comes close is Kubernetes and then Tensorflow, but both aren't in the same 'level' that chrome is in now.

[1]:https://enterprise.google.com/chrome/contact/?lsc=assist [2]:http://www.chromium.org/Home

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For starters, the overwhelming vast majority of chromium development is from Google.

Not to mention that the licensing explicitly allows commercial usage.

(Also I'm almost positive there is OSS code running in MANY more places at google, including their server platforms, which they use as an almost direct part of their income)

Unless I'm really misreading things, your comment makes it sound like Google is now suddenly "abusing" work from developers when that's just not the case.

Not only is there literally nothing wrong with making money of OSS projects which explicitly allow it through their license, it's significantly better than the alternative of "closed source" in that anyone can not only view the source but can contribute and can even fork the project for themselves.

Many of Red Hat's products are simply rebranded versions of open-source products that they sell and support.

Apparently my comment looks like I'm criticizing Google for making money off OSS projects. That is NOT what I meant to do.

I like companies that make companies that open source their commercial products. It means they aren't paranoid of someone 'stealing' their work, like so many other companies do so. And that they realize the power of open source. I'm NOT against people making money from open source projects. The only word I used to describe my opinion is 'interesting'.

I am aware of companies that also have OSS as their main/major revenue like Nginx, Redis Labs, and ofcourse the big one, Red hat. Even Ubuntu is a such a company and I like them.

I thought it was 'interesting' because till now I saw google as this black box which never open sourced anything other than some tiny tool which wasn't related to their revenue source. That changed a bit when they open sourced Kubernetes and Tensorflow, but that was possibly because they would benefit from adoption.

Look at Elastic's product, i.e. Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, etc. Or Oracle with MySQL and Java. Redhat's OpenStack. Spring for Java. EhCache. Even .NET from Microsoft is also starting to accept third-party work. There are a lot of such examples, and that's usually a good thing. Because it means that there is someone with a different interest, than just working on cool things, behind the product (i.e. Money) and driving it foreward. Also, having professional support offered makes it sometimes much easier when convincing stakeholders to build upon an OSS product instead of a closed source equivalent.

If Openstack were to belong to anyone it would be Rackspace, not Redhat. It hasn't belonged to anyone for a very long time.

I'd put money on Openstack (minus Swift) being an entirely legacy project by 2020.

What about Android?

> this will add Google to the list of companies which take contributions from OSS and make money off it.

There is nothing wrong with making money off open source software if the license allows it (and most licenses do allow it).

If developers don't want other people to make money off their project, they are free to use a license that would prevent it.

Chromium is funded by Google and nearly all of the modifications and security updates are by Google employee's. So to imply that Google should not profit from an open source browser they bankroll and maintain is beyond ridiculous.

One more thing, the majority of Linux contributions are from employee's that work for major corporations that use Linux.

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