How “Open” Is Google Really? [video] | Hacker News Reader

How “Open” Is Google Really? [video]

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29 pointsjolie17 comments

Openness is good. Radicalization of the ideology is not. If you are not willing to compromise you are no different than people who support the other extreme of the ideology. We need to meet in the middle, where it helps everyone. IMO YMMV

Google is in a no-win situation.

If they had all software closed, we would have treated them the same way we think of MSFT. In their hybrid form, where some of their services/software is open-source, some of us accuse them of playing the field because at the end of the day it helps their business, which it does, both in terms of goodwill and adoption.

They will never make everyone happy, but I think they can do certain things to be more open. For instance, they can open-source their search engine, gmail, blogger, docs (and other closed) platforms which are a "lite" version of the current form. IE, they can release a google search version that is one year older than the current version google is using, than they can release a new version every-year which will be one year older than the current version.

They could also not release some critical aspect of the software, like pagerank algo, spam detection. Something like what reddit does now.

Obviously it will not make everyone (or even Stallman) happy, but it will be better than what it is now and if anyone can pull this off, Google can.

> they can release a google search version that is one year older than the current version google is using, than they can release a new version every-year which will be one year older than the current version.

I don't think that would ever happen. Even a one-year old Google Search probably contains things that no other search company knows about (not to mention how it would help everybody better reverse engineer the current version). They'd have too much to lose in their core business by doing that.

> "I think it's usually best to look at the various things a company does and judge each of them separately. That way we put more pressure on a company to change the things that are bad."

Actually, that sounds pretty darn pragmatic and even-handed to me; I'm not seeing this radicalism.

If openness is good than radicalization is necessary. With out Stallman and his breed the conversation becomes:

100% closed vs some openness in some cases.

Which is a conversation clearly biased in favor of closed.

Right now 100% closed is seen as completely sane and normal and reasonable, but 100% open is considered crazy extremism. So as of today Open is still losing, and Stallman is still good.

I don't think there's anything wrong with strict personal adherence to an ideology. I greatly admire Stallman for the sarcrifices he's made in this regard (for instance using a terrible laptop only because it's got open firmware, see: http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/)

Where it all comes unstuck is when someone tries to force their strict ideology on others. Stallman calling me immoral for not open sourcing my code gets roughly the same reaction from me as some guy on the street would if he screamed at me that I'm selfish for not donating all my stuff to charity.

Or when Christians tell me to repent or I'm going to burn in hell.

You shouldn't get offended when someone calls you immoral when you don't think you are. It just means your moral systems don't match.

Also, calling "strict ideology" the moral system Stallman is trying to spread is a stretch. His moral system really is quite reasonable. You probably know the propaganda by heart, but anyway…

Unlike your stuff, software is abundant. Give it to charity, and you still have it. Such a fundamental difference calls for a fundamentally different moral system. Stallman found a suitable one: it is applied to scientific research: results should be public knowledge, so everyone can benefit from them. Under such moral system, it is indeed immoral to make proprietary software.

I'm not sure I agree that I shouldn't be offended. If someone tells me that I'm being immoral by their moral code, I don't have a problem with that. But to simply say that I'm acting immorally is to assert that their moral code is the standard by which everyone should be judged, which in my opinion is offensive.

The problem is, if I think that doing something is evil, I probably don't want anyone to do that: that would be evil to me. I see few ways around that.

Stallman asks too much from everyone, but this is good. As said George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

I wouldn't be too hard on Google, because they're probably one of the less evil of the well known software companies and have done a lot to support free software. Relative to Microsoft or Apple they look positively saintly.

I don't get the point. Openness really doesn't mean you keep your bank locker open in a street and ask people to pick any amount of money they want. Openness should be viewed in the right perspective & context.

This extends far beyond Google. There's this bizarre duality at play where f/oss is positioned as the future but websites/web applications are mysteriously exempt. Even leading sites that tout they're built on f/oss stacks are inherently or most often absolutely closed.

Video proving Google openness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt2NJRybcxE

So this program, he talks about that will block non-free non-trivial javascript; thereby stopping Google docs from working...

Isn't the easier way just not to use services like Google docs? :) (i.e. with non-free non-trivial javascript)

Can people start posting a warning when there isn't a transcript, like [no transcript] or something?

[Interviewer]: So, Google claims to offer more freedom than apple

[Stallman]: It's hard not to respect freedom a little more than Apple does, since Apple is about as nasty as exists in world today. Google does some things that are good and some things that are bad. I think it's usually best to look at the various things a company does and judge each of them separately. That way we put more pressure on a copmany to change the things that are bad. Now Google develops a lot of free software and funds substantial amount of free software developers, that's good. Then, look at the Google services. Some of them work okay with free software, and there's nothing particularly bad about them. Nearly all of them, maybe all of them, try to install a piece of non-free javascript program to the user's browser. But many of the services will work okay even if you block the JavaScript. Some javascript code does things that are so simple that we can think of it just slightly extended markup for the HTML, but that's not always true -- some JavaScript is quite complicated, and it's not acceptable for that to be non-free. So, somebody's working on a program, which I think will probably be an added feature on NoScript that will make it possible to block all non-free non-trivial JavaScript. I think for instance that Google Docs won't work if you don't allow a half a meg of a JavaScript program to be installed.

Thank you!

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