Taking a stand on open source and patents
google-opensource.blogspot.com
google-opensource.blogspot.com
I'm guessing it's the former, since it typically takes big companies a long time to pull something like this together and fully execute it.
In any case, it's a good step for Google to suggest that they DO still take openness seriously and are, more or less, still the "don't be evil" company we all came to know.
Bloggers, journalists, and internet commenters started crying like 5-year-old children.
I'm not necessarily saying the backlash was (or wasn't) justified, but it was what it was, and I think this step by Google is a good thing in terms of earning them a bit more trust with that crowd. Whether that's something that actively care about, is anybody's guess.
http://www.google.com/patents/licensing/index.html
And that in itself is just part of ongoing stuff coming from Google, so as you suggest this is not the kind of thing you throw together in a moment.
Having said that, once you've put in the months/years to get to this stage, you do get to choose the timing of your announcements.
(I am directly involved in this :P)
"Apart from a few patents listed, we hold a large arsenal of patents that we won't rule out using offensively against both developers AND users of open OR closed source software."
As a software developer and user, I'm not entirely comforted....
"Over time, we intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies."
Now that's not a specific promise, so you can argue how much it should count for. But if you take it at face value, it seems reasonable to expect that they will be adding to the list.
Google is becoming an entrenched company, they will eventually (or sooner) go from an innovative market position to a defensive one, and thats when patents start to look really juicy to the bean counters.
Also, if you're a developer working for a large google competitor, you may also have reason to fear at least for your job (which is quite personal).
The newer patents on tech like glass and machine learning are what are particularly concerning for todays startups, many of who are venturing into these areas, and these are nowhere to be seen in this agreement. The recent patents also have the longest shelf life and the most potential for nipping competitors "in the bud".
What do you people want?
I've often wondered, though, why there isn't a consortium to which all the companies with "defensive" software patents can assign them, on condition that if the company get sued for ANY software patent, the consortium will terminate the license to the plaintiff for ALL the patents it holds. The consortium could make that explicit in the license for software patents they offer (for free) to everyone. Sue someone for a software patent and you lose all rights to these others.
That would kill software patents dead in their tracks, I think. There are many elements of that solution in this one announced by Google, but it would be far more effective if every company who hated software patents but held them anyway collaborated.
"The Pledge remains in force for the life of the patents, even if we transfer them."
I realize Google can claim whatever they want, but I don't see how they enforce this pledge for other entities which inherit their patents. How does the pledge actually bind (at a legal level) entities which inherit the patents?
I hope Google aren't going to pick and choose the areas they will allow FOSS innovation to happen in.
If Google believes in the principle of this move then it should be putting in a very large number of patents, at least every single patent that they have acquired primarily for defensive measures (we hope, most of them). If it doesn't believe in the principle of it then it should not be doing it at all.
Side note: isn't this already their internal policy? When has Google ever gone after open source projects with any of their patents?
What does this mean? Why wouldn't someone be free to read patents?
This applies much more in the realm of software, because of the idiocy of things like the XOR mouse patent, Amazon 1-Click, and many other obvious 'inventions' that aren't, but were provided patent protection.
Except for Google Maps, GMail, Google Search, Google Apps, AdSense, AdWords, Reader, Code Search, News, or pretty much any of their web apps or which make them money. In those cases, proprietary closed source wins.
At no point does your quote say that open-source always wins, or that all things should be open-source, so it's like you didn't read even those two sentences. It always seems a bit artificial when people trot out "middlebrow dismissal", but geez...
This is what it says about open systems.
>Another way to look at the difference between open and closed systems is that open systems allow innovation at all levels — from the operating system to the application layer — not just at the top. This means that one company doesn't have to depend on another's benevolence to ship a product. If the GNU C compiler that I'm using has a bug, I can fix it since the compiler is open source. I don't have to file a bug report and hope for a timely response.
From that it appears that they're conflating "open systems" and "open source software", not drawing a distinction like you're claiming.
>At no point does your quote say that open-source always wins, or that all things should be open-source, so it's like you didn't read even those two sentences.
From the same link that you site, Google says this:
>We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get.
>Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration.
>since the compiler is open source.
But it's not open source. It's free software.
Well it says a good bit more than that. It's certainly not conflating; his argument appears to be that open source is a component of "open systems" (he also calls out "open standards" and "open information" as other components, and explicitly doesn't require all three).
>> At no point does your quote say that open-source always wins, or that all things should be open-source, so it's like you didn't read even those two sentences. > From the same link that you site, Google says this: >> We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get. >> Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration.
Those aren't contradictory statements.
Just to be clear, I'm certainly not saying that the "open" article is a perfect crystallization of open-source/open-web/open-whatever philosophy, nor would I say that Google has lived up to all the ideals in that article.
"Open systems" remains a poorly defined term at the end of that article (though the individual concepts fare better), the paragraphs on why google has closed-source software is awfully tilted to the "people will game these systems if they are open source" without mentioning the myriad other reason you might (and they do) keep source closed, and the open standards section is a bit prickly these days (I personally don't think not maintaining an RSS feed reader is a blow to standards, as others do, but I remain disappointed that G+ is not a federated system (or moving to one), for instance).
All that said, the original comment remains facile (and not even that, as the statement "Open-source software has been at the root of many innovations in cloud computing, the mobile web, and the Internet generally" is trivially true, even (or especially) for the products mentioned).
Google's core business is advertising. Open systems allow you to filter out advertising and avoid being tracked and exploited.
Google's raison d'etre is diametrically opposed to open systems. Everything else is PR bullshit.
Google believes in whatever makes them the most money, just like any other corporation. They're just more dishonest about it than most.
The 180 on net neutrality, the anti-privacy stance combined with downright illegal (at least in the EU) activities, the pro-active pandering to the copyright mafia, the anti-anonymity policy, the increased geo-tarding or services etcetera.
All of these are not just "things I don't like", they are things that go against the values Google suggested, if not outright proclaimed, they stood for.
Google has turned on the hacker community quite a while ago.
What I find particularly galling is that Google abuses the notion that they stand for openness and global internet freedom as PR-fodder, whilst being one of the most powerful forces in achieving exactly the opposite.
Even Microsoft only went as far as to proclaim their tactics were about "innovation". Google is far more cynical.
Look at all their more recent activity aside from the not-quite-here-yet Glass and Driverless Car projects:
1) Google+ is an attack against Facebook 2) Shopping Express is attacking Amazon 3) Chromebook and Nexus are attacking Apple and Microsoft directly. 4) Chrome is about to metastasize into a full-on OS, and this can be seen in Google's lack of interest in fixing simple "browser" issues as they put more and more kitchen sink into Chrome.
All of this is well and good - companies need to press their competitors in order to stay profitable and secure.
However, all of this coming at the expense of many their cool projects and widely used services like Reader. What's next, Voice (use G Chat instead)? Blogs (use G+ instead)? It sucks wondering what's next on the chopping block.
If Google is going to war, then they're no longer "nice" or "neutral". Google is throwing down the gauntlet and there's a fear that they'll be as closed as Apple or Microsoft, if they feel it's more profitable.
> Google's lack of interest in fixing simple "browser" issues
What do you mean by that? IMHO Chrome is the best browser around these days. In (well, almost) all dimensions - html5 spec feature coverage and quality, speed, security, etc.