Google: Friend or Foe of Ubuntu?
Google and freedom
Google enjoys a pretty favorable image within the free-software community. In some respects, it deserves this reputation, as it strongly supports many open-source projects. On the other hand, Google is reluctant to open the code of most of its own software. Given this hesitancy, can we trust the company to be always on Ubuntu’s side?
Google and freedom
Google does a lot of good for free software. It has sponsored development of wine and contributes patches to Ubuntu. Many of its employees use a modified version of Ubuntu on their company desktops. And as one of Microsoft’s chief competitors, Google is an ally of Linux by the simple logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
While it contributes substantially to open-source projects, however, the search giant rarely releases the source of its own software. With the exception of anomalies like Google Gadgets, which were open-sourced last summer, or the Chrome web browser, the majority of popular Google applications–from Google Earth to the Picasa photo editor to most of its web applications–are proprietary and closed.
Google’s use of closed-source licensing puts it in an awkward relationship with Ubuntu and other projects that are built, first and foremost, around the principle that source code should always be open, and that users should have the right to modify and redistribute it as they see fit. It’s hard to view the company as a genuine friend of Linux when it fails to practice what its donations to free-software projects would seem to preach.
What comes after the war?
I therefore worry whether Google is really committed to the free-software community in the long run. Given its lack of demonstrated belief in the value of open-source licensing when it comes to its own software, does the company support Ubuntu merely as a convenient element in its larger strategy to combat Microsoft? When the Windows monopoly on desktop computing is finally broken, will Google continue to dump its money and resources into open-source projects?
Or, like the Soviet Union and the West after 1945, will the relationship between Google and the Linux community devolve into hostility in the absence of a common enemy?
Realistically, the point where Ubuntu and related projects will no longer be de facto allies of Google is a long way off, as Microsoft doesn’t show signs of breaking anytime soon. But unless Google gets more serious about practicing, rather than merely supporting, software freedom, I don’t know how much I trust its promise to do no evil once it no longer has a strategic reason for working with Ubuntu.
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I see no excuse for releasing the source code of Picassa… Use open source products is one thing make open sorce products is other thing
Can’t Google both support open source projects while simultaneously own certain pieces of proprietary software? Personally, I think Google does a great job supporting the open source community and — more importantly — the spirit of open source.
I don’t care if they don’t open source Picasa. In fact, I’d rather they didn’t. The last thing I need is ten different versions of Picasa in the repos, each with a slightly different UI and moronic name changes (GNUcasa, KPicasa, Pikasa, etc). Just because Google doesn’t open up all of its projects doesn’t warrant it the title of “Ubuntu foe.”
I recommend that the community spends more time looking for partners and less time making new enemies.
Google Gears are open-sourced. Interestingly enough, nobody ported them to work on 64bit yet.
I think they are more a friend – simply because linux support is above open-source for me.
Who cares? Not everything needs to be nor should be open source.
Operating systems, however, are crucial to falling under open source license, for obvious reasons. There is no good reason for an OS to be closed. There is nothing amazing or secret about an OS that needs to be hidden from people. It is silly.
But it is pointless to demand everything be under that same license. It just won’t happen, not should it. When we talk about freedom, people and companies should be just a free to release their work closed or not. It would be bad for everyone to be forced to be open.
I think Google could do well to push Linux as a desktop, if they truly want to compete with Microsoft. It seems silly to me that they have not put more effort into this. It should be top priority – funding Linux/Ubuntu/GoogleOS development!
again a “war”-article? come on stop it. why is it the open-source/linux thing against microsoft? why do people always forget apple which does better in terms of numbers than linux anyway. i deleted tuxmachines from my bookmarks as most of those articles are like this one…cheers
@Josh:
Forking of a major project is rare when the original project itself takes its users’ and developers’ efforts into the main branch. Only when it doesn’t do this, or when development falters, do forks happen (usually).
Picassa is a strong piece of software; Freeing it and releasing its code would only help to strengthen the software.
What other software has 10 versions to back up your example? There may be many graphical front-ends (GUIs) to a command-line app, but generally a good app is improved upon, not forked.
I think that Google should Free their software, as having it in distribution repositories would benefit everyone and make its installation more widespread and simple. Not everyone uses *buntu.
I agree with most of the comments. The foundation of systems needs to be free so that people can have the freedom to build their projects on either free tools, or extra fancy proprietary tools. A proprietary base like Windows means free projects are built on proprietary libraries and such. It is why Gnu was looking for something like Linux because the Gnu OS was originally dependent on a Unix kernel people had to buy.
Also, @fab, Apple makes a lot of money, and together Microsoft and Apple dominate market share. The 1% Linux thing is always misrepresented as 1% user base. It is 1% of all the money goes towards Linux in the marketplace. Personally I thikn that is pretty big considering it is a community where the commodity is code for code because people need better software than they can make alone.
As far as user base, HP reported recently that it found more people using Linux on the desktop than OSX. Linux and BSD dominate on servers (for usage certainly and for quite a bit of market share). Also, Google Trends is interesting with respect for what people are looking for, and I was recently inspired to look at what people have been talking about on the web (mind you with no respect for time).
http://nakedpenguins.net/2009/02/os-discussion-what-have-people-talked.html
Google is a commercial enterprise that invests in technologies and developers that are useful to Google. That is what they will always do. Googles’ investment in Wine was always about helping Wine support Googles’ Windows targeted applications on the Linux platform. I don’t think Google has ever mislead anybody about it’s intentions or the nature of it’s relationship with open source.
It’s all business.
Similarly I don’t think any open source developers are under any illusions about Google. So long as Google obeys the rules when it uses open source technologies I personally don’t see the problem.
The bigger issue I think is the what Googles relationship with open source developers means for consumers of all kinds. Will they benefit or will they suffer?
Ultimately I think they will benefit. Google seems to realise there are benefits to a healthy competitive market that includes open source. Which is important because Googles’ business is built not just on selling a product but on actually being useful.
Market analyst types will tell us Google makes it money from web search and advertising. Which is true. But the real product Google is selling to it’s customers is a captive human audience that can be targeted by advertisers.
For Google to keep a hold on that market it needs to remain fresh, innovative and above all useful. A healthy relationship with third party open source developers will help Google do that. Which I think Google is well aware of.
It’s also not just about Google competing with Microsoft. Google also needs to compete with every other search engine on the web for it’s share of the web audience. And some of the competition are former Google staffers.
Google supported the Ubucon conference, Ubuntu developer Summit ,Mountain View? and is definitely a very close friend.
I think quite a few people need to read some of RMS essays. agree or disagree with him, he clearly points out good objective ways of dealing with this problem… That said
Google is just a corporation, it has no feelings, wants or desires, it is simply a legal construct around an enterprise out to make money. We will always have to watch the actions taken in the name of Google.
Closed or not, the reason I don’t trust Google is the privacy policy. When you couple that with closed desktop software, it’s almost worse than Microsoft. Of course MS does other gehy things like corrupting standards. That is one thing Google is pretty good about. However, a highly standards compliant piece of software can still bring about your demise. Just because it’s not MS, doesn’t mean Google is your friend. Their both giants playing a different game. You have to wary of any of these corporations.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”
Google is dependent on Ubuntu, they’re not going to be our enemies any time soon. Microsoft has many enemies – Sun, Apple, Yahoo, and Palm compete just as directly, yet none have been as friendly to Ubuntu as Google.
Twice now Google has hosted our developer summit. They sponsor summer of code projects, have a team of engineers who work on open source, and a significant portion of their engineers 20% time goes to something Ubuntu-related. Most importantly, Google themselves use an Ubuntu derivative for their desktops and servers, giving them a direct incentive to contribute to it’s improvement.
Could Google do more? Of course – at the last UDS there was even talk about changing the default Firefox search provider to Yahoo since they offered more money. But that’s hardly evidence of Google being evil; it’s not like we had a real choice of default search provider in the first place. So, even if Google completely redoes their entire infrastructure, they’re not going to have any reason to be enemies of Ubuntu any time soon – at worst, they’ll just be another ISV that supports Ubuntu as a platform.
I think there’s nothing wrong with having closed-source software. For me, I see *buntu and GNU/Linux as a completely free platform on which to build your applications. It’d be great if everything was open source, but Google can keep their products closed if they want to. That they sponsor and encourage open practices is already more than a lot of companies