

How “Open” Is Google Really?  [video] - jolie
http://mashable.com/2010/05/23/google-openness-video/

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pavs
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.

~~~
reitzensteinm
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.

~~~
loup-vaillant
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.

~~~
reitzensteinm
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.

~~~
loup-vaillant
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.

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motters
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.

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curiousfiddler
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.

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benologist
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.

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

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ErrantX
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)

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temptemptemp2
Can people start posting a warning when there isn't a transcript, like [no
transcript] or something?

~~~
jimmyjim
[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.

~~~
temptemptemp2
Thank you!

