Just glancing through the qmail GitHub repository gave me a headache. Plenty of files have 0 comments (not really sure where you see the clearly stated assumptions). In addition, he seems obsessed with 1 letter variables which offer no inclination of their purpose at a glance.
Here's something I did for myself a long time ago: take some of the fundamental code like alloc.c, alloc_re.c, fmt_str.c and str_*.c, and start commenting it yourself. I found that it was so expressive and concise that after a short time the code is very clear and the comments get in the way.
The only real noise is that no-one uses SunOS cc anymore and compilers will optimize loops (expanding in place, or doing other magic optimizations when appropriate) so loop-unrolling doesn't apparently buy an increase in performance anymore.
And yet he probably wrote code that would be considered objectively better than anything I have ever seen from my large variable name and lots of comments colleagues. Perhaps there is more to it than surface level concerns?
What a bizarre world we live in where willful violations of a legally binding license (a license which attempts to keep knowledge in the open) is considered nothing more than a "calculated risk."
I'm sure you've never jaywalked or littered or sped in a car and thought to yourself "there's no way i'll get in trouble for this so i'll do it anyway". Except in VMware's case they are much large than a single person so their list of "low risk" crimes is larger.
It isn't silly to assume considering that an overwhelming majority of Google's revenue comes directly from advertisements.
As for self driving cars, I can think of a ton of marketing use cases including tracking how often people drive, where they go, how long they stay there, the frequency in which someone goes to a location, what type of features in the car the user takes advantage of...
And that's just from the top of my head in 30 seconds. I'm sure the marketing kids at Google can think of far more ways to milk you.
I suspect that technology giants like Google and Facebook are trying to wean themselves from ad revenue, to become conglomerates like other companies of that size, like GE.
The alternative is massive problems in a few years, when somebody has the guts to kickstart a consumer laptop that comes with adblock preinstalled.
I believe it's necessary to repeat this point because of the constant churn of new users who are otherwise ignorant of Google's business model. I still hear people say, "I'm so glad Google is nice enough to give us free apps!"
I've heard folks say things to that effect. "Google is awesome. They have the best search and email and smartphone software. For free! And they're fighting corrupt ISPs!"
It's nice when Google does things that benefit a lot of people, but they're a for-profit corporation and not motivated primarily by altruism. People might not fully understand that or its significance and simply enjoy Google products, but I think it's useful knowledge.
But did you also hear them say, "...and they're doing it as a charity" and then get shocked when you revealed that Google is actually a for-profit organization that makes money via advertising?
It's a nuanced point. aros said some people believe Google is "nice" which isn't wrong in my experience. I didn't interpret aros' words to mean that people explicitly deny Google is a for-profit corp nor espouse that it is a charity, but people have expressed warm fuzzies about Google.
My takeaway was that many people produce warm feelings about an entity that doesn't necessarily reciprocate or find those warm feelings important in it of themselves.
I personally like Google (so far). E.g. I could have seen them siding with ISPs, trying to dismantle net neutrality, and using their capital to stifle innovation keeping them at the top.
But if sometime in the future, Google enacts policies that aren't so "nice", people may do well to avoid confusion by remembering that Google isn't inherently "nice", but they are inherently "for-profit".
