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Comment by jacksmith21006 | Hacker News Reader

This is a very goofy article. Google has open source so many things that it is a bit crazy they give away. But who else open sources their OSs? Both Android and ChromeOS.

But the craziest one is giving away Borg. Probably the most incredible technology Google has created and just opens sources it.

For me personally the biggest contribution from Google is

https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html

Kind of the opposite of what this article suggests.

I get some of the alt right has a problem with Google firing Damore but this article is ridiculous, IMO.

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> Both Android and ChromeOS.

Which are only kind of open sourced.

Google only makes the lower levels available and both are designed in such a way that using Linux as kernel is largely irrelevant for anyone using the OS SDKs.

ChromeOS is mostly a Web browser juggler and as such the only way to develop for it is with the standard Web platform APIs.

Android is all about Google's version of Java, with plain ANSI C, C++ and a couple of native APIs on the NDK, everything else is not white listed as official NDK API and as of Android 7 trying to link to them will cause an application termination.

First, How does this have anything to do with the alt-right?

That's just a distraction from your argument that we shouldn't criticize the actions of Google because they give away some research. Google, and others, have turned open source into a free marketing campaign. Most of it is only open source in the "source available" sense.

You could fork it, but the sheer size and magnitude of insider contributions makes it as useful as packaged software that came with source code.

It appears a lot of the negative Google stuff I read is driven by emotions upset with the alt right thinking they are against them. Seems to have started with firing Damore.

I have ZERO problem criticizing anyone. But if we look at all the tech companies there has never been any tech company that give away more IP than Google. Nobody even close.

So my post is a lot more about removing the social politics emotions and look at actual data.

It is crazy giving away Borg and the K8S trademark. But Google has open sourced so much stuff. We have five OSs today. iOS, OS X, Windows, Android and ChromeOS.

Two are open source. Yes I realize there was a OSS of Apple OSs but that is NOT what is used today.

But then Chrome and well so many other things. But look at giving away Map/Reduce and GFS and so many other things in papers.

I tire a bit of the bitching on HN and really worry Google will end giving away stuff. It is hard to see why they continue. There is little in it for them.

have ZERO problem criticizing anyone. But if we look at all the tech companies there has never been any tech company that give away more IP than Google. Nobody even close.

Google only "gives away" IP that isn't part of their core business - just like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Where is the code for Google crawler and search algorithm? Gmail? Google Play Services? The back end for Google Docs?

Would argue nothing is more core than Borg. So would disagree.

I do think they are holding back some stuff and a big one is SDC stuff.

Plus we do not get the info until next release. So we got gen 1 TPUs after Gen 2. We will probably get gen 2 details with gen 3 release.

But Google shares so much more than any other tech company. I think possibly ever?

What has Google open sourced that would put it at a competitive disadvantage if a competitor uses it? Android? Earlier on they really didn't have a choice if they wanted to compete with Microsoft with the OEMs. When they became basically the only game in town for device manufacturers, they closef off much of what made Android Android to most people. Even Apple open sources stuff when they want to gain traction in a market as does Microsoft.

How is Google's strategy any different from Microsoft's and Netflix's? It would have been unthinkable a few years ago that MS would open source .Net and make it cross platform or gone through the trouble of creating Visual Studio Code that supports almost every popular language.

Android and Amazon using for the Echo and much of their hardware?

Google didn't have a choice but to "open source" Android to compete for OEMs against Microsoft. But as soon as they gained dominance, they started closing off more and more of what makes Android what it is to most people. Look at how many of Google Services are not only not available on Amazon devices, Google actively blocked YouTube from being on Amazon devices.

Besides, Android itself doesn't make Google money - advertising and to a lesser extent Google Play does. Why else would Google pay Apple $2 billion a year to be the preferred search provider on iOS?

That would be like saying nothing is more core to Microsoft than .NET, which they also gave away for free.

In reality, this is nonsense, because both are backend technical tools, NOT core products. Google is not going to open source Google Search any more than Microsoft is going to open source Windows: Google is a closed product company and they're not going to give away what actually makes them money.

Microsoft has actually been topping GitHub's contributions graph for a while. Even Apple's been opening a bunch of stuff up lately. And apart from some licensing squabbles, nearly everyone's been moving their frontend web code to a framework made by Facebook.

Of course, again, none of those companies open source their actual products, just like Google doesn't open source any of theirs. The closest place they come is open sourcing Android, but it's basically useless without the proprietary half of the OS, and Google uses a hilariously draconian contract to control everyone who uses Android, and they actively punish anyone who dares to fork it, because you're not actually supposed to fork Android.

> We have five OSs today. iOS, OS X, Windows, Android and ChromeOS.

> Two are open source.

Did you just ignore the likes of Linux & BSD? :D

(I mean, there are plenty more OSes of course, saying "we have 5 today" is incredibly far from the truth; but I expected at least these 2 to sound familiar for most HackerNews readers)

There are so much more OS out there than a plain 5.

"Android is open source".

So let’s take a look at it.

If I buy an Android device from Google today, can I use it just with the open source version of the OS? No, I can’t. Is there any device I can use just with the open source version? No.

So, what is in the proprietary version that isn’t in the open source version?

The Dialer is proprietary (since somewhere between 4.4 and 5.0), the Calendar is proprietary (since 4.4), the Contacts app is proprietary (since 4.4). The on-device search is proprietary (since 3.0), the homescreen app is proprietary (since 4.4).

The drivers are proprietary, the firmware is proprietary, the libraries to use recent openssl on older versions are proprietary, the only way to do wifi geolocation is proprietary, the only way to run in background is proprietary.

Android is as much open source as macOS is: Darwin is open source, and webkit is open source, but everything inbetween is proprietary.

I suggest you read https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on... to learn about why your statements about Android are deeply misleading

Sure parts of Android are open source, but what makes Android what it is to most users is the open source part + a bunch of closed source Google parts. Google has been closing more of Android over the years....

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on...

Neither Android nor ChromeOS are open source. Only parts of them are.

Android is becoming more closed source every year up til the point that they basically forked it without officially forking it. Apple has open sourced Darwin but the real goodies are in the closed source part of macOS.

You could've skipped the last paragraph as it adds nothing to the discussion.

It reveals the poster's affiliation, which is pretty important in assessing the usefulness of his post

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