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Comment by selfishgene | Hacker News Reader

It sometimes seems that Google uses open-source as more of a marketing ploy than a commitment to respecting user freedom. Why doesn't Google (first) fully open-source the entire Android platform before worrying about "silicon"? This would of course include all of their apps (e.g. GMail, Google Maps, Docs, etc.) as well as the Playstore Framework.

It is hard for me to take their words all that seriously when they are holding back some of the most important pieces from their users.

Ditto for Microsoft.

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This tool isn't open sourced by Google, it's a guest post by a Google Summer of Code mentor, so Android/Google apps aren't relevant here.

From the article: "By Steve Hoover, Redwood EDA, Google Summer of Code mentor".

None of those are part of the Android platform. They are clients to Google services. Many products including those from Amazon have been produced using the Android platform without access to any of them.

If Microsoft open sourced Windows would you complain that it wasn't really open sourced because they didn't open source Microsoft Office?

> Why doesn't Google (first) fully open-source...

Because sustainable open source rarely works that way. Sustainable open source projects focus on three things: (1) identify the bits that are common across many applications, (2) establish an open source standard for those bits, (3) sustain the bits by making it easy for other people/orgs to use them & contribute to maintaining them.

Edit: Sometimes a tool like Blender is open source and feature complete. So it seems like “the whole thing” is open source. However, in those scenarios the tool usually replaces a very expensive proprietary tool (Maya, in the Blender example) that is a single step in a larger business process (like making a 3D animation).

Your Blender example doesn't really hold up in this case because it's not like Blender has been funded historically by some large company replacing the expensive proprietary tool Maya. In fact, there are many fully open source products that do not fit into some larger corporate-backed business model: VLC, Gimp, ffmpeg, to name just a few.

But Blender specifically has been proprietary for many years, before being crowdfunded into an open-source project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History

It’s an imperfect example, but the Maya to Blender transition is starting to happen now. See “Epic Games supports Blender Foundation with $1.2 million Epic MegaGrant“, https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-fo...

I would love to see Blender become competitive with Maya etc but it's got a long long way to go. Though it might be closer than most, in part because it's competition is so expensive people are looking for alternatives. I sponsor Blender to help see that day happen and I wish big companies that are paying for Maya, Houdini, 3DSMax, ZBrush licenses would instead spend all that money paying engineers to contribute to Blender. But, as of today, while 2.8 made big strides, it's still missing huge swaths of features available in Maya and others.

You mean, kind of like Android, Google Docs, etc? Google makes its money by charging for add-ons to those products (space on Google Drive, Play store for Android, etc), not from those products directly. I see no reason why Google would be hurt by open sourcing those products, yet they don't, and that choice leads to all sorts of issues from privacy-conscious individuals.

I understand not open sourcing their secret sauce (e.g. search algorithms), but they have a ton of other products that could absolutely be open source without any negative financial impact. It's things like this that make me seriously doubt their commitment to open source.

The common-across-many-applications parts of android are open source, and "Google docs" isn't common-across-many-applications. Arguably, the google drive storage backend could be open source, but that wouldn't need to be open source, it would make more sense as an api.

Open source very often works wonderfully that way. Or is your definition of “working” open source something like “receives constant commits and churn”?

Lots of open source repos rarely see any activity and the the world is still so much better because people fork it, read the code, or just use it as is.

GNU grep sees almost no activity and it’s done more for people than kubernetes has.

How is it HN news seems happy to let people derail threads for Google hate?

It isn’t hate if someone criticises a company and states clear reasons, which we may or not disagree with.

In order to truly to show Google is committed to open source, they have to open source Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, etc.???

Such extreme exaggeration makes it difficult to take your comment seriously.

In theory, if you are philosophically committed to the idea of open source, it logically follows that every binary you release should come with full source, without exception.

This is the case for me, for example. I never release software without source.

> (e.g. GMail, Google Maps, Docs, etc.) as well as the Playstore Framework.

These "apps" are all based around interaction with Google services. Maybe they could release open source versions of those, but then the users would be left with the hassle of having to pay Google for API accesses by the open source code they're running. Most users would simply not bother, and stick to whatever Google is providing for free.

They could offer a digitally signed binary that is free (as in beer ... which would presumably be supported by ads that could not easily be stripped out) and a parallel open-source (ad-free) version that charges users directly for API access (preferably with an "always free" tier of use).

I would pay for that second tier provided they don't mine API usage for data for their search product. I would love to opt out of Google data mining, and I'm happy to pay for the services I use. The closest they have is their G-suite, but I think they still mine data from paying customers.

The Google Cloud client libraries are open-source; I don't really see the difference.

I should also point out: often, with this type of project (in-the-open development of a client for a paid service) the client comes with some sort of stub emulator for the service. FOSS developers can test their changes against the emulator, and then submit PRs, which then get run by CI against the real service.

I think you are being a bit hard on Google here, they are strategic but also quite generous with open-source.

You only get upvotes for Google hate here.

Google are great, upvote/downvote what does it matter :)

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