What TODO with open source: Google, Facebook and Twitter launch collab project Some of the web’s biggest users of open-source gear have thrown their weight behind a project to make open-source “easier.” Facebook, Google and Twitter, cloud collaboration services Dropbox and Box and code site GitHub have joined payment providers Square and Stripe, US retailer’s WalMart Labs and a body called the Khan …
There was me thinking that Google's policy on open source was we'll write what we feel like as open source for our own whims, we won't provide any support for it, and if it isn't making huge money then we'll bin it and drop all of those poor people who were using it. The code will then fester somewhere.
Going to change that?
And there was me thinking that Google had been funding open source projects for years, without seeking anything specific in return.
It's not clear to me that the Linux kernel, or X, KDE, Gnome, Libre Office (list continues on p93) are in need of TODO.
Let's not forget that Facebook and Twitter also contribute to improving open source infrastructure. Possibly there are niche projects that might benefit. However, TBH, this feels like an initiative in search of a reason.
You'll find that is more targeted towards projects of high relevance to them, especially areas such Databases (MySQL and forks), PHP, Open SSL, Python. Both Google and Facebook made a lot of patch contributions to MySQL that they initially had trouble getting put into the main codebase, hence one of the reasons MariaDB has flourished, as they were more accommodating.
I suspect this is just the next natural evolution of corporate support of Open Source, not much different to what IBM etc did with the Eclipse, and other did with Apache.
... if your business is premised on getting a load of people to do stuff for free, and those people start waking up to the fact of their exploitation by $billion corporation then said $billion corporations are screwed. I guess their next move would be to get some senate / congress committee, or Californian judge to declare that the SA clause in the GNU licenses doesn't apply if you're a $billion corporation. Then they can take the whole development in house and commercialize it properly.
What crap.. Most open source projects would not exist without $billion corporations, who quite frequently have inhouse developers who's sole purpose it to contribute to these projects (obviously they gain commercially from it!). Likewise a lot of Open Source projects were initially commercial projects created by the very same $billion corporations that you are bitching about.
Well certainly _some_ open source projects would not exist without such, but the majority? No chance on that one, it's a *relatively* small select bunch. My experience of working on open source projects during the last 15 yrs is that the core people behind them are not working for $billion corporations, and those projects do not get input from such corporations either by way of funding, patches, or anything else.
A/C - You are right, I should chose my words more carefully :) though in my defense I'd been working for 16hrs..
What I was trying to convey was many of the larger and most common projects that benefit everybody. To name a few that I use everyday in my professional or personal life include as Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, Chromium, Postgre, Eclipse, Xen, Java, Bootstrap, Mozilla and hundreds more that get some form of commercial or corporate backing, whether that development time, sponsorship or they have a revenue stream (such as support or an enhanced version).
Whilst its far from perfect and more should be done, its also far from exploitation.
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