Sundar, do you think we will believe you?
Google will bait and switch you again, like it did with Android.
Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
41–50 of 334 posts
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#42Sundar, do you think we will believe you? Google will bait and switch you again, like it did with Android.
Can you elaborate on Android part?
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#43I'm still not clear on what fuchsia is trying to be - or more specifically, why is Google developing it. What is the end goal here, from a business perspective?
> why is Google developing it.
They want to get a Linux free OS.
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#44I've heard Fuchsia referred to as a "principal engineer retention project" at Google. I'd be curious to know if others have heard the same.
As a principal software engineer that works on Fuchsia, I can assure you that the project does not exist solely to retain me. :)
Not solely, but in part? ;-)
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#45So maybe open source, [mostly] closed ecosystem? Add a bunch of Spyware from Google and get every app maker to add a dependency to Google services and they are golden for the collection of data on all your "smart" things
Sorry/not sorry for the cynicism; I feel it is warranted given what "open source" means on Android. Google talking like they have noble open source ambitions means nothing. They have a lot of amends to make before they begin to seem like a win for society and the industry and they seem to be going in the opposite direction.
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#46I'm still not clear on what fuchsia is trying to be - or more specifically, why is Google developing it. What is the end goal here, from a business perspective?
I remember reading a couple years ago that the goal is IoT devices. It runs on the Zircon kernel, which is a true microkernel (as I remember, haven't been paying attention recently). This is pretty ideal for IoT, since manufacturers should be able to spin up only as much OS as they need on top of the Zircon kernel. Fuchsia specifically is looking to be a full-fledged OS, I think, for devices like Chromebooks or simil…
It gives google the ability to thwart a major security problem that android has. That is, manufacturers choosing to drop support for a device.
Because the important parts of Fuchsia are all controlled by google, it means they can theoretically keep devices running and up to date indefinitely. They can control the majority of the software while manufactures only need to supply their drivers.
Manufacturers dropping driver support, while bad, isn't the end of the world. It's a much smaller attack vector than the whole kernel never getting updates.
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#47Sundar, do you think we will believe you? Google will bait and switch you again, like it did with Android.
Can you elaborate on Android part?
Does it need elaboration?
Android too was advertised as a nearly "community driven" OS.
Few years down the line, and good sales, and they turn Android into a locked down hell, start to stonewall communications with contributors, throw musings about community governance out of the windows, and break pledge to never block the adblock, nor introduce political censorship on the Android Store.
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#48That is the most hideous source control system ever. Do they really need to be developer hostile just because Github is owned by Microsoft? I mean seriously, who has time to commit to a project with a random set of tooling.
Welcome to the world of Building Large Google Projects. This is somewhat painful in the Android and Dart/Flutter world. I haven't tried building Chromium yet but I'm sure it's just as complex.
Flutter/Dart is on Github
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#49I'm still not clear on what fuchsia is trying to be - or more specifically, why is Google developing it. What is the end goal here, from a business perspective?
It’s already running on some of their embedded devices, such as google home. A capability based OS with a micro kernel sounds great to me. Things like the networking stack can run in user space, and be written in memory safe languages like Rust. An OS that “can’t” get viruses or be hacked sounds pretty desirable. Cynically it makes things like “jail breaking” a google home much more difficult.
>An OS that “can’t” get viruses or be hacked sounds pretty desirable. Cynically it makes things like “jail breaking” a google home much more difficult.
I don’t think these claims hold. It is still written in a memory unsafe language, so exploitation is totally possible. As well, for malicious software you’re just looking for a process handing out high privilege handles.
Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model
#50I've heard Fuchsia referred to as a "principal engineer retention project" at Google. I'd be curious to know if others have heard the same.
As a principal software engineer that works on Fuchsia, I can assure you that the project does not exist solely to retain me. :)
Congrats on the promo! It didn't retain me (though I didn't get promoted to Principal, so maybe I don't count) but I did enjoy working on Fuchsia. Nice to see much of the syscall design seems to have survived.