Expanding Fuchsia's open source model • Hacker News Board

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#51

Post by schappim » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

jtsiskin wrote: post #38

torben-friis wrote: post #3

I'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.

Just for clarification, is Fuchsia running on Google home in production (I.e. on public devices)?

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#52

Post by abarth » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

swetland wrote: post #50

abarth wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks! Yes, your ideas are alive and well in the project.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#53

Post by CivBase » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

EvilEy3 wrote: post #42

baybal2 wrote: post #41

Sundar, 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?

I believe he's referring to how Android phones have slowly become more and more dependent on the closed-source Google Play Services to provide essential functionality. Despite Android itself being "open source", many Android devices and apps are useless without Google's proprietary services.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#54

Post by derefr » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

CogitoCogito wrote: post #36

hollerith wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing the difference between the GPL and BSD-like licenses. You have not said anything about the difference between a BSD-like license with copyright remaining with the contributors versus BSD-like license with copyright assigned to Google.

Well if I have the copyright I can straight up sell software based upon it without telling people you made it. Or I can release your code or derivatives of it under a different license while privately selling it under other licenses for profit. If these things don't bother you, then feel free to contribute. In fact, what I'm trying to understand exactly is if I assume that you are correct that there is no difference,…

> In fact, what I'm trying to understand exactly is if I assume that you are correct that there is no difference, then why would Google require the contribution in the first place?

The difference isn't relevant 99% of the time, but it comes up if the maintainership of a work tries to re-license the work. Works without assigned ownership cannot practically be re-licensed, as you'd have to get individual consent from all owning parties.

This came up a lot when GPLv3 was introduced — many projects wanted to migrate from GPLv2 to GPLv3, but couldn't, because they never acquired legal ownership of contributed code, and so didn't have the right to re-license the contributors' code.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#55

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #3

I'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?

[deleted]

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#56

Post by jmnicolas » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

methodsignature wrote: post #45

So 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…

yeah the base open sources Android is barely usable. Even simple things like getting a local notification at the right time are not a given.

If they do the same with Fuschia, they'd better make it closed sources then.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#57

Post by snazz » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #25

mmastrac wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I've tried building Chromium on my own before. Chromium's build process is so inscrutable and changes so often that several Googlers I've talked to have said you can't really do it without handholding from another Googler in-the-know.

  git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git

Add it to your PATH

  fetch --nohooks chromium && cd src

  ./build/install-build-deps.sh

  gclient runhooks

  gn gen out/Default

  autoninja -C out/Default chrome

Congrats, you just built Chromium. Is it a different build process? Sure. But it sure isn't inscrutable, and they've been using this system for a while now.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#58

Post by wmf » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

abarth wrote: post #27

mmastrac wrote: post #4

I'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. :)

Since you're here, "abarth", it took me several clicks to get to the OWNERS file and all I saw was a list of email addresses. Calling that "governance" is... could we at least get some names and maybe brief bios on these people?

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#59

Post by baybal2 » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

methodsignature wrote: post #45

So 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…

Fully warranted caution.

You cannot expect they would not do the same bait and switch as with android without a legally binding pledge.

And even then, I bet Sundar will try to wiggle around it.

There is a clear repeating pattern in what he does:

"Google does not store geographic information of AGPS requests" — It did.

"Google will never attempt to block adblock from Android store" — It did.

"Google never shares your cellphone network data" — It did!

Clearly, he lies, and does it very intentionally.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#60

Post by swiley » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

The one singular nice thing about android was that the kernel was GPL. This put a (rather high) limit on the stupidity that could go on. Fuchsia changes that.