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Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

opensource.googleblog.com

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Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#111

Post by judge2020 »

diegocg wrote: post #20
hollerith wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADDED. Looks like this comment and its replies have no relevance to the Fuchsia project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25348935 You used to not be able to contribute to most GNU projects (maybe you still can't) without assigning copyright ownership to the FSF. I don't see what practical difference the assignment to Google will make. Without using the words "equality", "between equals" and "sharecropper", can y…

The FSF is a non profit organisation, Google is one of the biggest corporations. There is a big difference.

Doesn't invalidate the original post if you were to replace google with FSF. You might be fine granting ownership to the FSF, but not everyone is.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#112

Post by dewitt »

raphlinus wrote: post #67
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 quite retain me either, but I was a lowly staff software engineer. I am returning to Google though (back to the Google Fonts team), and it's entirely possible we'll get a chance to work together again.

Yay! Welcome back!

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#113

Post by dhodell »

warkdarrior wrote: post #63
derefr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

> it comes up if the maintainership of a work tries to re-license the work Bingo! Google will relicense Fuchsia to OEMs etc. under new terms if they want to include Google services.

Well, sure. Because people who want to develop products on some platform also want some kind of warranty, which is explicitly not provided.

Google establishes with the public a warranty- and guarantee-free use license. If someone feels they've been harmed by the software, they're prevented by the open source license from suing Google, but they're (more importantly) also giving up their right to sue the individual contributors.

At the same time, vendors want to be able to hold suppliers accountable for support and warranty on products that are supplied. Permitting sublicensing allows Google to sell the software to OEMs and vendors with support agreements that allow those vendors to hold Google responsible for that support (rather than the individual contributors).

There's a lot of complaint about the sublicensing going on, but I think most vendors aren't going to build systems where they can't get support, and I don't think contributors actually want to be liable under tort law for the code they provided for free.

Then again, maybe the objection is to giving code to Google that Google can profit from. I guess that's fair, but you don't _have_ to contribute code and you're also not prevented from sublicensing and trying to turn a profit yourself.

(edit: typo)

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#114

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

205g0 wrote: post #65

OT: Just a second ago, I was setting up unattended-upgrades for security updates for a new Ubuntu box and I am once again puzzled why the largest Linux distribution has such an underwhelming UX for an crucial feature. Long story short, I welcome any new contender in the OS space.

> I am once again puzzled why the largest Linux distribution has such an underwhelming UX for an crucial feature

Are we talking about Ubuntu, or Android? Because honestly in either case... what would you improve? Ubuntu has updates rolled into GNOME's package management frontend and it's seemed to work well, and Android has decent UX around updates (especially with A/B system partitions) although of course it suffers from vendors not actually releasing updates.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#115

Post by dbbk »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #102
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.

> I've heard Fuchsia referred to as a "principal engineer retention project" at Google. No rational company is going to create useless projects just to retain expensive engineers. What's the point in retaining engineers if you're just going to pay them to work on something without expected ROI?

I wouldn't say it's a useless project per se. But the usefulness of it is certainly yet to be determined.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#116

Post by ori_b »

ceras wrote: post #101
cute_boi wrote: post #75

Google and Opensource a joke of century. Chrome -> Make chromium opensource but add spyware that phones home on every second and with new manifest v3 make sure extensions like ublock origin don't work Andriod -> Make tip of iceberg opensource but force every vendor to use Service and lock down whole ecosystem around it. And make sure there is no way to block ads on youtube for andriod. Fuchsia -> Initial Stage make p…

I don't know, I think there's a couple examples of these open source projects gaining non-Google traction: - The new Edge, Opera, and Brave are based on Chromium - China has a huge ecosystem of non-Google Android devices Google does exert strong control of their open source code, and Google is clearly the prime beneficiary of them, but the external world has still leveraged these projects nonetheless

>The new Edge, Opera, and Brave are based on Chromium

Largely because Google has pushed enough complexity into the browser that maintaining a browser engine is unaffordable, so you use Chrome as is.

Have any of these projects successfully managed to contribute meaningfully, or are they just adding alternative window trimming to chrome?

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#117

Post by asadawadia »

outworlder wrote: post #110

> Fuchsia is a long-term project to create a general-purpose, open source operating system Why do we need this? We have Linux. It works. It is open-source, general purpose. It needs more support to become more mainstream (like what Valve has done with Proton). Don't like Linux? Start with one of the BSDs. Heck, start with Haiku. Any of these projects are lightyears ahead of anything that's just starting. The most lik…

They need work to give their thousands of devs

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#118

Post by asadawadia »

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. :)

What was your journey to principal?

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#119

Post by incrudible »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #102
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.

> I've heard Fuchsia referred to as a "principal engineer retention project" at Google. No rational company is going to create useless projects just to retain expensive engineers. What's the point in retaining engineers if you're just going to pay them to work on something without expected ROI?

The ROI is keeping your competition from the bottom starved for engineers.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#120

Post by hobs »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #102
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.

> I've heard Fuchsia referred to as a "principal engineer retention project" at Google. No rational company is going to create useless projects just to retain expensive engineers. What's the point in retaining engineers if you're just going to pay them to work on something without expected ROI?

Punishing your competitors and maybe making money.
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