Expanding Fuchsia's open source model • Hacker News Board

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#121

Post by trasz » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

saghm wrote: post #89

trasz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With BSD-style licenses there's still a strong incentive to share code. That's why permissively-licensed projects, from Node, to PostgreSQL, to FreeBSD, work. With GPL-style licenses, there's an incentive to avoid putting effort into development, and instead undercut other parties who did invest, and then had to share their code.

> That's why permissively-licensed projects, from Node, to PostgreSQL, to FreeBSD, work. Sure, but there are plenty of copyleft-licensed projects that also work? This isn't a very convincing argument.

Sure, both work. It's a counter-argument to the claim that GPL is somehow superior.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#122

Post by vondur » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

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…

Is there anything in Fuchsia that may be usable in Linux? I'm specifically thinking of something like a window manager?

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#123

Post by jasonvorhe » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

I don't understand the cynicism here. Android's fragmentation was the original sin that lead to fragmentation and the new that we've seen for years, until Google semi-fixed the mess with a) Play Services (short term) and b) Project Treble.

Google were so convinced of the value of open source that they didn't anticipate that almost all OEM's would rather ship their Android forks than to stay close to upstream. If they hadn't intervened, Android as a platform would be useless by now and app developers would need to implement various ways of handling notifications, storage access, etc just to ship their apps to a broad audience of device owners, Samsung would've never upped their update game and there wouldn't be 2-3 versions of Android on the majority of devices, but more like 5-10, depending on how many manufacturers would've survived in the market.

Android still allows for easy side loading of applications, there are still major independent after market Android versions out there, you can develop for Android in various languages, using a huge selection of IDEs and there's open source alternatives to Play Services that Google neither litigates against nor seems to actively fight against. Google didn't even manage to gain any relevant market share with their Pixel line of devices, of which most run Android. They could've done a lot of nefarious things by keeping newer Android versions Pixel exclusive until they publish the source code to OEMs, for example. Instead, they are making it easier to quickly move an existing Android code base to the latest version by abstracting away a lot of the complexity (project treble).

Is Google still primarily am advertising company that tracks its users? Of course. Do they have their own motives to keep Android at the top of the mobile OS market? Of course. But a lot of the comments see evil scheming where Google probably had to act quickly to ensure that Android has a future and that developers didn't lose interest in the platform in favor of iOS.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#124

Post by flotzam » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #108

flotzam wrote: post #70

If contributing to your project requires much more than git commit --signoff — in Fuchsia's case, a full-on Google Account! — this will exclude many pseudonymous developers who conceive of things such as privacy in terms of capabilities (not pinky promises). Which seems relevant for a security-focused OS.

I'm guessing that most of these pseudonymous developers—of which there can't possibly be too many—would distrust Google enough not to contribute even if it were easier to do so without a Google Account.

Uneasy bedfellows but nah. Some pockets inside of Google (like AOSP) are, on balance, still beneficial. What a world.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#125

Post by hacknat » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

flotzam wrote: post #70

If contributing to your project requires much more than git commit --signoff — in Fuchsia's case, a full-on Google Account! — this will exclude many pseudonymous developers who conceive of things such as privacy in terms of capabilities (not pinky promises). Which seems relevant for a security-focused OS.

You can't pseudonymously contribute to most OSes of note. Linux for example.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#126

Post by rhn_mk1 » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #108

flotzam wrote: post #70

If contributing to your project requires much more than git commit --signoff — in Fuchsia's case, a full-on Google Account! — this will exclude many pseudonymous developers who conceive of things such as privacy in terms of capabilities (not pinky promises). Which seems relevant for a security-focused OS.

I'm guessing that most of these pseudonymous developers—of which there can't possibly be too many—would distrust Google enough not to contribute even if it were easier to do so without a Google Account.

As a pseudonymous developer, I fail to see any harm in contributing to projects run by Google in general. Fuchsia is not a monopolist way to exert control over the market (not today at least), it doesn't seem to be explicitly made for evil, and can be forked to let the community steer it.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#127

Post by evil-olive » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #58

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. :)

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?

The OWNERS file is typically used, sometimes by automated tooling, to answer the "who should I ask to code review these changes?" question.

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/c...

https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/creat...

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/code_owners.html

It's not meant to be a place for developer bios. If for no other reason than one developer could appear in many OWNERS files scattered throughout a repo, or in multiple repos, and keeping the bio current across all of them would be a nightmare.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#128

Post by jononor » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #92

jononor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a significant limitation. A considerable amount of open source software is written while people are employed, as part of their work.

Sure, but no open-source project wants contributions by contributors who do not legally own the code because in that case the actual owner of the code can petition the court to issue an injuction on the project preventing further distribution of the code till the offending code is removed from the project. (They can also sue any user of the project for damages.) Wikipedia has to worry about the same thing, BTW: contr…

I agree that no project wants that situation. But many projects are willing to accept the risk of it happening, and instead have reduced friction with no CLA.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#129

Post by endymi0n » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

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…

Why do we need Krita when we have GIMP?

Because every once in a while, it‘s easier to free yourself from the shackles of architectural decisions that were made because of the hardware and constraints of their time that are obsolete now but are supported for legacy reasons.

A security model that is designed from scratch into such a deep OS concern as with Fuchsia is one of the aspects that would be next to impossible to bolt onto such a conplex project such as Linux or BSD.

I‘m not saying it will play out, but it certainly brings a wave of fresh and radical new ideas into open source operating systems I haven‘t seen since the times of BeOS and Plan 9.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#130

Post by zepto » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #88

zepto wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An open platform would have a framework that supports multiple back ends.

This would be definitely nice to have but why does core Android itself need to have support for every feature? We can have open source OSs on top of Android that build with a specific service set. Sort of how Ubuntu builds over Debian.

It doesn’t have to do anything, but if it doesn’t support what are considered standard features of a phone today in an open manner, it’s hard to take AOSP seriously as an open platform.

Also worth noting that when someone does build on top of AOSP, they are at the mercy of Google’s roadmap for the closed versions of Android.