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Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

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Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#251

Post by HJain13 »

est31 wrote: post #234
phh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project Treble didn't fix anything (I'm very happy with Project Treble, because it lets me hack stuff I couldn't begin to imagine with 4 yrs ago, but that's just hack). It didn't even fix Nexus/Pixels that still have the same upgrade track record as a Samsung 100$ device. (Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 users, feel free to come and use my Generic System Image, I'll keep upgrading you as long as I can with my bare hands!) ATM OE…

And not just that, Android also severely lags behind upgrading its mainline kernels, so you can't even avoid the issues by upstreaming your drivers. You have to fork them. People get mad at vendors that they don't upstream their drivers but there is currently zero benefit in that. Google should reward vendors for that, and maybe we'll start seeing more drivers upstream.

They are working on Kernel Issues, which while not the exact solution to the problem you mentioned but goes a long way https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/kernel/gener...

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#252

Post by lern_too_spel »

LukeShu wrote: post #100
actuator wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, not familiar with Android core. For your example, how would it work without proprietary technologies? AFAIK, Android uses GCM for notifications. Adding integrations for it don't seem to make much sense in core open source Android as that will make you tied to Google's ecosystem.

Because I don't have Google's services on my phone, I have two always-visible notifications that never go away: "Telegram" / "Push service: tap to learn more" (tapping opens https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/mas... ) "Signal" / "Background connection enabled" Both are serving the same purpose, for different apps. Even before we get to network connections and servers (the things that might make…

That is just because they are not using something like https://bubu1.eu/openpush/ and instead implementing their own push services. This is not a problem with Android but with the apps.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#253

Post by lern_too_spel »

zepto wrote: post #82
actuator wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, not familiar with Android core. For your example, how would it work without proprietary technologies? AFAIK, Android uses GCM for notifications. Adding integrations for it don't seem to make much sense in core open source Android as that will make you tied to Google's ecosystem.

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

It already does. https://bubu1.eu/openpush/

The fact that this is possible is something I have commented about on this very forum for years. It is trivial for the Amazons and Huaweis of the world to build an API like this that supports Google's FCM, Amazon's ADM, etc. and provide a library for developers to use that will let them easily deploy push-enabled apps on devices across all ecosystems.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#254

Post by munificent »

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?

> What's the point in retaining engineers if you're just going to pay them to work on something without expected ROI?

I'm not claiming that Google or other companies often do this, but just to play Devil's advocate, here are reasons why they might:

* Prevents them from going to the competition.

* Uses their prestige to attract or retain other developers.

* Keeps them "on retainer" in case a hard problem that needs their rare skills appears in the future.

When I worked at EA, we had a star engineer that spent, like, 75% of his time totally dicking around on whatever he felt like. But when say, it was a month away from FIFA's ship date and they couldn't get the game to run faster than 5 FPS, they would call him in. He would work some magic, the game would ship on time and with adequate perf, and he'd return to goofing off. Well worth EA's money to keep him on salary.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#255

Post by pabs3 »

rhencke wrote: post #219
rhencke wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium, as built in many open-source distributions, uses a per-distribution Google API key for service access. [1] [2] [3] If built without API keys, Chromium warns 'Google API keys are missing. Some functionality of Google Chrome will be disabled.' [4] [5] The APIs used include [6]: * Calendar API * Contacts API * Drive API (Optional) * Chrome Remote Desktop API * Chrome Spelling API * Chrome Suggest API * Chrome…

To elaborate, the following distributions of Chromium are violating the Google API terms of service [1] [2] by publishing the API secret key publicly in the build source code responsible for building Chromium: * Alpine Linux (community port) - https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/tree/community/chromium/A... * Arch Linux (svntogit, AUR) - https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-packages/blob/1e8f3fe7... - https://aur.arc…

Some of them could have agreements with Google that let them do that.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#256

Post by pabs3 »

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 think this is why samba refuses contributions from corporations:

https://www.samba.org/samba/devel/copyright-policy.html

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#257

Post by st1ck »

dhodell wrote: post #181
barnacled wrote: post #167

I am a Linux kernel contributor and former golang and chromium contributor and to be honest the latter experiences makes me leary about contributing to another Google project. There generally tends to be an insular 'cathedral' rather than 'bazaar' approach to Google projects where those working for the company get considerably more say and control than outside contributors. The whole issue I have with it is that they…

It's kind of unfortunate because existing developers have the privilege of experience with the systems and where they're going that external contributors simply don't have, and it will take a non-trivial amount time for interested parties to develop that knowledge. At the same time, it is an active project with active development that are informed by goals and processes not all of which are open. And really, while th…

> However, the "bazaar" is also a bit of a myth in this regard. I'm not really aware of any open source projects where I can go submit a PR without talking to anybody and have the expectation that it'll be merged without discussion

The word "bazaar" alone should imply discussions, including some haggling and shouting. If no discussions were expected, it should've been called supermarket or something like that.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#258

Post by tesmar2 »

quadrangle wrote: post #250
tesmar2 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully not. They are not a monopoly and doing so would be a severe overreach. Edit: Looks like many don't understand that you have alternatives to Google and you can use them.

There's a fuzziness to the concept of monopoly. It doesn't have to mean the absolute version where no alternatives exist at all. It can (and legally does) mean that a business is so dominant that it can effectively dictate the terms of the market. Google has a search monopoly effective enough that they can solely make or break anyone who relies on search. They have enough dominance in the market that if they were to…

I switched to Bing for search, it's great.

> it could utterly devastate all sorts of players in the market

That's the risk you take if you bank your entire business off of your search rank on Google. You should diversify accordingly.

This fuzziness you speak of has lead to massive overreach in the past, and it needs to stop.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#259

Post by rhencke »

pabs3 wrote: post #255
rhencke wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To elaborate, the following distributions of Chromium are violating the Google API terms of service [1] [2] by publishing the API secret key publicly in the build source code responsible for building Chromium: * Alpine Linux (community port) - https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/tree/community/chromium/A... * Arch Linux (svntogit, AUR) - https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-packages/blob/1e8f3fe7... - https://aur.arc…

Some of them could have agreements with Google that let them do that.

Let's say this is true.

If I fork one of the aforementioned Chromium packages, is my fork covered under that agreement? Is my right to build and produce my own binaries from the original unmodified source still intact?

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#260

Post by fomine3 »

zepto wrote: post #242
cpeth wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should still give them credit for being the most open among their peers. MacOS, iOS, Safari and Windows are not open source at all. Edge is of course just another Chromium based browser.

They aren’t really. Safari is based on WebKit, which is very much open. Chromium is based on blink which is a fork of WebKit.

WebKit is open source but Safari isn't meanwhile Chromium is. WebKit is sometimes a bit closed until it reaches embargo that Apple sets. But anyway Safari is good to web diversity.
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