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How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

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Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#131

Post by paskozdilar »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #124
paskozdilar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can certainly seem that way with all the companies pretending to be free-software-friendly, but I don't think the percentage is that significant. If you have any hard data you're willing to share, I'd be grateful for it.

This survey certainly doesn't answer all questions, but I think it does show that corporate funding of FOSS development is significant: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020FOSSC... The Linux kernel is mostly funded by a few large corporations: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/175919-who-actually-de... Clearly, corporate funding is concentrated in a few large projects, which inevitably means th…

Thanks for the links.

> Figure 4 shows the employment status of the survey respondents. The overwhelming majority are employed full-time. The next two most popular answers were self-employed/freelancer or full-time student. This makes sense as most of the skills necessary to contribute to FOSS are highly valued in today’s job market (programming, technical documentation, etc.).

The way I understand this is that most contributors are employed full-time, not that most contributors are employed to work on free software full-time..

> In aggregate, of 577 survey respondents, 48.7% said they are paid for time spent on open source contributions by their current employer, 2.95% said another party pays them, 4.33% said they are not paid because their employment contract prevents them from accepting payment for open source development, and 44.02% said they are not paid for any other reason.

So almost half of all contributors are actually paid to work on free software projects full-time. That is a fairly high number, but I feel it's still not that overwhelming.

> Clearly, corporate funding is concentrated in a few large projects, which inevitably means that there will be volunteers out there who carry a huge burden keeping critical smaller projects going.

I suppose it's just basic economy - a piece of software that solves a general problem (e.g. a kernel) will be used by more people then software that serves some specific purpose (e.g. text editor). But it seems to me that in no way is free software dependent on any company funding - that are more then enough hackers out there to keep the thing going, even if every company in the world decided to pull the plug at once.

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#132

Post by netheril96 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #119
vinkelhake wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average Googler doesn't get to pick the OS that their workstation runs. It's going to be Linux. The typical work setup is a browser, some kind of editor and terminals - which is something that works well in Linux.

> The typical work setup is a browser, some kind of editor and terminals I have all those things open in my work setup, but I also have 3 or 4 different chat apps that don't run on linux, a few music apps that don't run on linux, a ton of Adobe software that doesn't run on linux, a stock trading app that doesn't run on linux, Kindle, a huge number of random productivity apps and games that don't run on Linux, the lis…

> but I also have 3 or 4 different chat apps that don't run on linux, a few music apps that don't run on linux, a ton of Adobe software that doesn't run on linux, a stock trading app that doesn't run on linux, Kindle, a huge number of random productivity apps and games that don't run on Linux, the list goes on.

Well, from the viewpoint of Google the corporation, the inability of devs running these software that only detracts them from real work can be considered a feature rather than a bug.

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#133

Post by paskozdilar »

teddyh wrote: post #121
paskozdilar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that AGPL (Affero GPL) expands the attached strings to any kind of user-facing network interface. So if you take AGPL code and make a Service-as-a-Software-Substitute with it, you're still legally obliged to provide source code to the users of your SaaSS. In fact, AGPL is so badass that not even Google [0] wants to touch it with a 10 yard stick :) [0] https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl.…

> you're still legally obliged to provide source code to the users of your SaaSS. IIUC, only insofar as the software already does that (i.e. by a download link in the UI). If the software currently lacks such a link, you have no obligation to add that feature, AGPL or not.

Affero GPL [0] states that:

> [...] if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software.

So the way I understand it is as long as you don't modify the software, you can run the original version as a network service without providing source code.

But if you do modify the program and serve it to users through a network interface, you have to include some means of copying the source code.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#134

Post by pabs3 »

yasinaydin wrote: post #123
pabs3 wrote: post #76

I'm using Debian testing for years with unattended-upgrades upgrading everything 4 times daily (once for each Debian repository update). Not at Google. AMA!

Have you ever used/considered using another rolling release? If yes, how would you compare them to Debian testing? Also, are there any parts of Debian testing that is not rolling (i.e. OS version number or some package versions like kernel or Node.js)?

I've always used Debian since I discovered it via Knoppix (which was my first Linux distro, Cygwin was my first Unix distro), I initially used Debian unstable but downgraded to testing some years later as upgrading testing often is smoother than unstable. I've never considered even trying any other distro. Everything is rolling, except unmaintained software, that just gets removed from the distro when other faster rolling things change incompatibly.

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#135

Post by p_l »

saagarjha wrote: post #115
p_l wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(not a googler but discussed this with some) If I recall correctly, if you choose mac and you aren't in a team directly working on mac stuff, then it means you're going to do everything using SSH to Linux workstation - iirc the choice is essentially on what kind of laptop you want and you can't do development on the laptops by policy

You can work on your Mac (I do, and my official duties pertain to Android) but you get to deal with the janky FUSE/network server mount, and if you're running builds locally they're going to be slow.

thanks, TIL :)

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#136

Post by teddyh »

paskozdilar wrote: post #133
teddyh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're still legally obliged to provide source code to the users of your SaaSS. IIUC, only insofar as the software already does that (i.e. by a download link in the UI). If the software currently lacks such a link, you have no obligation to add that feature, AGPL or not.

Affero GPL [0] states that: > [...] if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilit…

Interesting; I may have been misinformed.

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#137

Post by fauigerzigerk »

paskozdilar wrote: post #131
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This survey certainly doesn't answer all questions, but I think it does show that corporate funding of FOSS development is significant: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020FOSSC... The Linux kernel is mostly funded by a few large corporations: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/175919-who-actually-de... Clearly, corporate funding is concentrated in a few large projects, which inevitably means th…

Thanks for the links. > Figure 4 shows the employment status of the survey respondents. The overwhelming majority are employed full-time. The next two most popular answers were self-employed/freelancer or full-time student. This makes sense as most of the skills necessary to contribute to FOSS are highly valued in today’s job market (programming, technical documentation, etc.). The way I understand this is that most…

>So almost half of all contributors are actually paid to work on free software projects full-time.

I'm not sure the report allows this conclusion. I think what it says is that there are full-time employees who work on FOSS projects as part of their employment. But I don't see where it says how much of their paid time they can spend on FOSS work.

>But it seems to me that in no way is free software dependent on any company funding

I don't know. Linux does look very dependent on corporate contributions. But maybe this is a special case as most kernel code is device drivers.

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#138

Post by jillesvangurp »

bluGill wrote: post #127
jillesvangurp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, one of those lessons they don't really teach you in school that is really obvious once you take note of the simple reality that integration and testing effort does not scale linearly with the amount of change. Twice the change is not twice the testing effort but more like five times.The more change you allow to pile up the more of a hurdle testing and integrating become. At some point the integration and testing…

Fast deploy is good for many things, but that 5 times the testing effort means the few releases you do are higher quality. When it has to be perfect, like many embedded systems you don't do many releases. If course the above assumes you actually do the 5 times the testing before release. Most companies skipped that, and it showed.

Automated tests are key for this. If you have those, it empowers deploying frequently. There is only so much that can break for a small delta. That typically also enables very targeted manual testing if you need that.

Many companies have the wrong reflex of releasing less often when things don't go smoothly so they can test more not realizing that if they release more often, they can get away with less testing because there is less new stuff that can break.

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#139

Post by happymellon »

SuperSandro2000 wrote: post #91
happymellon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely to work in any corporate environment that I've witnessed. This is why so many devs I know moved to Mac's. Not because Mac's are necessary that great, who cares about battery life when it just sits on a desk, but because it's the closest you can get to Linux in a corporate environment. I would take native Linux on an ThinkPad as first option, but denied that I would go for Mac over Windows. I don't find WSL f…

Mac's are closer to BSD than Linux and suck for Linux oriented development. Brew is more ductape than a solution and you basically need to replace all GNU tools since they are horrible out of date.

I completely agree that Mac's suck for development.

Running 32gb laptops to run a few development environments that really should be fine in 16gb is sad.

Re: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

#140

Post by haik90 »

akdor1154 wrote: post #46

Jesus.. here i am in my BigCorp being disallowed to dev with Linux because too much mandated corporate crapware doesn't work. I dream of the day my employer provides an in-house distro for me.

We're on the same boat. Since a lot of people complaint, they allow Linux, but only under VM (VirtualBox), still better than no Linux at all.
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