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The limits of Google’s openness

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Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#221

Post by vetinari »

beagle3 wrote: post #116
gebe wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silverlight for Linux has existed through the Mono platform since 2007 under the name Moonlight: http://mono-project.com/Moonlight . With Microsoft's blessing I might add.

Without the DRM parts, making e.g. NetFlix streaming unusable on Linux (until recently, when someone managed to get Wine to the point where it can run Microsoft's own SilverLight DRM properly).

Even without DRM, Moonlight never worked correctly. I don't care for Netflix, it is not available in my country anyway. But I do care about other sites, for example autosalontv.cz and it never worked with Moonlight.

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#222

Post by wklauss »

beagle3 wrote: post #121
zobzu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And.. thats pretty much being closed. Point microsoft, not you, nor google. Go "cry your river" elsewhere.

open does NOT equal putting yourself on equal footing with your competitors.

It actually does. It not only means that, but its one of the outcomes if you are truly open.

I think a bigger problem here is why people think YouTube or Google are "open" to begin with. There are some areas in Google businesses that being more open than the alternatives (note the emphasis on more, sometimes they are just "open" in comparison with Microsoft and Apple policies) serves them well, thats why the do it, but it's not a dogma inside the company and will never be.

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#223

Post by wslh »

jorgecastillo wrote: post #218
wslh wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't avoid AdWords. Have you tried to sell your software products via Bing/Yahoo? There is no audience there.

I am only a consumer so I wouldn't know about such issues. Maybe in the future my opinion of Google will change, but so far my experience with Google has been very positive. I can not say the same about Microsoft.

Did you hear about Google Reader?

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#224

Post by nivla »

beagle3 wrote: post #66
badman_ting wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? It's about Google not making a YouTube app for a platform, so the platform vendor makes one themselves, which then gets blocked, leaving users in the middle.

Cry me a river. If users buy a Windows Phone expecting to have a YouTube app, when one is not legally available, it is their problem. There is no inherent right to a YouTube app on a phone. Just as it was the problem of users buying early Linux notebooks / eees and expecting it to run Windows software. And it's not like the WP users are left out in the rain. They can just use the browser to view YouTube videos. Lesse…

I am pissed because the outcome of my choice shouldn't be affected by faux restrictions. I was a Youtube user before Google was its buyer. So my choice to go with a windows phone shouldn't to be dealt with a degraded experience. Had MS or Apple pulled a similar crap, everyone would be crying an antitrust river and carrying a nail to the cross. Why does Google get a free pass at this? Its by now clear that Google wants to provide a degraded experience to the windows phone users, thus deliberately rigging the market place. What guarantees that the same wouldn't be pulled when Firefox OS or Ubuntu OS comes to the market? If so what can possibly replace Youtube? 90% of the video links on the web are to Youtube.

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#225

Post by jorgecastillo »

wslh wrote: post #204
jorgecastillo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Apple has published plenty of open source code (non GUI stuff). Microsoft doesn't make significant open source contributions, because they don't get open source or because the only thing that makes them valuable is their huge desktop market share.

I am not defending Microsoft actions (even if they make some few open source contributions). I just said that Google Achilles' heel is in another place and because we have a bias in favor of free software we are not seeing the big picture clearly.

I have no bias in favor of free software. I do think open source is awesome. I do think open source UNIX-like systems are awesome. I do think open source programming languages are awesome. With all this said I use whatever software I like and can afford. I don't think open source software is inherently better, it is inherently more awesome but not necessarily better. My favorite desktop OSes are OpenBSD, OS X & Linux, I am only using Linux currently. My favorite GUIs are Cocoa & KDE.

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#226

Post by beagle3 »

nivla wrote: post #224
beagle3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cry me a river. If users buy a Windows Phone expecting to have a YouTube app, when one is not legally available, it is their problem. There is no inherent right to a YouTube app on a phone. Just as it was the problem of users buying early Linux notebooks / eees and expecting it to run Windows software. And it's not like the WP users are left out in the rain. They can just use the browser to view YouTube videos. Lesse…

I am pissed because the outcome of my choice shouldn't be affected by faux restrictions. I was a Youtube user before Google was its buyer. So my choice to go with a windows phone shouldn't to be dealt with a degraded experience. Had MS or Apple pulled a similar crap, everyone would be crying an antitrust river and carrying a nail to the cross. Why does Google get a free pass at this? Its by now clear that Google want…

> I was a Youtube user before Google was its buyer. So my choice to go with a windows phone shouldn't to be dealt with a degraded experience.

If you were a youtube user then, you were using the website - which is PERFECTLY USABLE on your windows phone. Your experience is not worse in any way than it was then (although it might not be as good as android or ios users; but then, you didn't buy an android or an iphone)

> Had MS or Apple pulled a similar crap, everyone would be crying an antitrust river and carrying a nail to the cross. Why does Google get a free pass at this?

Google is asking Microsoft to respect terms of service - nothing more, nothing less. Twitter does it every other week, and so does facebook - and people are upset, but everyone understands that this is entirely within their rights. (Unlike stuff Microsoft did, for which it was convicted of antitrust violations).

> Its by now clear that Google wants to provide a degraded experience to the windows phone users, thus deliberately rigging the market place.

The only thing that's clear is that Microsoft is using its customers as pawns in a PR game against google. I know what my response to that would have been: No more MS products.

> What guarantees that the same wouldn't be pulled when Firefox OS or Ubuntu OS comes to the market? If so what can possibly replace Youtube? 90% of the video links on the web are to Youtube.

AND THEY ALL WORK PERFECTLY WELL ON YOUR WINDOWS PHONE, INSIDE THE WEB BROWSER, LIKE LINKS ARE SUPPOSED TO! WHAT ARE YOU UPSET ABOUT?

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#227

Post by tn13 »

Eventually both Google and Microsoft give a damn about openness. They all care about their own profits. "Openness" is just a cute cover. Microsoft's own track record in such things has been very bad (hint: Samba, Wine).

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#229

Post by beagle3 »

wklauss wrote: post #222
beagle3 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

open does NOT equal putting yourself on equal footing with your competitors.

It actually does. It not only means that, but its one of the outcomes if you are truly open. I think a bigger problem here is why people think YouTube or Google are "open" to begin with. There are some areas in Google businesses that being more open than the alternatives (note the emphasis on more , sometimes they are just "open" in comparison with Microsoft and Apple policies) serves them well, thats why the do it,…

No, it does not mean that. You have things confused.

IF you are at equal footing with everyone else, THEN you are "open". But the other way around does not follow.

e.g. Mozilla (or Digia, or SourceFire, or thousand others -- take your pick) can relicense their open source software as closed source, and put out binaries for future versions without releasing the source. Others using the same source code base cannot. That does not make that source code any less open.

Re: The limits of Google’s openness

#230

Post by fpgeek »

lotso wrote: post #220
ntkachov wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your disclaimer probably says it all. Why bother when there just aren't that many people on windows phone. It seems like a matter of "who is helping who?". if Google didn't support the iPhone, there would be an outrage and people would move to other video service because of the number of people on iphone. If google didn't support android... well that would be silly, wouldn't it? But there aren't enough people on wind…

Except BB10 has a YouTube app.

Yes, an icon that opens up a link in the browser is a wonderful YouTube app Microsoft couldn't replicate: http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-10-apps-f274/why-the...
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