In a case like this where—as I think you are suggesting—the alternatives are very similar and any would do, I think there is something to be said for supporting the ones that are doing the actual work of building the product, ie. Chrome.
It seems like MS didn’t do much more then copy Chrome, put their telemetry in place of Google’s, and add some bonus features to promote—so Google keeping Chrome open source is being used against them by their biggest rival. It’s the sort of predicament that caused a number of smaller companies to abandon proper open-source licenses when AWS did the same thing to their products. That whole saga was sad and bad for open source, and it would be sad too if Google did to Chrome what they’ve done to Android—adding some closed source components to make it harder for rivals to simply copy—but at this point I guess understand. (I would probably feel differently if MS open sourced Windows or Office.)
I have sympathy for this argument, and I do assign some weight to this factor.
That being said, it doesn’t overweigh the other factors in my choice. Part of that is down to the fact that MS is (I haven’t actually checked, just what I’ve heard) making good and substantial contributions back to Chromium...which Google then merges back to Chrome.
Google does add closed source stuff to Chrome. The open source stuff is in Chromium and then Google adds their own stuff to that and releases that as Chrome which is closed source.
My understanding is that MS’s contributions to Chromium are minimal so far and are mostly to address their own issues and priorities, but I guess such judgements are hard to actually quantify so they end up being subjective.
Yes, I probably should have said ‘Chromium’ instead of Chrome, but I had understood that the closed portions of Chrome & Chrome OS were just the telemetry and the media decryption module (and I like what they did to reduce that to a minimum and make it optional). Nothing like what has happened on Android where Play Services and the Play Store are substantial elements.
So, I still think of Chrome as effectively, truly open source and Android not so much.
I agree there’s a large gap between Chrome and Android on this...though I do think they’re on the same spectrum.
Agreed that MS has made their Chromium contributions in areas that are important to them, but then that’s always the case with all contributors to OSS, no? As of a year ago they’d made 1800 PRs from 160 devs. Of course, as you say, what counts as “substantial” is hard to quantify. A PR can be a small typo fix or a complete reworking of a core technology, so it’d take a lot of work to pin down substantial-ness, and then a person would still be arguing about if it was important or not.
I doubt Google can “add closed source components” to Chrome with any success. MS will simply recreate the extensions in open-source, getting a lot of mindshare and PR in the process. Android became what it is because Google was ahead of the curve and other companies did not know how useful mobile OSes were going to be.
I don’t think Google added much closed source to Android until after Amazon—probably Google’s 2nd biggest competitor—forked Android for their own tablets. In that case, it kinda’ worked and the threat diminished, but never-the-less I think I agree with you—it wouldn’t work this time—and I don’t think Google will do it.
It does suggest though that they would have been better off making Chrome closed source from the beginning (WebKit is BSD), and while I hate to say such a thing, I think the whole market would be better off. Then, instead of all these copies of Chrome being the primary alternatives to Chrome, Firefox would be doing much better. Mozilla would then be in a dramatically better financial position and could continue to make great contributions to open source in spite of Apple blocking them on iOS. Maybe their increased user base and significance would even force Apple to relent!
In a case like this where—as I think you are suggesting—the alternatives are very similar and any would do, I think there is something to be said for supporting the ones that are doing the actual work of building the product, ie. Chrome.
It seems like MS didn’t do much more then copy Chrome, put their telemetry in place of Google’s, and add some bonus features to promote—so Google keeping Chrome open source is being used against them by their biggest rival. It’s the sort of predicament that caused a number of smaller companies to abandon proper open-source licenses when AWS did the same thing to their products. That whole saga was sad and bad for open source, and it would be sad too if Google did to Chrome what they’ve done to Android—adding some closed source components to make it harder for rivals to simply copy—but at this point I guess understand. (I would probably feel differently if MS open sourced Windows or Office.)
I have sympathy for this argument, and I do assign some weight to this factor.
That being said, it doesn’t overweigh the other factors in my choice. Part of that is down to the fact that MS is (I haven’t actually checked, just what I’ve heard) making good and substantial contributions back to Chromium...which Google then merges back to Chrome.
Google does add closed source stuff to Chrome. The open source stuff is in Chromium and then Google adds their own stuff to that and releases that as Chrome which is closed source.
Yes, it is just one factor.
My understanding is that MS’s contributions to Chromium are minimal so far and are mostly to address their own issues and priorities, but I guess such judgements are hard to actually quantify so they end up being subjective.
Yes, I probably should have said ‘Chromium’ instead of Chrome, but I had understood that the closed portions of Chrome & Chrome OS were just the telemetry and the media decryption module (and I like what they did to reduce that to a minimum and make it optional). Nothing like what has happened on Android where Play Services and the Play Store are substantial elements.
So, I still think of Chrome as effectively, truly open source and Android not so much.
I agree there’s a large gap between Chrome and Android on this...though I do think they’re on the same spectrum.
Agreed that MS has made their Chromium contributions in areas that are important to them, but then that’s always the case with all contributors to OSS, no? As of a year ago they’d made 1800 PRs from 160 devs. Of course, as you say, what counts as “substantial” is hard to quantify. A PR can be a small typo fix or a complete reworking of a core technology, so it’d take a lot of work to pin down substantial-ness, and then a person would still be arguing about if it was important or not.
I doubt Google can “add closed source components” to Chrome with any success. MS will simply recreate the extensions in open-source, getting a lot of mindshare and PR in the process. Android became what it is because Google was ahead of the curve and other companies did not know how useful mobile OSes were going to be.
I don’t think Google added much closed source to Android until after Amazon—probably Google’s 2nd biggest competitor—forked Android for their own tablets. In that case, it kinda’ worked and the threat diminished, but never-the-less I think I agree with you—it wouldn’t work this time—and I don’t think Google will do it.
It does suggest though that they would have been better off making Chrome closed source from the beginning (WebKit is BSD), and while I hate to say such a thing, I think the whole market would be better off. Then, instead of all these copies of Chrome being the primary alternatives to Chrome, Firefox would be doing much better. Mozilla would then be in a dramatically better financial position and could continue to make great contributions to open source in spite of Apple blocking them on iOS. Maybe their increased user base and significance would even force Apple to relent!