Will Chrome OS offend the Open Source Community – WGAS?

Published on July 10th, 2009

Here are Chrome OS’s sins, laid out one-by-one:

1. Chrome OS will include proprietary technologies. Linux still lacks a high-quality open source Flash plugin. Practically the only choice for 100% site compatibility is to use Adobe’s proprietary plugin, so Chrome OS will need to license and include it out of the box…

Then there are multimedia codecs. People are gonna want to play their tunes and watch their movies…Google will have to license the patents covering them. This will offend the open source community, who see the software patenting system as broken and corrupt…

2. Chrome OS was created to take away your privacy. Chrome OS exists to give Google access to your data. All of it. Chrome OS might be free of charge but you’ll pay for it with your online soul.

3. Google is big, ergo Google is evil. Open source people are suspicious of corporations, especially ones that are big. I have open source friends who won’t even shop at major supermarket chains, simply because of their size.

ubuntu

4. Chrome OS could destroy desktop Linux…The only people who were probably tight-lipped at the announcement of Chrome OS were Canonical, the guys behind Ubuntu. Chrome OS could destroy Ubuntu, or at the very least kill dead its plans for world domination.

Ubuntu was always aimed at the common man, and Canonical has been extremely successful at promoting this message. Chrome OS has the potential to make Ubuntu entirely redundant. Some people will stick with it, of course, but Chrome OS is aimed at exactly the same type of general user as Ubuntu. The two will compete, and Chrome OS will win because Google has virtually infinite resources and brainpower compared to Canonical.

5. Chrome OS is not a community Linux…The way it will work is that Google makes Chrome OS available, and you can make use of it if you wish. They might invite community feedback, and perhaps even source code patches, but they are in charge. You get what they give you…

Of course, none of this matters. Chrome OS isn’t aimed at Linux fanatics. It’s aimed at the ordinary user. Who cares what the fanatics think?

But it does matter. A lot. Chrome OS is a test of whether open source can actually live-up to its declaration of freedom. Most open source licenses are about freedom, provided certain caveats are followed.

The Linux community is a religious community. They have saints and prophets. And the same range of excuses for not delivering on the Promised Land.

Google is ready and willing to be the Catholic Church.

41 users responded in " Will Chrome OS offend the Open Source Community – WGAS? "

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# 1 tcc3 said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:12 am

Will it offend the Open Source Community?

So what? It will live and die on its merits, just as Linux has. Sounds like sour grapes from a community that couldn’t promote their own product. A lot of the “sins” are why no one wants to use Linux.

# 2 dusanmal said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:15 am

2) and 5) are real reasons (and the reasons I wouldn’t touch Chrome or Chrome OS with a 10ft mouse).

1) Will offend select few “vegan” Linux users but majority have shown to be pragmatic when it comes to few proprietary bits.

3) Countered by the Google striving to help Open Source community, hence neutralized.

4) is from someone who doesn’t understand Linux following at all (people who do or would use Linux will not be too excited about unmodifiable proprietary OS)

# 3 Luc said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:21 am

4) Big deal! Microsoft has virtually infinite resources and brainpower compared to other tech companies, and…

Hum. Never mind.

# 4 qb said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:26 am

Kittens offend the open source community.

# 5 ridin the short bus said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:30 am

#3 Geta grip… Microsoft has lost its way and has screwed up almiost everything its been involved with in the past few years.. it has lost direction.. and like all things one day will become insignificant..

my 16 year old daughter..loves Linux and never uses Microsoft products… you can live without MS.. but lets see what Google provides… unfortunately it will have a BIG Brother element..and that I do not Trust… the freedom on the web is slowly being eroded here too… “Ve Are Vatching You”…

# 6 Mr. Fusion said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:35 am

If Google uses OS code then they must allow everyone to access the code. That is the whole heart of the Open Source community.

If Google doesn’t play fair there could end up being a huge battle which Google would lose.

# 7 Somebody_Else said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:52 am

The open source crowd will whine about anything.

There’s no such thing as free. If Google offers a better product than the open source community then too bad.

# 8 gmknobl said, on July 10th, 2009 at 10:03 am

Google has more minds behind it than Ubuntu? Wrong. Ubuntu, being open source (Debian, I think) has more minds by definition. But they aren’t paid as Google is. Google has more paid minds. It certainly has more money.

Whether Google succeeds or not depends on if their products work well, if they continue to work when you ‘net connection is down, and whether there are lots of lost data or broken into data or not THAT CAUSE HEADACHES for their users. Some people won’t care as long as it is perceived to work for them but anyone in the security biz will avoid it like the plague with anything at all sensitive. (We have enough to worry about after all.)

Ubuntu or (name your favorite free Unix distro) will continue to be the choice for most serious computer people on a budget while we’ll tinker with Chrome, and be forced (willingly for many albeit) to use Windows and OS/X to know what to do with those systems.

# 9 tedknaz said, on July 10th, 2009 at 10:05 am

Linux is fine and dandy until you want to do something.

That’s overkill but…
If I want to do photo editing: Paint.net, easier to run than gimp, and photoshop for heavy duty uses
Microsoft Office: Not as buggy as OpenOffice, and has a better markup system.
Optimal iPod/Zune/whatever experience: not found on linux
Playing WoW/Crysis/Civ4: windows/mac: no hacking/emulating/wine needed

I’ve tried and used Ubuntu for a while, used slax here and there. I love the fact that Linux runs on embedded systems like routers, phones and the like, but on the desktop it’s just too limited. I read somewhere that linux slavishly copies the interface of Windows with KDE etc instead of fixing the underlying issue, and that’s true of a lot of open-source replacement applications. They copy the leader, with varying degrees of success.

There are exceptions: Firefox, Webkit, ddWRT, boxee/XBMC, VLC (love that), but those are also available on the windows/mac world. So we know that open source apps can work on a closed source OS, why not the other way around? Motivate companies to release high quality, timely, and feature complete closed source apps on the open source OS, and then I would be sold.

# 10 Breetai said, on July 10th, 2009 at 10:16 am

This won’t effect Market share much. Ubuntu/Linux still has no market share in that sense. Granted Google will piss off the Open Source Community, but not by what they’re doing, they’ll piss them off just by showing up. They’re a corporate giant. That community doesn’t need more reason to dislike them, it’s also part of what holds Linux back.

# 11 Eos said, on July 10th, 2009 at 10:54 am

No, what holds the Open Source community back is its insistence that computer science be just that, a science, with source code being more like a discovery that you create and give to the world, rather than an attempt at selling the most flashy bloated crap you can as fast as possible regardless of functionality.

And that is also the Open Source community’s virtue.

# 12 FRAGaLOT said, on July 10th, 2009 at 11:01 am

Since when did Google suddenly become the evil big brother? I don’t get it, just because they are successful business they must automatically be evil. That’s bullshit.

I’m really tired of this bullshit. It’s a shame people like this have to stereotype Google as another evil microsoft that will eventually create crappy bad software that everyone will be made to use by corporate bobbleheads. All because it has grown and become successful? Why isn’t this same stereotype apply to Apple then?

# 13 GetSmart said, on July 10th, 2009 at 11:23 am

Google wants a big bite of the portable computer user space, if Chrome OS works well there, fine.
It’s not like you’re going to pry Gentoo from the cold dead hands of true Linux geeks anyway.
If Chrome OS inter-operates well with Windows, OSX and other flavors of Linux, even better.
Even if the Linux community reacts in a hostile manner, maybe it’ll turn up the heat to fix some of the very real obstacles to Linux on the desktop for the average user.

# 14 Postman said, on July 10th, 2009 at 11:35 am

Forget Yahoo, Microsoft has set their eyes on teh real prise in search. At the rate that Bing is growing right now, Microsoft will be buying the last little remnants of Google out next year.

ChromeOS is too little too late…

http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/10/bing-leapfrogs-yahoo-search-again/

Poor Yahoo investors… I bet they are livid. ChromeOS is a desperate and futile last bid to avoid being crushed by the Borg.

# 15 David said, on July 10th, 2009 at 11:41 am

Does Mac OS X offend the Open Source Community? After all, it’s built on the open-source FreeBSD Unix. And even if it does offend some, should any of us worry about it?

# 16 bac said, on July 10th, 2009 at 11:48 am

Does Ubuntu offend Slackware users? I doubt it. Chrome OS will be just another Linux distribution. If Google does not charge for the OS, then Microsoft and Apple might need to step up their efforts. Chrome OS will be popular because it is from Google. How popular, only time will tell.

# 17 Luc said, on July 10th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

#[15-16] Yes, OS X offends part of the OS community. Not the BSD community since that is part of the purpose of the BSD license, but the GNU crowd hates the BSD community with a passion for giving away code with such a “libertine” license, as the GNU cooks like to say. They hate to see Apple profit from free code without any requirement to give something in return.

Yes, Ubuntu offends Slackware users, infamous for their l33ter-than-thou attitude. The Slackware crowd has a lot of spite towards Ubuntu.

# 18 SparkyOne said, on July 10th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

looking forward to 7 years of Chrome OS beta

# 19 Holden said, on July 10th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

I think it will offend the Free Software Foundation and GNUers, but not open source in general.

# 20 Thinker said, on July 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

Awwwwwwww…….and do I care???

# 21 Steve S said, on July 10th, 2009 at 2:27 pm

# 20 Thinker said,
“Awwwwwwww…….and do I care??”

No.

# 22 cc_other said, on July 10th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

#17 Luc
thanks for news from the nix/oss continent !

# 23 Greg Allen said, on July 10th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

If Chrome is Open Source, then the open source community can easily hack it and fix the privacy problems.

I strongly encourage them to do so!

# 24 cottenhamr said, on July 10th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

FINALLY an Engadget post I COMPLETELY agree with.

# 25 cottenhamr said, on July 10th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

FINALLY a post about Chrome OS I COMPLETELY agree with.

# 26 audion said, on July 10th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

Well, not to be too bitchy… but Windows kinda still lacks a high quality Flash plug-in. But yeah, it really bites on Linux.

# 27 dgroow said, on July 10th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

I am not sure what the buzz is about. Other than search, what has Google developed that is complete. Their gmail, although adequate, has room for lots of improvement. Their google maps for smart phones is pretty good.

I think Google should spend more time completing the apps they are marketing, instead of adding a product which at best will be a marginally small success. I would rather partner with a distro and add resources to improve Linux and desktop environments.

# 28 qb said, on July 10th, 2009 at 8:02 pm

#17 Luc

I’ve been to way too many conferences where the open source guys spent days arguing over which license to use. Zzzzzz……..

# 29 Toxic Asshead said, on July 10th, 2009 at 8:07 pm

Yawn. Richard Stallman is the second dumbest moron on the planet.

# 30 deowll said, on July 10th, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Let me explain. I could care less. An OS that only runs a browser is crap. That goes double when it runs an OS that has a 3% market share.

I’d rather have a Blackberry.

# 31 faustus said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:15 pm

on the surface of this it seems to really just suit google and google’s needs and not the linux commune as a whole… which sounds a little like software fascism to me…. what ever the greater good of inc and state… so be it. i mean come on… google all the doe ray me to build what ever microsoft has.. to rip off linux just for the cool…. seems to blow hard and like alot of shite google has been doing as of late probably won’t work out.

# 32 danijel said, on July 10th, 2009 at 11:24 pm

Every single point in this article is pure nonsense. And you wonder why media is dying….

# 33 Uncle Patso said, on July 11th, 2009 at 3:48 am

Apparently the open source community is as sectarian, individualistic and just plain contrarian as the leftist community. (I understand there’s some overlap…) All this speculation is completely baseless at the moment anyway. It will be months before we have any idea what Chrome OS will be like. There are so many possibilities. It could be great and achieve a 20% market share in two years in Europe, 15% in the U.S., with much higher figures for netbooks. Or, it could end up like “just another Linux distro” and fight with all the other distros for a few percentage points. (I’m hoping for the former.)

# 34 MikieV said, on July 11th, 2009 at 7:48 am

I love how Ridin the Short Bus [in #5] -completely- misses what Luc was saying [in #3].

Back to the original item, the privacy one makes me laugh, e.g. “Chrome OS might be free of charge but you’ll pay for it with your online soul.”

They can have my online soul, for all the good it will do them. They can’t make me buy things I don’t want/need. They can’t watch my online activities any more than Comcast and/or Verizon already do…

Comcast knows as much about my “private” online soul – at home – as the corporate proxy server knows about my “public” online soul, at work.

I have no illusion of privacy when I go online.

# 35 MikieV said, on July 11th, 2009 at 7:59 am

I’m curious to see how this ramps-up.

Google says they intend to start with netbooks… so they shouldn’t be supporting any “legacy” hardware, initially.

If it stays mainly as a cheap, fast way to get online – and everything else is secondary – I can’t see the new OS being much of a threat to desktop Linux… unless a LOT of desktop Linux users suddenly realize that all they really need is a cheap, fast way to get online.

# 36 MikieV said, on July 11th, 2009 at 8:03 am

Me, again.

“Practically the only choice for 100% site compatibility is to use Adobe’s proprietary plugin, so Chrome OS will need to license and include it out of the box…”

Unless they “pull an Apple” and don’t support Flash, like the iPhone doesn’t.

Isn’t that part of the attraction of HTML 5? Using regular video instead of having to use things like Flash/Silverlight?

# 37 Don Quixote said, on July 11th, 2009 at 8:18 am

Windows became dominant because it was supported by the hackers decades ago. Today the Apple guy in the commercial stands alone, while the poor MS slob has all these other people to make it work.

And that is just why the Apple guy is standing alone. It is a one person system, selling only his software.

Microsoft has since windows given the hacker access to it’s operating system, for free.. http://www.microsoft.com/express/

MS is what an open system looks like, and will be for sometime.

# 38 Philber said, on July 11th, 2009 at 9:34 am

Luc’s right – Microsoft has been squandering it’s size/power advantage for years by coming-up with crap OSs. Size and power (financial resources) does NOT necessarily mean a good product!

# 39 qb said, on July 11th, 2009 at 10:25 am

#37 Don Quixote

Have you ever tried to use VS Express? It’s a gutless wonder. VS is horrendous unless you buy ReSharper. Thank God for JetBrains.

# 40 Luc said, on July 11th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

#38: Yes, Microsoft has been squandering size/power advantage for years with substandard quality — but still is the dominating company, with massive headway. Maybe I was too sarcastic and didn’t make myself clear.

In other words: yes, Google may as well trump Canonical quite easily even if Chrome sucks.

# 41 LinuxOsman said, on July 12th, 2009 at 11:14 pm

When Google does not use the linux or the Microsoft kernel( and yes microsoft runs on a kernel) then you can represent it as a OS. I really didnt realize how many undereducated writers there was today lol

Best Regards

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