Ok, this is going to get me into trouble, but nevertheless:
Christian Weilbach, long-time KDE developer, has posted a lengthy critique of Google's intentions with the GSoC on his blog (which is running on Drupal, btw). The lack of paragraph usage makes it a bit hard to read, hopefully that'll be fixed soon, but nonetheless I find it very worth the read, even if one doesn't necessarily need to agree with his point of view.
I have always been a fan of the Summer of Code, having participated twice as a student and doing the mentor thing this year, I believe that it's highly beneficial for Drupal and a lot of other Free and Open Source communities. Still, it's worthwhile to take a look at the other side, if only to remind us to keep our independence and to utilize GSoC just for the good of Drupal's own interests, without having to be a big fan of Google itself.
Comments
Found nothing new with its criticism
I found nothing new with his criticism of Google.
I find GSoC as a good way to lure students into open source projects. Microsoft does it too by sponsoring school contests and by doing underhanded tricks. So it's actually a good thing that someone is doing something for open source :)
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Totally, yeah
For the record, I agree with that. I didn't claim the post to contain actual "new" information, it's just a pretty comprehensive linking-up of known stuff with SoC goals. Nothing that people couldn't figure out by putting together the various pieces by themselves, but I think not everyone gets to the point of actively questioning Google's goals in this. I found it a good idea to link to this post in order to encourage that.
yep
Agreed. It's all quite obvious stuff, but it's definitely worth having that discussion.
My own view is that there's only two real differences between huge corporations and tiny Mom and Pop businesses. Size, and cosmetics.
Size can be an issue both ways - sometimes economies of scale allows the working class (whether as employee or consumer) to keep stuff in check that's harder to do if you're the only employee of a family business, or only have one corner shop in your village to buy food from that's not connected to the next shop in the next village. However it's equally hard to do that with behemoths and monopolies, and all businesses are moving in one direction somewhere on that spectrum at various rates.
With cosmetics, I personally prefer using google to MSN search (or smaller search engines that are often plastered with even more ads). I also prefer (cosmetically) being tracked by my free e-mail account (and etc.) to having purchases tracked via shop discount cards. At the same time, used book shops are much nicer places to be in than Borders - but Amazon and Abe Books are more efficient places to find stuff than all but the best used book shops - many of which have been forced to sell stuff via Amazon and Abe to survive - not to mention some small 'boutique' shops are price gougers with their own little monopolies.
I think the fundamental issue here is a mistaken assumption that open source somehow exists outside the capitalist system. Even stuff that's entirely GPL like Debian or Drupal doesn't, not even a tiny bit. Contributing to open source in your spare time relies on having enough money to buy hardware and connectivity. And actually having some spare time, which is in short supply for a lot of people. My contributions to Drupal went up about 300% after getting a less hectic and better paid job 6 months ago - which made the difference between collapsing in the evenings after work and being able to log on and do stuff that vaguely productive (not to mention moving from a student-facing job to an office - there are a lot of unofficial corporate and state contributions to open source that they don't know about).
While FOSS points to a much better way of doing things (as have various attempts at alternative production and lifestyle in the past), it depends entirely on being able to bottom-feed off the excess produced by capital. Until there's a way to do FOSS food, clothes, computers etc. it's only ever going to operate within those confines. And in that context, there's no pure non-capitalist essence for Google or anyone else to defile.
So for me the issue is less "Google's actually bad, and even when they do really nice cool stuff, that's bad too", it's more the incapacity for open source to effect far reaching social change as a thing in itself (whether via technological or ideological example). Fundamentally it really does come down to the difference between whether you're a GSoC student or some fast food company sponsors your kids' school sports. I know which I'd prefer, I also know that escaping from either into a nicer friendlier smaller capitalism isn't an option.
What is capitalism?
You say that FOSS exists inside the capitalistic system. But what is capitalistic and what is a capitalistic system? You assume that working in the evening for a FOSS project is capitalistic. Of course you have to work all day long to get your money, but in the evening you are free from that necessity. Capitalism means a capitalist usurps the work of others and takes the revenue, without giving it back. So just because you work all day long for this capitalist, you have the historically fought for right to do what you want in your evening. And now you easily say that all this work should be part of the capitalistic system again? You want to support the same companies with it?
not should be, is.
I'm not saying it should be part of capitalism, I'm saying it is - I hoped my post made that clear. To answer your specific question, capitalism is a set of social relations - not just wage labour, not just the marketplace, not just commodities (although those are important components) - I see quite a lot around suggesting that FOSS has somehow escaped those social relations - whereas personally I think it exists both within and in opposition to them. No less important. But overall stuff which is 'anti-corporate' as opposed to having an analysis of capitalism as a whole, tends to miss the point imo - and almost any article which is talking about corporate influence in foo is likely to fall into that category.
FOSS truely exists "inside" the capitalistic system
I am very thankful for an argument finally! After all these posts like you are too pessimistic or I don't believe in your facts, you are absurd, ... etc. this is great to see.
Although we can discuss what capitalism is, which would be too broad topic for now, I have focussed on Google vs. FOSS from the beginning. My point was never, although people have interpreted it like that, that FOSS is independent from companies and money. My point was that Google operates differently than traditional software vendors, it sells information not software, and therefore can use FOSS for its interests without giving something back. The GPL handles commercial interests inside the software market well for all FOSS enthusiasts, but it does not deal with somebody who simply takes programmers out of the FOSS world and creates lock-in products on their servers. Google is also strong in social information dealing and therefore knows the structure and interests of FOSS very well. GSoC is not simply an internship program but it is also a big marketing program for FOSS developpers to support Google. Google then buys developpers in the top of hierarchies, which they know very well, and uses the code for their products, but without giving it back: Google Websearch, GMail, Orkut, Google Maps, Youtube, all use FOSS internally and client widgets and programs externally, but you can never free from that platform.
Web services "loophole" ...
What you refer to, is the "web services loophole", and it is a known feature (or bug) of the GPL.
The Affero GPL license is the only one that addresses that, but I am sure that it is not widely adopted beyond a few projects (CiviCRM being one of them).
Google does not use all the projects they sponsor (e.g. they don't use Drupal or PHP products), so perhaps only the marketing part is true in the above.
Google is still "better" than the alternatives as far as large multinational corporations go. They are not yet (very) evil. One day, they will be, I am sure, because like all regional powers in geopolitics turn to empires, corporations turn evil. Same goes for Apple by the way.
But until then, the money from GSOC is good for the projects.
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Google is not Microsoft
The point is that the GPL and FOSS are constructed to deal with Microsoft and even if the GPL is used completely capitalistic it still guarantees its freedom against traditional commercial software vendors. But Google is another business which might lock-in FOSS projects in ways the GPL does not handle. Google for example studies and knows the internals of FOSS projects and uses them to get the hardest working programmers for the Googleplex. Additionally it knows whom to buy for what to achieve. Have a look Andrew Morton or the Firefox chief developper. But finally Google then creates online services you can only write FOSS clients for, but you cannot open source anymore. Like GMail, Google Websearch, Google office tools, Google maps, ... This means that writing FOSS code and corporating with Google introduces a new danger and GSoC is part of this danger. Google does not simply make money with selling services around open-source products, like traditional software companies do. So my criticism is new, it is not the old way of criticizing commercial interference.
Please have a look at my follow-up, too: http://kde.blogsite.org/?q=node/53
"So for me the issue is less
"So for me the issue is less "Google's actually bad, and even when they do really nice cool stuff, that's bad too", it's more the incapacity for open source to effect far reaching social change as a thing in itself (whether via technological or ideological example). Fundamentally it really does come down to the difference between whether you're a GSoC student or some fast food company sponsors your kids' school sports. I know which I'd prefer, I also know that escaping from either into a nicer friendlier smaller capitalism isn't an option."
Right on, catch! Nicely said.
jpetso, rest assured, I did not think for one moment you weren't for GSoC. :) I've been reading a lot about Google, both good and bad and I felt that the KDE blog was just rehashing old arguments and even felt childish for me actually.
Ciao!
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Perfect, there is no
Perfect, there is no alternative to capitalism. You know of course the economical truth and the fundamentals of being human. Capitalism is something which hasn't grown historically and which is not made by humans but it is a natural force, right?
FOSS is just the next level of capitalism, right?
No big deal
So, the idea here is that XYZ Corporation (here, Google) has interests that they pursue while donating to a cause?
That is nothing new. Businesses do it all the time, for example: jumping on the "Green" bandwagon, donating to cancer societies, being a "good corporate citizen", ...etc.
If these activities are partially tax writeoff, partially public relations, and those are the intentions, yet they do benefit someone else, then so be it.
Did you know that Microsoft sponsored DrupalCon Boston?
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No I didn't know that.
Was it via some kind of shell company/front organisation?
I have written more than
I have written more than 'So, the idea here is that XYZ Corporation (here, Google) has interests that they pursue while donating to a cause?' and it does not simply boil down to this classical and simple criticism.
Whatever their motive ...
My point is this: whatever their motives are, it is beneficial to open source. The students get money, and the projects get money and code.
Their motives, good or bad, does not diminish the above, which is more than what other companies do.
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Port 25
Port 25. You can see them on the Sponsor List.
And see this blog post.
What matters is : did they influence the conference or Drupal? No. Was it any different because they donated? No. So their money is welcome in this case.
I am not pro Microsoft at all, and don't use any of their product. But I am not irrational either.
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Ahh, see I didn't even
Ahh, see I didn't even notice. Google is inconspicuous because it's just the little logo and whitespace, and Microsoft is in disguise.
I don't think Drupalcon was any different than it would've been because Microsoft and Google donated (well, the google keynote showed some influence, but I don't think that was due to this specific sponsorship somehow) - however, Drupal(+con) has clearly got enough different enough in the past 3-4 years that it's worth their while to do so at all.
Yeah that's a healthy balance. There was that guy who tried to not use google for a month for much the same reasons as the post linked here, which was like a bizarre inverted geek version of SuperSize Me.
For that matter Ask.com recently ran a billboard ad campaign in the UK with a lot of faux revolutionary rhetoric, raised fists etc. - pretty much saying 'use us because we're not google' - plenty of money to be made from being anti-corporate (including by corporations).
My take
I am one of the students participating in GSoC this year...While I agree on Google being omnipresent and it is not such a great thing..I have to say that money is not the only factor....Yes, I joined this program for the money and certificate...agreed..but now after talking to various developers on the IRC and mailing lists..I am sure that I will work on a few projects even if I dont get selected in GSoC..earlier I was just someone interested in programming and was somewhat of a FOSS and GNU/Linux evangelist..now I am planning to actively participate in development...And $4000 is not that much for me either...I could earn 10 times of that, here in India,in a year right after getting my undergraduate degree...but GSoC has ignited that urge to contribute to FOSS..and thats more important..and yes..whats wrong in getting paid for writing free software?
That's the spirit :)
See, this is why I love the Summer of Code. Even if you were the only person with that intention, GSoC would probably still be worth it. (But of course, there's a lot more thinking the same - come for the money, stay for the community. That's actually a great concept.)
Nothing, really. As long as a company only pays contributors but not the open source project itself (so that the project can still act against the company if necessary), I believe there is mostly good in getting paid for writing free software.
The point that I miss in the blog entry is that Christian doesn't make a distinction between Google as a company and the people who run the GSoC, because like everywhere else in open source, stuff like this isn't done by some anonymous group of capitalists but rather by Leslie Hawthorne, Chris DiBona & Co., people who care a lot about open source and community and leverage their standing in order to help us. It's easy to forget that each achievement of big companies like Google is still done by individuals and relatively independent teams, and it would be unfair to lump them all together.
In the end, it all comes down to control. Is the software controlled by individual, independent contributors or by a large team of unknown people paid by a company that controls the direction which the project takes? Does my employer control my work, or do I decide where the right balance between instant solutions and harder but more sustainable community involvement lies? Is the Summer of Code a reputation improvement project mandated by the management, or do Leslie & Co. use Google for pushing their own interests? Does the GSoC have any effects on the project's "loyality" to Google and our independence from a single company's policy?
I think those questions can be answered quite satisfactory for Drupal and most other open source projects, and the Summer of Code doesn't really pose any threat in this regard. It's just important to separate smaller initiatives (GSoC! Port 25?) from general company policy (Google data harvest, Microsoft lock-in) - those two might or might not pursue similar goals.
Also note that Christian's attitude is not representative for KDE, or even popular at all in the community. I just need to stress that fact because Khalid called it the "KDE blog" (yeah, the blog is also named like that, but it needs to be stated nevertheless).
Minor
Minor correction: ben_c called the "KDE blog", not Khalid.
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Oops
Er, sorry. I hate making factual errors... will remember to consequently verify the quotes each time.
No big deal
I make these errors all the time, so not a big deal. That is why I said "minor".
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hey :)
If you get some time can you please review my application ?
http://groups.drupal.org/node/10295
My application is based on your idea of Youtube API integration with Drupal ..
http://groups.drupal.org/node/9829
Dipen Chaudhary
http://dipenchaudhary.com
http://playdrupal.com (under construction)
Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development
commented on that blog post, but dont think will get approved
I am a student and here is my 2 bits about your analysis, ESR, RMS and others have repeatedly talked about not reinventing the wheel and google does exactly that, there is limited resource and you cant go around developing a OS and a browser from the scratch because thats brutually wasting ur intellectual and financial resources.You got google right about their interest in open source and funding firefox,plone etc They wanna keep improving the search and work on information while also fund other groups who have been doing open source development and doing it good.Open source products are superior in quality because of this huge distributed QA which a coorporation can never achieve. Why not leverage that? Why not fund them and let them improve it while they work on what they do best ?
As for GSOC ..
By starting to pay developpers in FOSS-projects, you a) distract other participants offering their time for free (although many calculate with personal profits) and b) you start to weaken the 'free' spirit, because parts of your project are not interested in the freedom but rather in money and career (a Google certificate). In my opinion you should avoid having a concurrency situation in your project, where one part gets paid for fancy features and the others develop unspectecular parts like bugfixing and maintenance.
a) Everyone has a selfish reason to take up a choice.. key here is to understand dimensions of selfish, If I gain no value for it I dont invest.. Those who have been developing it free had their reasons in learning, hobby, pleasure and they will continue to do .. Student community at large is ignorant and usually needs time to know what they are cut for.. Money is a incentive for them to step up and find out what they are cut for, I am speaking for general mindset here, not mine .. For example I always thought that India sucks at drupal development not being able to find any indian in irc easily, if its a indian name then he/she is probably in US/london .. And as Gsoc comes I see indian students all over the group and yes they have done good work in their past engagements.. My point here is that a general student mindset would want a google certificate and money, whats wrong in that ? Everyone expects returns for their work and if not then it can never be productive and It need not be money always..
b)What is a 'free' spirit? In open source free spirit only means my right to code and look at code and how is that violated here, If you talking about money then have not open source contributors earned money? tht again brings me to the point of google funding open source projects, ($56 millions to mozilla foundation in 2006) and we have a good browser, I have open code to learn how does a browser function and improve, yes google earns from mozilla and vice versa they both have choice to opt out but the point in question is how did google limit my freedom in exploring and using firefox .. I agree with you over feature and bug fixes.. there should be bug fixes camp or a fair division on that front in terms of applications accepted but in my opinion google will not restrict KDE if it wants its student to do bug fixing though I am not sure of it ..
Thanks ..
I doubt you will approove my comment, but this needs to be shared .. so I am posting it in drupal community where I got link to your blog post
Dipen Chaudhary
http://dipenchaudhary.com
http://playdrupal.com (under construction)
Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development
And yes the post got me furious .
Why does everyone see capitalism as bad ? Why is money bad ? Why ? Why ?
Dipen Chaudhary
http://dipenchaudhary.com
http://playdrupal.com (under construction)
Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development
Er, well
As far as I can tell, only one person here regards the combination of capitalism and open source as bad. I like catch's point that capitalism is a fixed fact already in open source, and what I really find great is that even if companies are in it only for profit, it makes more sense for them to give back than not to.
I think "capitalism" is used interchangably with "profit > people" by duns_s, and that is true in many cases. Money is not inherently bad, but striving for money can make a lot of people do things that can easily be judged as "morally wrong". Different people will of course have different views on where the border between "morally right" and "morally wrong" is drawn, but capitalism certainly doesn't try in any way to get the balance right, the system is just designed to prefer people over money if there is a choice between those two, and while I'm not inherently against capitalism I have good reason not to trust it.
@duns_s:
Capitalism is a fact of life, and won't disappear any time soon. It's just futile to fight it, regardless anyone's opinion, because you always lose that fight. If we run away from capitalism, it'll hunt us down and eat our children. So instead of fighting it, we need ways to make capitalism work for us, by maximizing profit when public benefit is also maximized.
Open source is great not because it's able to take down capitalism. It's great because it works with capitalism while requiring it to contribute to our own benefit as well, which is not the case with the "traditional" approach to software capitalism. Trying to fight Google won't get you anywhere - you'll have better chances if you can find ways to make Google recognize the advantages of giving back what you find important.
Lastly, every company needs some distinguishing feature that others don't have. Microsoft's competence is proprietary software (resulting in licensing money), Google's competence is data (resulting in advertising money), Red Hat's competence is knowledge (resulting in money for support contracts). Find a way to deprecate one of those and be better at yours, and we can talk about changing the effect of capitalism. Open source deprecated proprietary software in favor of data and knowledge. If you want to destroy Google, better find a way to deprecate data in favor of knowledge only.
Value for Value
Value can be anything and it has been many things in my case, pleasure, fun, learning, money .. Google pay's equal amount irrespective of the organization you choose to do work for .. even if its not remotely associated with .. Maybe they do it for PR but how can they affect end user's choice or the choices of the open source organization ?
Bleh !! I need a smoke
Dipen Chaudhary
http://dipenchaudhary.com
http://playdrupal.com (under construction)
Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development
How to disagree
BTW, Moshe just posted a link to an interesting essay on "how to disagree" - http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html - if you're interested in communication, expressing opinions etc., please read. Then read the post about Google again.
http://www.twitter.com/lxbarth