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Google And Open Source 131

Posted by Zonk from the so-happy-together dept.
Nate writes "Former Slashdot editor, games programmer and consultant Chris DiBona talks about his new work at Google in a brief interview over at Linux Format. Most notably, DiBona points out that Google wants to follow IBM's lead in not attempting to control open source, and he also highlights the reasons why Google will never be a 100% open source company." From the article: "So I don't see the word 'sponsorship' as being appropriate. Because sponsorship also implies stewardship. We don't want to run open source, that's not who we are. I have to tell you, I've admired how IBM has gone about this. They've for the most part not screwed up: they haven't taken things over, they haven't managed to break anything, they've done a lot of good work. We're not going to use that as a model for what we want to do, because we're different companies, but I really want to get code out there, I don't want just... money. Money's not enough."
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Google And Open Source More

Google And Open Source

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  • Money's not enough ... but it sure helps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by b0r1s ( 170449 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:29PM (#14718304) Homepage

    A lot of projects benefit from IBM's money, but as importantly, a lot of the Linux codebase benefits more from their hardware compatibility. We run a large farm of IBM e-Series servers (x306, x335, x336, x345, x346), and it really, really helps when we can grab the source for drivers straight from the IBM website.

    Hardware compatibility: thank you IBM.
    • really, really helps when we can grab the source for drivers straight from the IBM website.

      As long you run SuSe X.X or RedHat Y.Y, with kernel Z.Z for which the RAID controller driver's (closed source) and NIC ones were written to...

      Sun, HP or Dell are better than IBM on compatibility, in my humble opinion...

    • Re:Money's not enough ... but it sure helps (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, for sure, and that's why we've given a bunch of money out to projects like oregon states OSL [osuosl.org], Apache [apache.org], the FSF [gnu.org] and many others.

      A few other things from the article that need correcting: 1) not web 'scramblers' but web 'scammers' :-) and 2) The number 100 was a joke, I meant a number much larger than that but we don't talk about the number of machines that we release. For more info about our open source efforts and to see the code that we've released, see Code.Google.com [google.com]

      Chris

  • Money (Score:4, Funny)

    by saboola ( 655522 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:29PM (#14718305)
    I don't want just... money. Money's not enough.


    He can PayPal me any of it he does not want. I could sure as hell use it.

  • No one can own open source. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:31PM (#14718334) Homepage
    Any person or company who contributes *anything* to the OSS community is helping it thrive. Google contributes in a variety of ways from actually releasing source code, funding summer of code, and even just existing as an excellent search engine making it easier for OSS developers to search for previous solutions to the problems they are facing.
    • I agree that no one can own open source software, as it's released from the moment of its creation. However, what Google is trying to say is that they don't want to control or influence open source development. Instead, I think that Google wants to find a way to encourage the current evolutionary process by which many projects are tried, and only the most viable get the critical mass of developers needed for continued growth.

      As far as Google's vested interest, I'd say that Google has an interest
    • What applications has Google released that are Open Source that you like? In fact, what applications has Google released that are Open Source at all? I'm not trolling, I'm honestly curious. I know a ton of Open Source code that has come from Redhat, IBM, Sun, Novell etc., but I don't know of a single project that Google has contributed a significant amount of code to. As far as I can tell all of their current offerings are closed source and Windows only.
      • While they didn't contribute code directly, they did finance a large number of internships working on F/OSS projects over the summer.
        • My mistake, I should have said other than the Summer of Code because I was aware of that project. That project cost them roughly a million dollars and for a company as profitable as Google that's nothing more than a little PR stunt. If they want to be comparable to other companies, such as IBM, they're going to need to contribute a lot more than that. All of the applications they've produced internally are closed source and Windows only. From what I've seen they haven't really supported the Open Source
      • There's a lot of stuff here [google.com].
    • I think you don't get the point: IBM and google just want to be "yet another open source geek". You won't see IBM/google people showing up as maintainers of a given project and controlling that project just to benefit their companies (unlike Sun does with, for example, openoffice)

  • Release pagerank (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:34PM (#14718376)
    First: We're not going to use that as a model for what we want to do, because we're different companies, but I really want to get code out there, I don't want just... money. Money's not enough.

    Then: We're never going to release PageRank [Google's trademark system for ranking web pages in its search index], we're not going to release things like that, because to release them would ruin them. If you release how you do the ranking function, suddenly every web scrambler in the world screws up the rank and Google search becomes useless. We don't want to do that.

    Or, you could release it so others can learn how it works and perhaps come up with improvements or more sophisicated algorithms/systems that are rank scrambler proof.

    But that endanger profits right? think of investors, lifesavings etc. Fair enough.
    • But we all know how well security through obscurity works. Why ruin a perfect system.

    • Re:Release pagerank (Score:5, Insightful)

      by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:50PM (#14718533)
      Don't be stupid.

      EVERYTHING gets cracked. If Google released PageRank, then they'd be starting a "war" with the search-engine abusers. A never ending war. Yeah, having it be "open-source" means that the community could constantly update it to prevent the latest abuses, but the people doing the abuse would just find new holes, since the source would be available.

      Sometimes "security through obscurity" is the right thing to do.

      • Re:Release pagerank (Score:2, Insightful)

        by patriceCH ( 321022 )
        They would be starting a war? I don't know where you were the past ten years, but that was has started quite some time ago (like just about when search engines showed up)

      • Re:Release pagerank (Score:4, Interesting)

        by m50d ( 797211 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @04:08PM (#14719235) Homepage Journal
        EVERYTHING gets cracked. If Google released PageRank, then they'd be starting a "war" with the search-engine abusers. A never ending war.

        Like that doesn't happen now.

        Yeah, having it be "open-source" means that the community could constantly update it to prevent the latest abuses, but the people doing the abuse would just find new holes, since the source would be available.

        They would find holes anyway. The choice is between bad guys finding holes and good guys patching them, or just bad guys finding holes.

        Sometimes "security through obscurity" is the right thing to do.

        Not if you're relying on it. Because it isn't real security at all.

        • The choice is between bad guys finding holes and good guys patching them, or just bad guys finding holes.

          The choice is between 1) bad guys easily finding holes and many good guys patching them, or 2) bad guys finding holes with more difficulty and a few good guys patching them (or not, if the product is unmaintained).

          As I recall, John Carmack had a similar situation when he wanted to release the source for Quake* Exposing the source code for the (obscured) multiplayer network protocol made it much easi

          • As I recall, John Carmack had a similar situation when he wanted to release the source for Quake* Exposing the source code for the (obscured) multiplayer network protocol made it much easier to write cheats. It eventually happens anyway, but hiding the source code gives some measure of control over the problem.

            That is a good, but bad example. As far as I know, only a fraction of the people who use the internet play Quake 3 today. And this is a very small fraction even in gaming considering everyone else who
            • I hope one day that he will open up the network code

              I'm pretty sure he did. Or he might as well; there is a quake3 parser for ethereal. Not sure how good it is, and not sure whether it or the source came first.

          • The choice is between 1) bad guys easily finding holes and many good guys patching them, or 2) bad guys finding holes with more difficulty and a few good guys patching them (or not, if the product is unmaintained).

            True, but I don't think making it more difficult for the bad guys to find holes stops them to any great extent, especially in cases like this where they are directly making money from it.

      • A never ending war. Yeah, having it be "open-source" means that the community could constantly update it to prevent the latest abuses, but the people doing the abuse would just find new holes, since the source would be available.

        You mean like Wikipedia? As far as I can tell, Wiki works. Well sort of... Vandalism happens all the time, but its swiftly dealt with (most of the time).

        I think we are just faced with more eyes looking at source doing good and with a few eyes doing evil.

        A few eyes (and I mean few) d
      • What they should do is subtly leak that there's actually a backdoor in the pagerank system, say that including the number "42424242" in your web page somewhere instantly doubles your pagerank. Make it real and genuine as well, and better yet, release a press release saying "You should not use this backdoor!". Wait a little while until all the insidious users are exploiting this then ban everyone using it.

    • Re:Release pagerank (Score:2, Informative)

      by zopu ( 558866 )
      If you release how you do the ranking function, suddenly every web scrambler in the world screws up the rank

      PageRank ranking function:

      http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/page98pagerank.html [psu.edu]

      Details on the implementation of PageRank:

      http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/brin98anatomy.html [psu.edu]

      Both of these papers are extremely outdated, but the PageRank ranking function is by no means a secret.

    • Or, you could release it so others can learn how it works and perhaps come up with improvements or more sophisicated algorithms/systems that are rank scrambler proof.

      They may not be perfect, but the smart money says that the Google engineers are pretty good at what they do, and if they aren't confident that PageRank is capable of being both open and secured, I believe them. It would take a lot to convince me that some open source coder or two is going to do better.

      But that's not the issue. We aren't

    • Or, you could release it so others can learn how it works and perhaps come up with improvements or more sophisicated algorithms/systems that are rank scrambler proof.

      If you want to see some GPL code which computes the PageRank algorithm, try this [lbreyer.com].

      Google itself hasn't used pure PageRank in probably 5 years at least, they augment it in all sorts of ad-hoc ways, kind of like SpamAssassin is a mix of a lot of optional rules and scoring systems.

  • complete the quote! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > I don't want just... money. Money's not enough.

    What he means is that he wants power, prestige, and chicks!

    Seriously, what happens when money's not enough? You go for power (politics), and then you get caught in a scandal with some chicks, and it all comes crashing down. It's happened too many times.

    • I'm willing to give it a go, though. I suppose out of a sense of noble self-sacrifice that I have. Please start posting your cheques so I can start my campaign for world do^W^Wthe coming elections.

      I trust I can rely on your vote.

    • Seriously, what happens when money's not enough?

          T#i5 i5 w0T I'vE b3eN +RyIn6 o+ T31L y0U - u n33d h3RbViA6ra n0W!!1

  • SCO Sues Google (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This just in: The SCO Group has launched a lawsuit vs Google after reading on Slashdot that Google plans to follow the examples of IBM in open source. Says SCO CEO Darl McBride, "Clearly this shows that Google has donated confidential SCO code to Linux. Now with these two major companies causing such infractions, the price of Linux licenses has to be increased to $1398." This lawsuit has prompted one Pamela Jones to create a new site entitled Googlaw. SCO representatives have alerted us that they will b

  • Sponsorship doesn't imply stewardship (Score:4, Informative)

    by ortcutt ( 711694 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:39PM (#14718425)
    sponsor (verb, trans): provide funds for (a project or activity or the person carrying it out)
    Nope. Nothing about stewardship there.
    • Maybe you should look at more than one definition or more than one dictionary. The American Heritage Dictionary (on www.thefreedictionary.com) give these two definitions (among several): 1. One who assumes responsibility for another person or a group during a period of instruction, apprenticeship, or probation. 2. One who vouches for the suitability of a candidate for admission. Granted it's not software, but it certainly implies a responsibility on the part of the sponsor.
    • That's a mighty limited dictionary you have there.

      From dictionary.com:

      sponsor

      n.
      1. One who assumes responsibility for another person or a group during a period of instruction, apprenticeship, or probation.
      2. One who vouches for the suitability of a candidate for admission.
      3. A legislator who proposes and urges adoption of a bill.
      4. One who presents a candidate for baptism or confirmation; a godparent.
      5. One that finances a project or an event carried out by another person or group, especially a business ente

    • imply tr.v. implied, implying, implies

      1. To involve by logical necessity; entail: Life implies growth and death.

      2. To express or indicate indirectly: His tone implied disapproval. See Synonyms at suggest. See Usage Note at infer.

      Just because the definition does not use the word does not mean that the connotation [reference.com] of the word does not include it.

      • I don't see that it even implies it. It's a small matter, but DiBona had me worried that I didn't speak English as a native language. Well, I'm now convinced that the term used to imply some sort of assumption of responsibility since the old definitions seem to relate to Godparents and the like but it doesn't anymore. Sponsorship means money. It doesn't even imply that there is control over the receiver.
        • Sponsorship is usually defined as giving money to someone in order for them to provide something. Most definitions use the example of a sponsor for a television program: "The Simpsons, brought to you by Quik-E-Mart".

          In most cases, the money given by a sponsor is *not* without strings. For example, a sponsor will be associated with the content of the project. If The Simpsons said something about how horrible Squishees were, it is unlikely that Quick-E-Mart would continue to sponsor them. There is the

  • Open Source, Schmopen Schmource... (Score:4, Funny)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:53PM (#14718556)
    Tell him to post a new slashdot poll for old times sake.

    Hell, just tell ANYONE to post a new slashdot poll; that most-used-key-combo thing has been up there since LAST Valentine's Day...

  • hardware limitations (Score:4, Insightful)

    by slackaddict ( 950042 ) <(rmorgan) (at) (openaddict.com)> on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:54PM (#14718558) Homepage Journal
    FTA, he states that some of the software would be useless to release unless you have "more than a hundred" servers in a datacenter. That's really not that many boxes nowadays. Besides, I don't need more than a hundred physical machines when all I need is ten decent machines and VMWare or Xen to run ten virtual servers each.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @02:57PM (#14718597)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "I really want to get code out there, I don't want just... money. Money's not enough." -Chris BiBona

    Now in the record books... completely interprets the feelings of all open source programmers, and those who program for the fun of it.

  • I thought Page Rank was open source?? (Score:4, Funny)

    by filesiteguy ( 695431 ) <perfectreign@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:16PM (#14718781)
    Okay, I'm confused. I thought Page Rank was an OSS project.

    And then there are other things. We're never going to release PageRank [Google's trademark system for ranking web pages in its search index], we're not going to release things like that, because to release them would ruin them. If you release how you do the ranking function, suddenly every web scrambler in the world screws up the rank and Google search becomes useless. We don't want to do that.
    Now, if you recall, Google publishes EXACTLY how the Page Ranking works: http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html/ [google.com]

    It is all right there:

    As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank(TM), a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.
    Am I wrong?

  • Hypocritical? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Swamii ( 594522 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:18PM (#14718802) Homepage
    From the article,

    And then there are other things. We're never going to release PageRank [Google's trademark system for ranking web pages in its search index], we're not going to release things like that, because to release them would ruin them. If you release how you do the ranking function, suddenly every web scrambler in the world screws up the rank and Google search becomes useless. We don't want to do that.


    The very same argument could be used from Microsoft's point of view. We're never going to release Windows [Microsoft's trademark operating system], we're not going to release things like that, because to release them would ruin them. If you release how you do the operating system internals, suddenly every hacker in the world screws up the code and Windows becomes useless. We don't want to do that.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The very same argument could be used from Microsoft's point of view. We're never going to release Windows [Microsoft's trademark operating system], we're not going to release things like that, because to release them would ruin them. If you release how you do the operating system internals, suddenly every hacker in the world screws up the code and Windows becomes useless. We don't want to do that.

      So your comparing a search algorithm to that of a software layer that allows access to the devices on a generi
    • Ranking pages in search is all about trust. You hop from one trustworthy area to another hoping that good information breeds good information. The best scheme for trustworthy information right now is the collaborative pointing of a large group of trustworthy sources. There aren't schemes independent of pointing to decide, for example, if a certain page is semantically well-related to the execution of your query and provides accurate information in the domain you are interested in. Too much common-sense cont

    • Oh, for mod points!

      That is the stupidest comment I've seen in ages. Insightful? I don't think so.

      MS doesn't want to release Windows source for a lot of reasons; some are good, some are bad.

      Google doesn't want to release PageRank source because .... that would reveal all the details of how PageRank works. Then, all the SEO goons would get craftier at building pages specifically for getting to the top of the list, and destroy the usefulness of Google as a search engine.

      A large part of what mak

  • Google hasn't ever release any open source code ! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    See, that's the difference between Google and other companies with open source values. Google hasn't released ANY worthwhile open source code and just likes to talk about it.

  • What? (Score:3, Funny)

    by SnarfQuest ( 469614 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:42PM (#14719009)
    they haven't managed to break anything, they've done a lot of good work. We're not going to use that as a model for what we want to do,

    That doesn't sound promising.

  • GOOGLE NOT OPEN SOURCE FRIENDLY (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google is not open source friendly. They just pretend it to be.. They enjoy all the benefits of open source; they do like "Microsft is evil and they are the open source heroes, angels" but this is not the case.. I even find Microsoft more honest than Google.

    All their apps are closed source. They don't even make them cross platform by just using Qt libraries; they're programming only for Windows. They only care MONEY!

    What if Picasa were open source? Is it a very special program? No.. there should be no s

  • Not money, power. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cyno ( 85911 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @04:26PM (#14719383) Journal
    I don't want just... money. Money's not enough.

    Yeah, you want power. The power to control people's lives. Hundreds or thousands or millions of people's lives. Through propoganda and censorship. That's what you want.

    And how do you go about getting it? Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.

    Its all about trust, for me. Never about money or power. And I don't trust Google. They're too powerful to trust at this point, like IBM, a monopoly or a government. They would have to fully embrace the GPL or some other form of selfless act to be taken seriously. Free wireless is nice, but so are free cell phones.

    With regard to GNU software, I trust the code. The license makes that easy for me. I don't have to trust the project leads or copyright holders. They've already given up their power by using the license. But Google isn't like that. They like the money AND the power.
  • If you release how you do the ranking function, suddenly every web scrambler in the world screws up the rank and Google search becomes useless. We don't want to do that.

    So, if some competing company pays someone to get a job at Google, get the source for the PageRank algorithm, and leaks it onto the internet, then Google is basically toast?

    I'm not sure that's something I'd admit to in public...

    • The question is, would you want a company the size of Google, with the power, money, and talent at their fingertips to want to bring the hurt on you for doing something like that?

      They don't have to do anything illegal to make your life hell. Just redirecting search requests for your name could be damaging. And I'm sure they could come up with something far worse then that.

    • I think the point (though unsaid by chrisd) is that making PageRank truly open-source not be a good thing, for the stated reasons. If the code leaked once, it would be very much not good. However, if it was a one-time leak, Google could still change the algorithm a bit and keep it from being so easily exploited and so forth.
  • Both do a lot for OpenSource but not with the same intention. This might shed some light on their images and possibly have some adjusting.

    O. Wyss
  • The original page rank worked exactly like this:
    The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
    http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html [stanford.edu] [By: Brin and Page]

    Of course it has been modified over the years, but yeah, the basis of PageRank has been released already.
  • Dibona spoke on this topic at SCALE last week. Slides and audio will be up shortly. Keep an eye out on the SCALE website [socallinuxexpo.org]
  • I'm suprised that no one has taken advantage of the availability of the google search appliance to get insight into the detailed workings of the google backend
  • I'm glad to see that Google understands that they don't need to be 100% open-source or 100% commercial. Nor does it have to be 50-50. Whatever Google decides is there decision and is their own decision.

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