8 ms·

>open source platforms Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux, so that Google and its partners can release pr

by catern 9y ago

>open source platforms Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux, so that Google and its partners can release products to users that have proprietary modifications to the kernel, without giving those same users access to the source code of the kernel. That would of course be a disaster for user autonomy and freedom, but why should Google care about that... Edit: This isn't just about the license, but also about the structure of the code. Fuschia is based on a microkernel. "Microkernel" doesn't just mean "modular kernel"[1] it also means "run drivers and systems in a separate process with a separate executable". That imposes performance penalties, but it can enforce a better programming style... and it also allows low-quality proprietary vendor code to be isolated from the base system and not have to pass quality checks or open its source. [1] Linux is very modular despite being monolithic, and there have been academic operating systems like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language-based_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language-based_system which are extremely modular and well designed despite (or perhaps because of) operating entirely in ring 0. Microkernels of course require modularity; but modularity doesn't require microkernel. The key problem with having all your code linked into one executable, of course, is that it requires you to have all your code...

djsumdog 9y ago
Companies are embracing open source these days, but not the GPL. We see that with gcc and clang, or in the way MacOS uses older versions of tools just to avoid GPLv3: http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-... The OSS utopia pushed in the the 1990s, with tools like Gimp being one day comparable to Photoshop, never really happened.
- catern 9y ago
  OK, but that's irrelevant. Kernels are an entirely different class of thing. I'm fine with permissive licenses for higher-level software such as clang or GIMP. But I'm not looking forward to a world where I can't get the source code for a kernel that will actually run on real hardware. It's already painful to compile and run Android from source. Fuschia will make it just impossible.
  - DannyBee 9y ago
    "But I'm not looking forward to a world where I can't get the source code for a kernel that will actually run on real hardware. " You literally live in this world right now. "It's already painful to compile and run Android from source. Fuschia will make it just impossible." You can literally go download and compile the entire fuchsia kernel, right now. How is that "impossible"?
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
      "You can literally go and compile the entire kernel, right now." Android discussions started that way. Things changed after enough time and revenue with a huge gap between ASOP and Android experience. Their security fixes vs Apple are also now abysmal. Might be a hint at the future of Google's next OS.
      - DannyBee 9y ago
        "Things changed after enough time and revenue with a huge gap between ASOP and Android experience." No, things changed for other vendors and for other parts. You can, AFAIK, still happily compile Google's entire kernels. You are thinking of userspace.
        pritambaral 9y ago
        > still happily compile Google's entire kernels Google's, sure. Some vendors make it painful (and in some cases, even impossible) to compile kernels for their devices. Google is legally obligated to release kernels for their device. With Fuchsia, neither it nor any of the other hardware makers would be. Google might still continue to release their kernels — say, for developer contributions — but other vendors are quite likely to not do so.
        snvzz 9y ago
        >vendors won't release their kernels Vendors won't modify fuchsia or its microkernel (magenta). That's the point behind the driver APIs in fuchsia. This should allow Google to update the full system, kernel included, while leaving the vendor drivers, which run in user mode and will still work due to the API being still supported, alone. If Android is ported to fuchsia, that would solve the android update problem for good.
- geofft 9y ago
  Don't forget the difference between "free software" and "open source". Open source was, from day one, pushed as a tool of capitalism: big companies could make more money if they collaborated on common code with each other. The free software movement (whence the GPL) always operated on the idea that, in an ideal world, software wouldn't be copyrighted at all and everyone would just publish their source because that was the right thing to do. The open source movement (whence the MPL) merely argued that open source was the profitable thing to do. A lot of companies embracing open source have succeeded in building an OSS utopia for themselves internally, and selling software as a service to other people. There's an unprecedented number of people employed by big companies working on things that are nominally free software, but it's free software to do things like large-scale container management, not photo editing. (The free software folks, to be fair, did see this happening and responded with the AGPL, but that strategy seems to have had about zero effect.) And even Photoshop has realized that switching to a billing model that more closely resembles SaaS than traditional proprietary software is more profitable. But a better comparison is something like Thunderbird vs. Outlook or LibreOffice vs. MS Office: those fights have ended up with both participants losing out to Gmail/Outlook 365/etc. and Google Docs/Office 365/etc., which are free-of-charge, high-quality, and even more non-free than proprietary software that in theory at least you could disassemble.
DannyBee 9y ago
"Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux," Certainly why? I know, in fact, this is pretty much a non-consideration, so i'm really curious what makes you believe it is. In fact, the fuchsia kernel is completely open source, so ... If you were to bug the SFLC/others, you'd see Google is, in fact, quite happy releasing kernel changes, and is pretty much one of the only companies that has either pushed vendors to open source drivers, or, in a number of cases, rewritten proprietary android drivers as open source just so it can release them! However, regardless, even assuming you were right, you end up having to put together a compliance release either way, and it's not like the kernel part of that compliance release is any more difficult than the other software. "That would of course be a disaster for user autonomy and freedom, but why should Google care about that..." This will be shocking, but the kernel people working on fuchsia do, in fact, care about that! If they didn't, they wouldn't have open sourced everything, including the kernel. I'm honestly having a ton of trouble following your logic here. They want to be able to keep stuff proprietary, but have open sourced it since day 1. They want vendors to be able to release proprietary drivers, but those vendors can and already do so for linux? What exactly do you think is different and horrible?
- catern 9y ago
  Then why is it not licensed under the GPL, like Linux?
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    I'll ask a related question: Why license it under the GPL? What does Google gain? (and what do you gain)
    - oconnor0 9y ago
      You gain the knowledge that a device running Fuchsia is running code that's publicly available.
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
bitmapbrother 9y ago
>Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux, so that Google and its partners can release products to users that have proprietary modifications to the kernel, without giving those same users access to the source code of the kernel. That would of course be a disaster for user autonomy and freedom, but why should Google care about that... I've heard this argument before without any factual evidence to back it up. Google could have easily used the FreeBSD kernel and not had to deal with the GPL if they had wanted to.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Google didn't invent Android though, they bought it. Fast time to market probably trumped all other concerns at the time. This project probably has a less aggressive timeline.
  - bitmapbrother 9y ago
    I'm not sure what that has to do with it. Apple didn't invent OSX/MacOS either, they bought it from NeXT and then used that base to build iOS. Google bought Android in 2005 so they had plenty of time to switch out kernels if licensing concerns were really a factor for them.
    - CountSessine 9y ago
      Would they? Especially given that they'd already heavily modified their fork to meet their specific needs with ashmem, binder, and logcat? And the fact that they pretty much completely changed direction with user-space development in 2007 to meet the iPhone and not BB? I seriously doubt they had time to switch to a more user-hostile kernel, given what was already in place. Especially given that they had their hands full programming a user-hostile libc and a user-hostile driver framework that would help hardware vendors with their user-hostile driver-blobs.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
Nomentatus 9y ago
GPL implicit patent grab, Google thus prefers more open licenses than GPL.

by catern 9y ago

djsumdog 9y ago

Companies are embracing open source these days, but not the GPL. We see that with gcc and clang, or in the way MacOS uses older versions of tools just to avoid GPLv3: http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-... The OSS utopia pushed in the the 1990s, with tools like Gimp being one day comparable to Photoshop, never really happened.

catern 9y ago
OK, but that's irrelevant. Kernels are an entirely different class of thing. I'm fine with permissive licenses for higher-level software such as clang or GIMP. But I'm not looking forward to a world where I can't get the source code for a kernel that will actually run on real hardware. It's already painful to compile and run Android from source. Fuschia will make it just impossible.
- DannyBee 9y ago
  "But I'm not looking forward to a world where I can't get the source code for a kernel that will actually run on real hardware. " You literally live in this world right now. "It's already painful to compile and run Android from source. Fuschia will make it just impossible." You can literally go download and compile the entire fuchsia kernel, right now. How is that "impossible"?
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    "You can literally go and compile the entire kernel, right now." Android discussions started that way. Things changed after enough time and revenue with a huge gap between ASOP and Android experience. Their security fixes vs Apple are also now abysmal. Might be a hint at the future of Google's next OS.
    - DannyBee 9y ago
      "Things changed after enough time and revenue with a huge gap between ASOP and Android experience." No, things changed for other vendors and for other parts. You can, AFAIK, still happily compile Google's entire kernels. You are thinking of userspace.
      - pritambaral 9y ago
        > still happily compile Google's entire kernels Google's, sure. Some vendors make it painful (and in some cases, even impossible) to compile kernels for their devices. Google is legally obligated to release kernels for their device. With Fuchsia, neither it nor any of the other hardware makers would be. Google might still continue to release their kernels — say, for developer contributions — but other vendors are quite likely to not do so.
        snvzz 9y ago
        >vendors won't release their kernels Vendors won't modify fuchsia or its microkernel (magenta). That's the point behind the driver APIs in fuchsia. This should allow Google to update the full system, kernel included, while leaving the vendor drivers, which run in user mode and will still work due to the API being still supported, alone. If Android is ported to fuchsia, that would solve the android update problem for good.
geofft 9y ago
Don't forget the difference between "free software" and "open source". Open source was, from day one, pushed as a tool of capitalism: big companies could make more money if they collaborated on common code with each other. The free software movement (whence the GPL) always operated on the idea that, in an ideal world, software wouldn't be copyrighted at all and everyone would just publish their source because that was the right thing to do. The open source movement (whence the MPL) merely argued that open source was the profitable thing to do. A lot of companies embracing open source have succeeded in building an OSS utopia for themselves internally, and selling software as a service to other people. There's an unprecedented number of people employed by big companies working on things that are nominally free software, but it's free software to do things like large-scale container management, not photo editing. (The free software folks, to be fair, did see this happening and responded with the AGPL, but that strategy seems to have had about zero effect.) And even Photoshop has realized that switching to a billing model that more closely resembles SaaS than traditional proprietary software is more profitable. But a better comparison is something like Thunderbird vs. Outlook or LibreOffice vs. MS Office: those fights have ended up with both participants losing out to Gmail/Outlook 365/etc. and Google Docs/Office 365/etc., which are free-of-charge, high-quality, and even more non-free than proprietary software that in theory at least you could disassemble.

DannyBee 9y ago

"Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux," Certainly why? I know, in fact, this is pretty much a non-consideration, so i'm really curious what makes you believe it is. In fact, the fuchsia kernel is completely open source, so ... If you were to bug the SFLC/others, you'd see Google is, in fact, quite happy releasing kernel changes, and is pretty much one of the only companies that has either pushed vendors to open source drivers, or, in a number of cases, rewritten proprietary android drivers as open source just so it can release them! However, regardless, even assuming you were right, you end up having to put together a compliance release either way, and it's not like the kernel part of that compliance release is any more difficult than the other software. "That would of course be a disaster for user autonomy and freedom, but why should Google care about that..." This will be shocking, but the kernel people working on fuchsia do, in fact, care about that! If they didn't, they wouldn't have open sourced everything, including the kernel. I'm honestly having a ton of trouble following your logic here. They want to be able to keep stuff proprietary, but have open sourced it since day 1. They want vendors to be able to release proprietary drivers, but those vendors can and already do so for linux? What exactly do you think is different and horrible?

catern 9y ago
Then why is it not licensed under the GPL, like Linux?
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  I'll ask a related question: Why license it under the GPL? What does Google gain? (and what do you gain)
  - oconnor0 9y ago
    You gain the knowledge that a device running Fuchsia is running code that's publicly available.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago

bitmapbrother 9y ago

>Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux, so that Google and its partners can release products to users that have proprietary modifications to the kernel, without giving those same users access to the source code of the kernel. That would of course be a disaster for user autonomy and freedom, but why should Google care about that... I've heard this argument before without any factual evidence to back it up. Google could have easily used the FreeBSD kernel and not had to deal with the GPL if they had wanted to.

tyingq 9y ago
Google didn't invent Android though, they bought it. Fast time to market probably trumped all other concerns at the time. This project probably has a less aggressive timeline.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  I'm not sure what that has to do with it. Apple didn't invent OSX/MacOS either, they bought it from NeXT and then used that base to build iOS. Google bought Android in 2005 so they had plenty of time to switch out kernels if licensing concerns were really a factor for them.
  - CountSessine 9y ago
    Would they? Especially given that they'd already heavily modified their fork to meet their specific needs with ashmem, binder, and logcat? And the fact that they pretty much completely changed direction with user-space development in 2007 to meet the iPhone and not BB? I seriously doubt they had time to switch to a more user-hostile kernel, given what was already in place. Especially given that they had their hands full programming a user-hostile libc and a user-hostile driver framework that would help hardware vendors with their user-hostile driver-blobs.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

Nomentatus 9y ago

GPL implicit patent grab, Google thus prefers more open licenses than GPL.