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Fuchsia is Google's not invented here syndrome expressed in operating system form. There's a pattern of behavior where nothing invented/controlled outside of Go

Fuchsia is Google's not invented here syndrome expressed in operating system form. There's a pattern of behavior where nothing invented/controlled outside of Google is ever good enough for Google. So, they fixed C/C++ by inventing Go. They fixed cross platform UIs by inventing Flutter. They've been trying to fix chat protocols in a weird time loop that results in a new chat product about every year, when Webkit became a success at Apple, they forked it and created Chrome. With each of those the (better) alternative could have been working with open source communities to improve things. And of course they often do. But their reflex is to internalize things and make them Google things. Their motive is very simple: control. Mostly they actually do a good job because they just have a lot of skilled people. Go is a nice language, people seem to like Flutter (even if I don't), Chrome is arguably the most popular browser by far, etc. So, from Google's perspective this probably is a proven strategy. With Linux vs Fuchsia, their motive is crystal clear. Linux is kind of high maintenance in the sense of cat herding its community in any kind of direction is somewhat of a challenge. That's Linus Torvald's job and he isn't a Googler and fiercely independent and hard to manage. Google soft forked years ago with Android and the Android kernel is way behind what happens in the Linux kernel and has lots of custom patches. Fuchsia is an attempt to break away from that and have something that is easier to deal with technically, without GPL and other IP issues, and something they control. It's the same reason Apple and Microsoft don't ship operating systems based on Linux (yet, MS came close a few times): they like having control. In my view the challenges with Fuchsia are actually non technical and related to Google's control over it. That is not going to sit well with OEMs that have already had to deal with Google's level of control over Android. Are the likes of Samsung, Huawei, etc. going to jump on the band wagon? I think that they won't be in a hurry to do that. I think that's one of the reasons why Google is taking their sweet time getting to market with this with a more serious product than the Nest stuff they did a while back. Maybe I'm wrong and the next Pixel phone is going to be Fuchsia based. Or maybe that will never happen.

rvz 5y ago
> Maybe I'm wrong and the next Pixel phone is going to be Fuchsia based. Or maybe that will never happen. I bet it will happen. I also bet during this decade and the next that at least one Pixel phone will be Fuchsia based and ChromeOS will also be Fuchsia based. Google's intentions with Fuchsia are absolutely clear.
tssva 5y ago
"Are the likes of Samsung, Huawei, etc. going to jump on the band wagon?" Samsung is already a fushia contributer, so they are to some degree considering jumping on board.
kllrnohj 5y ago
> Google soft forked years ago with Android and the Android kernel is way behind what happens in the Linux kernel and has lots of custom patches. That's not really true at all? Upstream finally took a lot of the stuff they objected to almost a decade ago (like wakelocks & binder), and since then Google has reduced the amount of forks not increased them (like contributing F_SEAL_FUTURE_WRITE to memfd to allow memfd to be a viable replacement for ashmem: https://lwn.net/Articles/768785/ https://lwn.net/Articles/768785/ ) And then the most recent biggest "downstream patches" for Linux where around the scheduler, and that's all been upstreamed, too (and again quite a while ago), in the form of EAS: https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-software/linux-kernel/energy-aware-scheduling https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-sof...
geodel 5y ago
> That is not going to sit well with OEMs that have already had to deal with Google's level of control over Android. Are the likes of Samsung, Huawei, etc. going to jump on the bandwagon? I think that they won't be in a hurry to do that. I think that's one of the reasons why Google is taking their sweet time It happened before also. At one point Samsung was suppose to smother every android native app with their versions and alongside develop new OS (Tizen). And in intervening years Samsung or others have not proven that they can create large, quality software projects and ecosystems. So Google really have to do no more than reduce staffing for Android if and when they like to promote Fuchsia over it. All these phone makers are not gonna pick up slack and start maintaining. Also the likes of Samsung are really vulnerable to low cost manufacturers from China. So challenging Google on low level technical layer as far as business goes is hardly wise. One can argue vendors can just fork whatever "last/latest" release of Android and go their path. This indeed can work for few years. But with Apple/Google marketing of new experiences and features only supported by new OS this will be tough. These small vendors can't hire top software engineers who are used to Google level salaries to help develop features which otherwise estranged partner would have done.

rvz 5y ago

> Maybe I'm wrong and the next Pixel phone is going to be Fuchsia based. Or maybe that will never happen. I bet it will happen. I also bet during this decade and the next that at least one Pixel phone will be Fuchsia based and ChromeOS will also be Fuchsia based. Google's intentions with Fuchsia are absolutely clear.

tssva 5y ago

"Are the likes of Samsung, Huawei, etc. going to jump on the band wagon?" Samsung is already a fushia contributer, so they are to some degree considering jumping on board.

kllrnohj 5y ago

> Google soft forked years ago with Android and the Android kernel is way behind what happens in the Linux kernel and has lots of custom patches. That's not really true at all? Upstream finally took a lot of the stuff they objected to almost a decade ago (like wakelocks & binder), and since then Google has reduced the amount of forks not increased them (like contributing F_SEAL_FUTURE_WRITE to memfd to allow memfd to be a viable replacement for ashmem: https://lwn.net/Articles/768785/ https://lwn.net/Articles/768785/ ) And then the most recent biggest "downstream patches" for Linux where around the scheduler, and that's all been upstreamed, too (and again quite a while ago), in the form of EAS: https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-software/linux-kernel/energy-aware-scheduling https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-sof...

geodel 5y ago

> That is not going to sit well with OEMs that have already had to deal with Google's level of control over Android. Are the likes of Samsung, Huawei, etc. going to jump on the bandwagon? I think that they won't be in a hurry to do that. I think that's one of the reasons why Google is taking their sweet time It happened before also. At one point Samsung was suppose to smother every android native app with their versions and alongside develop new OS (Tizen). And in intervening years Samsung or others have not proven that they can create large, quality software projects and ecosystems. So Google really have to do no more than reduce staffing for Android if and when they like to promote Fuchsia over it. All these phone makers are not gonna pick up slack and start maintaining. Also the likes of Samsung are really vulnerable to low cost manufacturers from China. So challenging Google on low level technical layer as far as business goes is hardly wise. One can argue vendors can just fork whatever "last/latest" release of Android and go their path. This indeed can work for few years. But with Apple/Google marketing of new experiences and features only supported by new OS this will be tough. These small vendors can't hire top software engineers who are used to Google level salaries to help develop features which otherwise estranged partner would have done.