Google Calls On Companies To Devote More Engineers To Upstream Linux, Toolchains

[Vistaus]

Oh! The irony is great here!

Why not they invest first and set a good example for the rest instead wasting efforts on soon-to-fail experiments such as FuchsiaOS?

Google, please do your homework before talking to others...

They have already deployed Fuchsia to almost all customers of their popular Nest devices, so that's millions of devices already running it and many more will receive it over the coming months. And Samsung has recently started to contribute a lot to Fuchsia. So failure? I don't think so.

https://9to5google.com/2021/05/25/go...a-os-nest-hub/
https://9to5google.com/2021/05/12/sa...oogle-fuchsia/

[tomas]

They have already deployed Fuchsia to almost all customers of their popular Nest devices, so that's millions of devices already running it. And Samsung has recently started to contribute a lot to Fuchsia. So failure? I don't think so.

https://www.androidcentral.com/nest-secure-being-discontinued-and-people-are-rightfully-losing-their-minds

[arQon]

I really don’t think that Google can be accused of not investing enough in Open Source development…

WTF?! They absolutely not only "can" be, but should be, because they aren't, and that's exactly what this is about in the first place.

Alphabet is a trillion-dollar business founded almost entirely on Linux, and its main "contribution" so far has been to Tivo-ize Android *specifically to avoid Open Source*. Alphabet could hire those "missing" 100 devs today, have the cost of it not even show up on their balance sheet, and they *still* wouldn't have given back even a fraction of what they've gained.

I'm not saying there aren't plenty of other companies that could also do a lot more to start pulling their weight, but you've fallen for the exact "whataboutism" that this stunt was intended to cause.

[Vistaus]

https://www.androidcentral.com/nest-...ng-their-minds

https://9to5google.com/2021/05/25/go...a-os-nest-hub/

https://9to5google.com/2021/05/12/samsung-contributing-f2fs-google-fuchsia/

[tomas]

Well, one can only hope that Fuchsia fails one way or the other in the long run. Unless you are a fan of binary blobs for drivers and open source only by name, not in spirit. Fuchsia will always be controlled by Google one way or another, even if other companies contribute. It will be like Android, open source and in theory independent but in reality controlled by Google.
The only thing that could change my mind about Fuchsia would be if Google let go of control and made it a completely independent project separated from the company.
And If they enforced open source for the drivers. Otherwise I'm not interested.

[chocolate]

Alphabet is a trillion-dollar business founded almost entirely on Linux, and its main "contribution" so far has been to Tivo-ize Android *specifically to avoid Open Source*.

+1, but a minor nitpick: should be "to avoid Free Software". Open Source, per OSI, is what Google is all about. Unidirectional open source, which is pretty much the only model of open source that lets such movement live to the point that they are symbiotic, demands a permissive license that lets OEMs ship everything as proprietary to the end user, disregarding Free Software's pareto-efficiency between all parties. Android in a nutshell.
Linux, the kernel, is the last nuisance to get rid of for Google to achieve 100% permissive, unidirectional open source, which for the end user means 100% proprietary garbage.

[Charlie68]

People: OMG Huawei bad, Chinese company, evil, worst, spyware! Use American and European company products only!

Some American and European companies: We will use this thing to our benefit, not contribute back upstream, oh and we'll also be flippant about following GPL license. Oh and we will also ship spyware in our devices.

I didn't understand what you mean, that's the list I found, which is about 2020 and they are the biggest contributors to the Linux kernel that year. Who doesn't like Google, Huawei, etc. don't use their products, it has nothing to do with their contribution to the kernel.

[abu_shawarib]

One can only wonder if Linux is understaffed, what chance do other much smaller FOSS projects have

[smitty3268]

It's just that some people hate on Huawei purely for being Chinese, while they do make good contributions to the Linux kernel, unlike some other companies that are not Chinese.

Pointing out the hypocrisy and blind hatred of Chinese people and their work, instead of hating only the evil people like the Chinese government and military.

People who hate Huawei do so because they believe they are one and the same as the Chinese government and military.

You can argue that's incorrect, as they have, but it's not just hatred because they happen to be Chinese. It's the connection to the government there which is the issue people have.