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ChristianKl comments on Google vs Wikipedia, for-profit vs not-for-profit - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (42)
At the same time a lot of for-profit companies died away instead of growing. Just because Google and Amazon grow doesn't mean that Friendster does as well.
Treating Wikipedia and the government the same fundamental mistakes how Wikipedia works. Governments are bureaucratic Wikipedia wasn't in the days when it was growing. Non-profit and for-profit are not good categories. Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Networks is much better.
The present system has both Wikipedia and Google. It has plurality. It's good to have different organisation with different incentive system in the same society.
Google has very public API that allow people to construct apps that connect to various Google services. The idea, that Google doesn't, mistakes a lot of what Google is about.
Google also produces the Android operating system for smart phones. Open source.
An organisation that has to protect privacy of it's users should not simply hand out all information that an outside party, that calls themselves a scientist, requests. Google is right for encryting data that travels between their data centers to prevent the NSA from scooping. It should not simply hand out all data.
Google is slowly moving as much code as possible from the open source android to the closed source Google Play Services api. They also have agreements with manufacturers that make it very hard to produce non-google androids. The kindle and nook still manage to exist, though.
What are you talking about exactly? The latest deal with Samsung to put less of their own bloatware into android? I think it's still pretty straightforward to install CyanogenMod if you want to do so.
But to come back to the topic at hand, Google is a company who wants to make money. When releasing something as open source interferes with that mission they won't release something as open source. On the other hand there are plenty of cases where Google supports Open Source.
For the for-profit vs. non-profit discussion even RedHat is a for-profit company.
Device manufacturers that ship certain google apps and code are not generally allowed to ship competitor apps.
This article goes into some detail, the bit about the OHA is on page 3, if I recall correctly.
I think this is one of the concerns that the author of the original post is referring to.
No, the orginal post pretends that for profit company don't release stuff into the public domain.
The idea that nonprofits simply give all there resources into the public domain is without basis. The Americal Chemical Association which happens to be a non-for-profit sued Wikipedia for violating it's intellectual property by integrating CAS numbers information about chemicals into Wikipedia.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neither-microsoft-nokia-nor-anyone-else-should-fork-android-its-unforkable/
One example that the second article makes is that features like in app purchases are bad to be behind closed source.
In-app purchases inherently need specific architecture and trust in an institution that facilitates payment. With Android you are free to switch over to another system that facillitates payment.
A company like Ripple is free to compete with Google's solution and provide developers an alternative. The same is not true with the iPhone where third party payment processors are outlawed.