Google Ventures invests in Europe

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janl
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2010 10:26 pm

Google Ventures invests in Europe

Post by janl »

http://googleblog.blogspot.cz/2014/07/g ... urope.html - 'To help support the next generation of European entrepreneurs, today Google Ventures is launching a new venture fund, with initial funding of $100 million. Our goal is simple: we want to invest in the best ideas from the best European entrepreneurs, and help them bring those ideas to life.' PR people should try to cantact them. Though we were not accepted in GSoC, so it will be perhaps vain.
danunder
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 4:51 am

Re: Google Ventures invests in Europe

Post by danunder »

Google is a cancer thats infests and takes over everything they touch. [Take a look at what has happened to mozilla since they became involved with GSOC] They are not a benevolent organisation out to help the world, they are a giant corporation out to control it. Their agenda is profit and they will manipulate any and all in their quest for more. Let me translate corpoate-speak to truth:

'To help exploit the next generation of European entrepreneurs, today Google Vultures is launching a new vulture fund, with initial bribes of $100 million. Our goal is simple: we want to steal the best ideas from the best European entrepreneurs, and pass off those ideas as our own.'

If reactOS is truly to remain a an open, community based operating system, stay away from them completely.
Webunny
Posts: 1201
Joined: Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:30 pm

Re: Google Ventures invests in Europe

Post by Webunny »

danunder wrote:Google is a cancer thats infests and takes over everything they touch. [Take a look at what has happened to mozilla since they became involved with GSOC] They are not a benevolent organisation out to help the world, they are a giant corporation out to control it. Their agenda is profit and they will manipulate any and all in their quest for more. Let me translate corpoate-speak to truth:

'To help exploit the next generation of European entrepreneurs, today Google Vultures is launching a new vulture fund, with initial bribes of $100 million. Our goal is simple: we want to steal the best ideas from the best European entrepreneurs, and pass off those ideas as our own.'

If reactOS is truly to remain a an open, community based operating system, stay away from them completely.
ALL companies' want to rule (marketshare) and all seek profit. That's not extra-ordinary, on the contrary, it's what is to be expected. It's a companies' job.

And of all big corporations, Google is a reasonably benevolent one. While it searches control and profit, as all do, they also give something worthwhile back.

In any case, we're under the GPL, so they can't 'take us over'. In another thread, me and purplegirl have been discussion exactly the same things, but came to another conclusion than you. In fact, I think we should get as much from whatever source, financially and otherwise, and use it to further our goals. That other organisations and companies have their own agenda may be, but that doesn't mean it can't be mutually beneficial. Mind you: I'm not saying Google is a saint, even if they claim the 'do no evil', far from it. But having different agenda's or pursuits isn't problematic on itself. As an under-manned and undersourced open source project, you would have to be quite foolish NOT to accept a GSOC. (Nobody is forcing you to apply for it in the first place, btw.)
PurpleGurl
Posts: 1790
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2009 5:11 am
Location: USA

Re: Google Ventures invests in Europe

Post by PurpleGurl »

Actually, I see it both ways. I my feelings about Google and the fear they might be able to somehow compromise us, though I am not clear how. It might be good to share the possible ways people might try to sabotage or take over open source projects.

1. Code poisoning. You don't want to take on dirty developers or fall for a setup that involves introducing dirty code. Actually, open source projects can be taken over through the court system. A project was forced to give all rights to Microsoft because they used the FAT32 file system without paying royalties.

2. Divide and conquer. If you plant people to stir up trouble, that can harm morale, and if that continues, everyone might give up.

3. Code diversion, code fragmentation or incrementalism. Microsoft has been known to do this. They take an open source standard and include it. Nobody has a problem with that. They use their own code to implement a public standard. Then over time, they make "upgrades," additions, or other changes. They are gradual, but over time, it amounts to major changes. So those who created the standard no longer have a following since a language or standard no longer works on their implementation (like Java not working under Java). At least that was resolved in court and Microsoft agreed not to bundle their own implementation.
Last edited by PurpleGurl on Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mrugiero
Posts: 482
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 9:12 am

Re: Google Ventures invests in Europe

Post by mrugiero »

You should first ask yourselves what does Google get by sabotaging ReactOS. As a company, they'll only do what they think will benefit them. ReactOS doesn't really compete with Google in any significant way, as ReactOS is aimed to desktops, while that's a fading market in Google's eyes (they evidently see lightweight, cheap thin-clients as the closest to a desktop computer in the mainstream, and mobile as the major player, and that's evidenced by the fact they aim their OSes to those kind of hosts).
So, yeah, they do want control and profit, but probably don't care about us. They are more likely to care about the browser in the desktop.
Webunny
Posts: 1201
Joined: Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:30 pm

Re: Google Ventures invests in Europe

Post by Webunny »

PurpleGurl wrote:Actually, I see it both ways. I my feelings about Google and the fear they might be able to somehow compromise us, though I am not clear how. It might be good to share the possible ways people might try to sabotage or take over open source projects.

1. Code poisoning. You don't want to take on dirty developers or fall for a setup that involves introducing dirty code. Actually, open source projects can be taken over through the court system. A project was forced to give all rights to Microsoft because they used the FAT32 file system without paying royalties.

2. Divide and conquer. If you plant people to stir up trouble, that can harm morale, and if that continues, everyone might give up.

3. Code diversion, code fragmentation or incrementalism. Microsoft has been known to do this. They take an open source standard and include it. Nobody has a problem with that. They use their own code to implement a public standard. Then over time, they make "upgrades," additions, or other changes. They are gradual, but over time, it amounts to major changes. So those who created the standard no longer have a following since a language or standard no longer works on their implementation (like Java not working under Java). At least that was resolved in court and Microsoft agreed not to bundle their own implementation.
Frankly, that all seems a bit paranoia to me.

1)Dirty developers introducing dirty code? Why would they even bother? Why would they risk to be found out, since it is open source? The whole point of their GSOC is to help open source; there is no benefit for them to spend money and time on things, only to try to subvert those projects. That's unrealistically Machiavellian. Furthermore, regular coders can make and put in dirty code too, so you have to keep quality control whatever is the case.

2)Conquer what, exactly? It's open source, it can't be 'conquered' in an economical way. You can try to destroy the development, yes, but again: what would be the point? Certainly from Googles' perspective. IF you really had to be wary of an organisation, it would be MS. They're the only ones who stand to lose if ROS ever became a really popular replacement for their OS. But by then it might be all in the clouds and they provide just services, or something. No telling the future. But even in the worst case, you don't need to organise a GSOC for it. You could place some people here and there, and try to stir up people any time of the day. Success would be far from certain, and the impact most likely very small, especially coding-wise, since the devs nowadays use the meritocracy approach (which is a good thing in regard to the code). As you may have noted, they don't really care about what is said in the forum, and they don't care what some newby coder would say until he has proven himself neither.

3)That seems a variant on your first point. MS can take BSD licensed code and open standards and try to 'convert' that, but they can't take GPL'ed code and make it their own.
PurpleGurl
Posts: 1790
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2009 5:11 am
Location: USA

Re: Google Ventures invests in Europe

Post by PurpleGurl »

I branched out when I mentioned the 3 points. I listed how ANY people could do it and was not implying anything about Google. It was about being vigilant, not paranoid. And for the record, Webunny's arguments are the same ones I made elsewhere about the very thing. One person told me they were scared of ROS since "Google has their hands on it and thus owns/controls a portion of it." I said pretty much what Webunny is saying here, and the poster gave me a wall of links to check out, none exactly germane to the topic, but all eye-openers. That poster said he uses Iron instead of Chrome and berated me for using Chrome and went on about NSA backdoors and so on. To me, that was a bunch of paranoia, and I am more concerned with the race riots we are having in the US, as that is an actual current danger, and I'm concerned with how the cops were actively targeting the reporters. Conspiracy or not, that actually happened if the reports are true and to be believed. But saying that Google wants to take over ROS does sound like one of those baseless conspiracy claims. (I'd rather not discuss the Ferguson riots or the cops, and I only mentioned as a side point as an example of something that is real and should be worried about, since it is an actual attack on civil rights and free speech.)

The first and third points are different. The first is about the code itself, whereas the third is about hijacking protocols or standards. Open source covers the code, not the standards, if I am not mistaken, though a court might have just ruled otherwise. So if MS wants to write their own Java interpreter from scratch (and they did in Windows 9x), they theoretically could if they wrote their own code. Google recently did that, but made the innovation of it being a compiler rather than an interpreter and doing more strict garbage cleanup to reduce leaks. But the problem in the Microsoft example was that not only did they have their own implementation, they let standards creep in, thus making code for Sun Java incompatible with the MSJVM, and since coders were encouraged to do things the wrong way, it stole the market share. In the case of ROS, my 3rd point in the previous post does not apply. That only harms those who create whatever standards, and we are only conforming, not creating. The point of mentioning was for completion.
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