Here are Chrome OS’s sins, laid out one-by-one:
1. Chrome OS will include proprietary technologies. Linux still lacks a high-quality open source Flash plugin. Practically the only choice for 100% site compatibility is to use Adobe’s proprietary plugin, so Chrome OS will need to license and include it out of the box…
Then there are multimedia codecs. People are gonna want to play their tunes and watch their movies…Google will have to license the patents covering them. This will offend the open source community, who see the software patenting system as broken and corrupt…
2. Chrome OS was created to take away your privacy. Chrome OS exists to give Google access to your data. All of it. Chrome OS might be free of charge but you’ll pay for it with your online soul.
3. Google is big, ergo Google is evil. Open source people are suspicious of corporations, especially ones that are big. I have open source friends who won’t even shop at major supermarket chains, simply because of their size.
4. Chrome OS could destroy desktop Linux…The only people who were probably tight-lipped at the announcement of Chrome OS were Canonical, the guys behind Ubuntu. Chrome OS could destroy Ubuntu, or at the very least kill dead its plans for world domination.
Ubuntu was always aimed at the common man, and Canonical has been extremely successful at promoting this message. Chrome OS has the potential to make Ubuntu entirely redundant. Some people will stick with it, of course, but Chrome OS is aimed at exactly the same type of general user as Ubuntu. The two will compete, and Chrome OS will win because Google has virtually infinite resources and brainpower compared to Canonical.
5. Chrome OS is not a community Linux…The way it will work is that Google makes Chrome OS available, and you can make use of it if you wish. They might invite community feedback, and perhaps even source code patches, but they are in charge. You get what they give you…
Of course, none of this matters. Chrome OS isn’t aimed at Linux fanatics. It’s aimed at the ordinary user. Who cares what the fanatics think?
But it does matter. A lot. Chrome OS is a test of whether open source can actually live-up to its declaration of freedom. Most open source licenses are about freedom, provided certain caveats are followed.
The Linux community is a religious community. They have saints and prophets. And the same range of excuses for not delivering on the Promised Land.
Google is ready and willing to be the Catholic Church.
Every single point in this article is pure nonsense. And you wonder why media is dying….
Apparently the open source community is as sectarian, individualistic and just plain contrarian as the leftist community. (I understand there’s some overlap…) All this speculation is completely baseless at the moment anyway. It will be months before we have any idea what Chrome OS will be like. There are so many possibilities. It could be great and achieve a 20% market share in two years in Europe, 15% in the U.S., with much higher figures for netbooks. Or, it could end up like “just another Linux distro” and fight with all the other distros for a few percentage points. (I’m hoping for the former.)
I love how Ridin the Short Bus [in #5] -completely- misses what Luc was saying [in #3].
Back to the original item, the privacy one makes me laugh, e.g. “Chrome OS might be free of charge but you’ll pay for it with your online soul.”
They can have my online soul, for all the good it will do them. They can’t make me buy things I don’t want/need. They can’t watch my online activities any more than Comcast and/or Verizon already do…
Comcast knows as much about my “private” online soul – at home – as the corporate proxy server knows about my “public” online soul, at work.
I have no illusion of privacy when I go online.
I’m curious to see how this ramps-up.
Google says they intend to start with netbooks… so they shouldn’t be supporting any “legacy” hardware, initially.
If it stays mainly as a cheap, fast way to get online – and everything else is secondary – I can’t see the new OS being much of a threat to desktop Linux… unless a LOT of desktop Linux users suddenly realize that all they really need is a cheap, fast way to get online. 🙂
Me, again.
“Practically the only choice for 100% site compatibility is to use Adobe’s proprietary plugin, so Chrome OS will need to license and include it out of the box…”
Unless they “pull an Apple” and don’t support Flash, like the iPhone doesn’t.
Isn’t that part of the attraction of HTML 5? Using regular video instead of having to use things like Flash/Silverlight?
Windows became dominant because it was supported by the hackers decades ago. Today the Apple guy in the commercial stands alone, while the poor MS slob has all these other people to make it work.
And that is just why the Apple guy is standing alone. It is a one person system, selling only his software.
Microsoft has since windows given the hacker access to it’s operating system, for free.. http://www.microsoft.com/express/
MS is what an open system looks like, and will be for sometime.
Luc’s right – Microsoft has been squandering it’s size/power advantage for years by coming-up with crap OSs. Size and power (financial resources) does NOT necessarily mean a good product!
#37 Don Quixote
Have you ever tried to use VS Express? It’s a gutless wonder. VS is horrendous unless you buy ReSharper. Thank God for JetBrains.
#38: Yes, Microsoft has been squandering size/power advantage for years with substandard quality — but still is the dominating company, with massive headway. Maybe I was too sarcastic and didn’t make myself clear.
In other words: yes, Google may as well trump Canonical quite easily even if Chrome sucks.
When Google does not use the linux or the Microsoft kernel( and yes microsoft runs on a kernel) then you can represent it as a OS. I really didnt realize how many undereducated writers there was today lol
Best Regards