Python in Peril - Please Help

Trademarks are a problem for free software, because there is a tension between a desire to encourage sharing of the software, and a need to ensure that people are not misled over what exactly that software is. For example, you don't want people distributing modified copies of your code claiming that it is your code, or that it is approved by you - in the worst cases, it might contain malware, for example.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Google Losing it?

Google matters for open source. First and foremost, it is an example of a multi-billion dollar global company that simply would not be possible without an underpinning of free software. Open source's customisability means that its engineers have been able to fine-tune Linux and other code to meet Google's very specific needs. That, and the fact that there is no licensing fee, has allowed the company to scale its operations to unprecedented levels – rumoured to be over a million servers.

On The H Open.

Wrestling with Google's Python in the Cloud

Here's Google App Engine, part of its cloud offering:

Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users.

You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization.

App Engine costs nothing to get started. Sign up for a free account, and you can develop and publish your application for the world to see, at no charge and with no obligation. A free account can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month.

During the preview release of Google App Engine, only free accounts are available. In the near future, you will be able to purchase additional computing resources.

Here's the fun bit:

Google App Engine applications are implemented using the Python programming language. The runtime environment includes the full Python language and most of the Python standard library.

Although Python is currently the only language supported by Google App Engine, we look forward to supporting more languages in the future.

A big boost for the open source Python, then - no surprise, given that its creator, Guido van Rossum, works for Google. But I wonder what languages it will support in the future?

Monty Python's Flying IDE

The last time I programmed was in Fortran, about 25 years ago. The machine I was using had 2 megabytes of memory - not RAM, but "core": it was an IBM 360, as I recall. I've often thought maybe I should learn a slightly more up-to-date language, and Python has always attracted me.

First, because of the name: I grew up on watching Monty Python when it first came out, and it has shaped my entire Weltanschauung; secondly, because I had the pleasure of interviewing Python's creator, Guido van Rossum, who is a thoroughly nice chap; and thirdly, because the consensus seems to be it's a fine language.

Perhaps I should add a fourth reason: the existence of Stani's Python Editor, which looks to be a splendid open source, cross-platform Python IDE, written, with neat recursiveness, in Python. (Via NewsForge.)

Google: Friend or Foe?

"Don't Be Evil" is the company motto: but is Google for us or against us?

I'm not talking about justifable concerns that it knows far too much about what interests us - both in terms of the searches we carry out and (if we use Gmail) the correspondence we send and receive. This is a larger issue, and relates to all the major online companies - Microsoft, Yahoo, even Amazon - that mediate and hence participate in much of our lives. What concerns me here is whether Google can be considered a friend of openness.

On the one hand, Google is quite simply the biggest open source company. Its fabled server farm consists of 10,000s/100,000s/1,000,000s (delete as applicable) of GNU/Linux boxes; this means that anyone searching with Google is a GNU/Linux user.

It has a growing list of code that it has open-sourced; it has sponsored budding hackers in its Summer of Code programme; and it keeps on acquiring key open source hackers like Guido van Rossum (inventor of Python) and Ben Goodger, (Firefox lead engineer).

On the other hand, Google's software is heavily weighted towards Microsoft Windows. Programs like Google Earth and Picasa are only available under Windows, and its latest, most ambitious foray, the Google Pack, is again only for Microsoft's operating system. This means that every time Google comes out with some really cool software, it is reinforcing Microsoft's hold on the desktop. Indeed, we are fast approaching the point where the absence of GNU/Linux versions of Google's programs are a major disincentive to adopt an open source desktop.

This dilemma is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, since Google clearly wants to serve the largest desktop market first, while drawing on the amazing price-performance of free software for its own computing platform.

But there is another area where it has the chance to play nice with openness, one that does not require it to come down definitively on one side or the other of the operating system world.

Another Windows-only product, Google Talk, is the subject of a lawsuit alleging patent infringement. However, closer examination of the two patents concerned, Patent Number 5,425,085 - "Least cost routing device for separate connection into phone line" - and Patent Number 5,519,769 - "Method and system for updating a call rating database", suggests that one of the best ways Google could show that it is a friend of both open source and proprietary software is by defending itself vigorously in the hope that the US Patent system might start to be applied as it was originally envisioned, to promote innovation, not as an easy way of extracting money from wealthy companies.

Update 1: Google has come out with a Mac version of Google Earth. It's a start.

Update 2: There are rumours about Google working on its own desktop GNU/Linux. Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it: it's a poor fit with their current portfolio, and the margins are terrible.

Update 3: Comfortingly, these rumours have now been scotched.