SFLC will love the 7th Circuit

[Chris DiBona]

Hi Philippe;

First off, the mirror where you can find rpms and source rpms can be
found at this link:

http://code.google.com/gsa.html

You were right, It was absurdly hard for a non-,er, me, to find, I'll
fix that very soon so it is easier to find, but as to the rest, you
complain about price, the availability of trial versions, build
quality, and other issues that I have no say on or opinion about. Nor
will I debate them as I wouldn't be able to in any substantive way.

As to the entire search appliance being open source I don't think
we've (the google we) ever asserted such a thing, and I know I didn't
do so myself, as it would be a mistake.

You seem awfully upset about this and I can't really see any good
reason why. Did you buy one and did it not work for you? Do you need
to be put in touch with thier support folks? I can help a little bit
there...

Chris

On Oct 15, 2007 1:50 PM, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Chris DiBona [mailto:cdibona at gmail.com] wrote:
> > Actually, you're mixing up earth (where the issue is that Richard
> > wants the imagery that we ourselves do not own) and the google search
> > appliance. I invite you to go mess with the mirror on code.google.com,
> > and not confuse the gplv3 and gplv2 wrt replacability.
>
> There was no confusion. What I said was a question (a set of questions in
> fact) about this fully proprietary Google box that Google does not want
> their customers to look into (that's why it does not want to give the source
> and not even any installable binary, or any details about how it is built,
> and what it contains; Google says that it contains only material built by
> Google, and that he owns all the rights on it). It remains a good question:
> which exclusive right is effectively transferred by the sale contract? If
> there's no such right, the sale is invalid. If it's a service contract, it
> must include an assistance as long as the service is provided...
>
> Now I was not speaking about the code.google.com community network that is
> used as a base for open-sourced and free projects. But effectively about the
> full proprietary GSA and Mini appliances sold by Google Enterprise (which
> implement documented API to the outside, but Google gives no detail about
> their internals, and no right to look for that information).
> i.e. http://www.google.fr/intl/us/enterprise/intranet_search.html
> (and look at the very expensive price for a simple PC in a rack, and that
> Google describes as "affordable", "cost effective"). If the data you want to
> index merits this price, then it is very precious, and these are good
> reasons for requesting details about how the data is used and protected.
> This is even more critical for the "Universal" versions of these appliances.
>
> These products also have no trial versions (you must contact Google to
> negociate it and sign a contract); you only have a limited 30-day refund
> policy after the sale for the Mini.
>
> Google says that it is not available as a software only product (because it
> would reduce the TCO, however the price of the integrated hardware is
> certainly ridiculous compared to the rest; the software part is sold with
> extremely large commercial margins (that go much above the cost of the
> included 2 years assistance, 1 year for the Mini)... The assistance is ONLY
> by email (no guaranteed delays and no security in emails, each additional
> year costs nearly two thirds of the initial price, no phone contact for the
> mini, supplement to pay to have phone support on GSA).
>
> Google says that the box runs a modified version of Linux (GPL-licenced),
> that it renamed "Google Linux":
> http://www.google.com/support/gsa/bin/answer.py?answer=15898&topic=-1
>
> And if you think that the GSA code is open-source (may be it was true) this
> is no longer the case (even the distribution mirror for just patches has
> been deleted, and there's nothing available on code.google.com for GSA). And
> don't expect you'll be able to locate it elsewhere on the net using the
> Google search website!
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
Google's Open Source program can be found at http://code.google.com
Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com