You might want to improve your knowledge on the Google Summer of Code events, they are not at all about "coding for Google's proprietary API". You can see the list of accepted projects for this year here to get an overview: https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/...Speed=noscript
There are indeed a few projects involving Android, but the rest is about improving non-Google open source projects, for example Mesa, OpenBSD, GNOME, ... .
Or in other words: Without the GSoC many projects in daily use on your machine would not be in the tate they are now.

Please don't insert words in my mouth never spoken to twist the message. It leads nowhere.
My comments were general, only to support astrogeek's idea. The ostentatious example with raping and swindling was chosen to help in cases when imagination is somehow lacking.
I've never expressed my attitude to Google Inc., nor I'm unhappy with. I can only mention this corporation does several acts which can be classified at the broader unbiased consensus as `evil'. Like non-transparent people snooping and private data collection, manipulation with pages ranking, censorship, tax avoidance, cooperation with other subjects misusing innocent people or ignoring their rights. For some examples see article on Wikipedia. How happy Page or Brin would be when I'd let monitor their personal lives, their families and sold it to some tabloid newspaper to get some profit ? Or to some state agency reporting possible law breaking committed in their privacy to erase some of my criminal record ?
Your relying on law to make decisions is a bit naive, as it is mostly written not in a common concern and will but as a result of interests of limited group of powerful people to control and keep population in an expected way.

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I take that to mean that you have no respect for my reply, or my person... so be it.

But this thread is not all about you (or me), so for the benefit and consideration of others interested in the original topic, "Don't be Google" I would like to add a few comments and specifically ask you a few questions (in all seriousness).

First, let me summarize the point that I tried carefully to make for the benefit of those who think there was no point...

1. I stated a basis for the applicability of a principle to follow, a scope if you will. That basis is the concept that from the moment of our birth we all share an inherent "equality" in the sense that no human is inherently superior to, or inferior to any other human, even those who work for Google. I state that as a given.

2. I then stated a principle that self evidently maintains an equillibrium and produces the widest range of agreed "good" results in relationships among such inherently equal beings. The principle was this: doing to others what we would want done to us, and refraining from doing that which we would not appreciate if done to ourselves.

I might have stated that principle as a symmetric, self balancing algebraic expression, or as the transfer function within a stable feedback loop, or as a programming algorithm, or used language from any number of other philosophical sources, and our conversation would surely have taken a different path.

But in the spirit of Albert Einstein ("Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler"), Doug McIlroy and others, I chose to use the simplest form of that idea which I thought would be familiar to the greatest number of readers so as not to have to explain the "equation" at length... and still, here we are... Apparently my choice of expression clashed with one of your own deep prejudices.

So, I would ask you to overcome your obvious prejudice against what you (certainly incorrectly) presume to be my motives, and just consider the meaning of the words from points 1. and 2. as stated above. Then in as simple of terms as you can, please provide your own best answers to my simple questions, specifically as it explains why the people at Google are allowed to do things which the rest of us are prohibited from doing:

These are serious questions, I would appreciate a serious reply.

That is a rather arrogant, dismissive, dis-respectful, even childish statement to make to someone that you do not know, and whose standards you know nothing about, with regard to carefully expressed principles that you do not even acknowledge, much less refute. Not much appreciated.

An intelligent, respectful reply would be appreciated.

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What, exactly, has any of this hyperbole got to do with Slackware? Or has this particular forum now become the 'anything else' one?

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Well said, sir. I could not have put it better myself!

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I will swim with sharks but not bears... good comic. Sounds like politicians and law-\makers\-yers...

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Nothing really but it's only forum here that is really active since it's the defacto Slackware forum so it's more GP.

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In different words: the early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

They are not even a search engine company. They are an advertising company. They use a search engine as a vehicle to mine data so they can target ads to buyers. They provide various goods and services so they can target ads to buyers.

Indeed. Consider:

* Most humans do not condone theft. Change the word to taxes and many people start jumping up and down looking for "tax cheats."

* Most humans do not condone murder. Change the word to war and many people start jumping up and down looking for people to kill --- people who have never inflicted any harm on them.

* Most humans to not condone kidnapping. Change the word to arrest and many people start jumping up and down looking for "justice."

* Most humans do not condone brainwashing. Change the word to "public education" and many people start jumping up and down looking for those who do not want to pay their "fair share."

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Good bluegrass song too Woodsman.
http://www.allmusic.com/song/the-sec...9360131/lyrics

Google has done a lot of good things.

The Summer of Code is one of those good things. Android, for all of Google's intrusiveness, is much more open than IOS.

Google is far from perfect--and all those folks who go "Aaaahhhhhh, yes! yes! YES!" whenever Google comes out with something new need to wake up and exercise some awareness--but, on scale of useful and trustworthy internet outfits, Google is far more trustworthy than most. (See Facebook.)

The internet is a public place and users should govern themselves accordingly.

Most humans follow "situational ethics" Take for example:

Now phrase the question "Your trapped in New Orleans just a couple days after Hurricane Katrina hit because you were unable to evacuate when warned. Your kids are crying because they are hungry and you find a parked car with bags of groceries sitting on the seat. Do you break the window and take (steal) the groceries because your kids are hungry?

I'd bet most people you ask that question would condone theft then.

Good is in the eye of the beholder. Say your a Lawyer for Apple then you say Android = bad because it stole many of Apples patents (I don't write that as Apple's ideas since Apple got most of them from Palm but Palm didn't patent them).

But is that theft? There is a long-standing principle in legal thinking called abandonment. Abandonment is a process of relinquishing recognized title rights to property. A question then is whether the groceries are still titled property or abandoned property?

There is another long-standing recognized principle that under duress trespass is tolerated but does not dismiss restitution. The principle can be reworded "trespass now but pay later." Under that principle, a person under duress could break the window and take the groceries with the expectation of later providing restitution.

So how long between theft and abandonment?
How do you know the owner of the car didn't just unload it yet.
Again all situational.

Indeed. One element that is considered is something called "exhausting available remedies." In that kind of situtation an obvious remedy is earnestly seeking the owners of the groceries.

Or, breaking the window, taking some groceries, and leaving a note with contact information in order to provide resititution.

I don't pretend to have answers other than observing through the years that very little in life is black-and-white.