by Carla Schroder
Managing Editor
Google’s Chrome browser is the most revolutionary,
transformative technology to ever hit the planet. It will end
hunger, tame avarice and greed, and beat swords into plowshares.
But plows are destructive, so they will be strictly ornamental and
have pretty flowers growing over them.Or, Chrome is a Web platform designed to make Web applications
fast and usable, instead of slow, buggy, script-heavy kludges that
make your dual-core feel like a 386. I got the former impression
from reading the stampeding herds of excited Chrome stories that
hit the wires, and the latter from reading Google’s own
documentation. The Chrome comic
book that explains the engineering decisions that went into
designing Chrome is a masterwork. Finally I understand garbage
collection- all this time I thought that was shorthand for “I heart
coding in Java, but I can’t really explain why I think it’s better
because I don’t understand it very well myself. But it has garbage
collection.”The comic book has one small error; it portrays existing browser
technology as a cute little
Volkswagen Beetle being cruelly crushed under a workload it was
never designed to carry. VWs are tough and nearly unkillable. I
think the Yugo is more representative of the current state of the
art- cheap, hackish, and throwaway.So What?
So is this really a big deal? Yes, it is. Naturally Google has
their own self-interest pushing this forward, and they’re probably
not telling everything. “Making the Web go faster so we make more
money off more faster clicks!” is hardly credible. A nice
by-product of some master plan, but not the plan. Some things are
obvious- they’re already pushing a family of Web applications, and
are going to push a whole lot more. Some things are less obvious-
they’re already the biggest data collectors of all time, with no
oversight or accountability, and no restraints on what they collect
or how they collect it. Google Streetview is visible demonstration
of their complete disregard for ordinary courtesy and respect for
people’s private spaces. Is this someone you want to trust with
your data?Less sinister is making all the Web 2.0 and Software As A
Service (SAAS) hype sound less like fevered buzzword bingo, and
more like an actual possibility. Making the Web browser a universal
client has a lot of advantages, if it can be made fast and pleasing
to the end user, instead of slow, obnoxious, and plagued by
incompatibilities. I wish poxes upon everyone who dismisses entire
categories of users with “oh, you’re just a few percents, we don’t
have to care about you.” Yes, you do. The Web was originally
designed to be the universal communications medium- not an
extension of Microsoft’s lockin, not an arm of law enforcement for
the rabid DRM/anti-piracy loons, and not a splintered delivery
medium that plays favorites.The good news is it should deal a mortal blow to the unholy
IE/ActiveX malware vector, which mysteriously persists despite its
unbroken history of fatal security flaws, and accelerate browser
improvements even more. Now we have two fast-moving 21st-century
Web browsers to get excited about, Chrome and Firefox. I remember a
long stretch of time when there were none. Netscape was coasting on
inertia and collapsing under the weight of its spaghetti innards,
nobody in their right mind touched IE, and aside from some niche
FOSS browsers that was all there was. Sure, there was Opera, which
has always been good, but it’s closed-source and never did ignite
many fans.End-run Around GPL?
One question that keeps popping up is SAAS a GPL dodge? Since the
software itself is not distributed, but merely accessed by thick
clients, hosts can use and modify it all they want to without
triggering the releasing-modifications clause. Google itself is the
poster child for this. In effect the GPL becomes more like a BSD
license- any contributions back to the community are voluntary and
not required.Inspirational Reading
At any rate it’s a nice day and I am tired of weighty thoughts. If
you’re looking for some great reading, try these two books that are
generously free online: In The Beginning Was
the Command Line by Neal Stephensen, and Open
Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. I always turn
back to these two books when I need to be reminded of what Free
Software really means.