Google bends to open source critics

It doesn't matter whether we're talking here of a government, a university, a church, or a corporation. The first instinct is always to ignore the critic's merits and attack the critic.

But in an open source world, we are learning, this may not be the way to go. The approval of your market means as much as whether they buy your stuff.

Facebook is in a continuing state of crisis because its users can walk, so even though they have not yet walked it can't act with impunity the way, say, AT&T can.

A proprietary company only wants your wallet. An open source company needs your mind and heart to thrive. Yes, it sounds like politics and I suppose it is. But that's the reality.

So with its drive to grow Chrome market share in advance of its debut as an operating system threatened, Google has backed down. It placed WebM, formerly VP8, under a standard BSD license, and now critics like Simon Phipps (above) are mollified.

The move is further proof that Chrome is now a very big deal at Google. It needs companies like Intel to improve it, with things like hardware acceleration, because it's going nowhere fast on current non-Android smartphones.

The strategy seems to be to push Android against Apple and Chrome against Microsoft. For that to work Google needs as broad a front of strategic partners as possible. It's a delicate diplomatic dance, played at corporate boardrooms around the world.

In that effort having people outside shouting its name, rather than shouting at it, is important. If Simon Phipps and Floyd Mueller are saying "Google is evil" then Japanese or Chinese manufacturers might see its supposed lesser evil as no real choice, and go with the names they know.

So that's what open source has led us to. Business strategy as both politics and diplomacy.