The sooner we start using AGPL for every piece of FOSS code, the better. IMO it's the only way to avoid FOSS being marginalized by big companies like MS or Google.

USA has a monopoly on IT (MS has the PC section, Google the Internet search market), and those companies are both killing FOSS. MS fights openly (the viral factor anyone?), while Google is fagoziting FOSS, (Android vs Linux kernel), (Chrome vs Safari).

He's been promoting MS interests (eee) with-in the FOSS movement for too many years. The only open question IMO, is how long it will take to the GNOME people to get rid of his 'works'.

you are afraid of 'the cloud'

So, if plain old 'server' is being called 'cloud' Let me get it scathologically: The 'cloud' is full of s***, you better beware of the rain

Google fanboys lemma: 'In Gog we trust'

Why is it so odd to just be generous? Why must generosity have some hidden motive? Can't a person (or a company) just be nice once in a while?
If this were Microsoft announcing a free public DNS service, sure, I'd be wary, but Google hasn't given me reason to mistrust them.

How much they pay you, to say such a naive and blatant Google apology?

I have to say: Thanks, but NO thanks.

Monoculture is bad. Google is trying to bypass/replace internet and open source. Free/open source coders should be start using Affero GPLv3 license in every piece of software (starting by gcc, and the linux kernel) to stop this madness.

SoC = Marketing.

Plain and simple, a cheap marketing strategy. Wake me up when some project in SoC targets any sensible Google technology (search/ocr/translation/gis/etc/etc).

I am sorry, but I have to say it.

Slashdot moderation system is being vandalized by Google fanboys. The same happened some years ago in other public forums, we called them astroturfers.

Just correlate moderation points of pro-Google posts versus anti-Google ones.

In fact Google is one of the larger contributors to the OSS movement that I personally know of

Then you dont know much

Or maybe could you please indicate some efficient massive text search technology released by Google under some open/free license?

Or maybe some decent OCR program (ocropus+tesseract are years behind what you get for free in windows with any HP multifunction scanner/printer) so that we could convert those millions of tiff's based pdfs to an editable format?

Perhaps you know of some GIS technology from Google, to allow open/free implementations of world modeling?

And please, let's not forget to mention the little support and even smaller cooperation of Google towards key pieces of the open source world, like the kernel, or java.

Google keeps perfectly closed his cashcow technologies, but those very same technologies are build UPON open/free software. That's the taking and not giving the parent poster was talking about.

The telecom spanish situation it's a de facto monopoly (telefonica), with some other minor players to mascarade the industry as on oligopoly. The point is that spanish telecom prices/quality are one of the worst in the EU, with the explicit consent of goverments (left & right spanish parties does not give a f* s* for the people's right to access information).

Sometime they need to wash his face, that's the 'new regulation' comes in... minimal requirements, undefined prices, and of course, not now, tomorow. I am sorry, but I've heard the same lies, repeated too many times..

Google is using extensively open source, but is not giving back any significant technology to the open source world.

No efficient search technology.
No decent OCR software (ocropus + tesseract are still years behind what you get for free with any multifunction HP printer on the windows world) No GIS technology No JSP cooperation, Minimal kernel patches, etc, etc

Google could be a major open/free source contributor, they have the money and the skills, but they have no will to do-it. In fact, Google is behaving like any other big greedy corporation, they only do what they see fit for his own interest. The bleeding point is that Google exist THANKS TO open/free programming.

Yes, there's more than back-prop for succesfull neural processing. One of the most instereseting approaches IMO were done by Liaw and Berger on adaptable sinaptic training models, but that was more than ten years ago!

IMO the most useful UNIX tool is by far the shell itself...

and Awk is the second one. :)

Your comment and his moderation are an exact copy of what astroturfers has been doing for MS for years on public forums (paid marketing spin). Unfourtunately slashdotters seems to be easily deceived by the G word. :(