Open Source Dangerous Game Attacks

Open source is one of the most innovative endeavors every programmers and developers have to feel good about for the past few years. It is amazing that people will work on projects for the love of it. The open source community have work together hand in hand for a common good of every individuals. It is even more amazing when big companies involved with the open source projects. The idea is that open source enables them to build things and get benefits like the community support and most of all the satisfaction. The feel good factor or the satisfaction of being part of the open source community have been tarnished recently due to some phenomena that arises, when open source projects are used against companies that sponsor them. Let's take a look with some examples when Open Source Attacks: Google Android: Android would not have been possible without both Linux and Java. Linux provided the operating system base and Java the language base. We cannot deny the fact that Google worked hard to make Android workable but without Linux or Java, it would have been next to impossible. Google made so much money with the project, but Linux and Java don't have the same benefits with Google. Apple OSX and iOS: Apple built the OSX and iOS from the open source - Unix. The company was able to capitalized on the license (BSD) which didn't specify that changes had to be made open source and so Apple can keept its wares hidden from the outside world and declines to offer anything as a starting point for someone else, even though it does contribute some code back to the open source community. Apple made so much money on their work which was based on Unix but didn't gave back to the community by hiding their innovation and patented it for the good of the company. Apple also claimed that Google have just copied their iOS into Android but both companies actually copied an open source projects and make it their own. This is one of the most common situations in the open source community, your rival borrow the software, modify it a bit and bring it out as a competitor. The main purpose of some companies is to give their software to help deliver a service to their customer. The open source sometimes can bite the hand of those who created it. Consider the Android OS, Google created it as away of getting its service into the pocket of every phone owner. Almost all of the features were free, some were paid by advertising but eventually they created Play Store to make money. Android is just a Trojan allowing Google into your digital world. Google have never expected that someday a company will also put a Trojan on their project as what they have done with their previous project to the open source community. That Trojan is no other than Amazon. Amazon has an entirely legitimate idea, the Kindle Fire, by taking a version of Android, customize it a bit and use it, to sell lots of things. Amazon takes away from Google Play to Kindle, but who knows what Amazon can be capable off in the near future. Google Chrome: Apple may got angry with Android who allegedly copied the iOS, this kind of situation only applies to the mobile world but in the desktop world, Google was the victim. Google created the Chrome browser, that helps you fall into Google's honey trap of free and integrated services. The problem once again is that if it works for Google it can work for another company and so Yandex can simply take what it needs to compete with Google from Google. The company fell prey to Yandex, the Russia's search giant with roughly 60% of traffic from Russia came from Yandex. The Russian search engine takes the source code of Chromium, the open source part of the Chrome browser, and turn it into their own custom browser. The situations enumerated above were just some of the few situations that proved the danger of Open Source when it plays it game, the open source dangerous game attacks. Companies should be aware that using an open source as a Trojan to deliver services into a customers lap need to be aware that their advantage can quickly become a competitor's advantage. This is probably the reason behind Microsoft's insistent of not giving up on building their IE browser and did not borrow on Chromium. The company continues to struggle with Windows Phone 8 instead of borrowing on Android.