Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'
Hello Sylvain,<p>Today I was reading news.ycombinator.com<p>and found your website:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kerkour.fr&#x2F;blog&#x2F;bloom-a-free-and-open-source-google&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kerkour.fr&#x2F;blog&#x2F;bloom-a-free-and-open-source-goo...</a><p>You may consider me free software supporter since
1999. That is how long I am using GNU operating
systems with Linux kernel.<p>I am business consultant too, helping people to
startup in business.<p>Let me give you few comments on your website:<p>Congratulation on publishing software under the
GNU Affero Public license.<p>&gt; Bloom: a free and open source Google<p>Please note that &quot;Google&quot; is a trademark. While
Google will not react that fast, you should. As
you are using the trademark to promote your own
services, be it free software or not, that is
really wrong approach.<p>&gt; The social crisis<p>I agree there are social crisis situation in the
world. But I don&#x27;t agree in generalities and
presentation that is making it general. As it is
not. There are many areas in the world where
people do not have social crisis. You would not be
able to convince them.<p>&gt; How is the world&#x27;s wealth shared among its
&gt; population?<p>Well let me say that &quot;world&quot; does not own any
wealth. Your statement is deceptive, and I even
don&#x27;t see why that type of politics shall be
involved with the software that you so nicely
published under the Affero GNU Public
License. Don&#x27;t give people politics, if you are
providing software that everybody can use. That is
incompatible.<p>Make one separate page for your world&#x27;s wealth
politics.<p>World does not &quot;own&quot; wealth. You are mistaken. It
is owned by private individuals and corporations
that in turn also belong to private individuals,
some of them being non-profit corporations that
are now owned by any particular person.<p>Wealth is not &quot;shared&quot; because &quot;world&quot; does not
share &quot;wealth&quot;.<p>Wealth is obtained by providing products,
services, production.<p>Some of people are successful and they earn more
than you do. Majority of people who do earn very
much, may decide, but that it their own free will,
to contribute to society.<p>However, wealth is theirs.<p>There is no such thing as &quot;global wealth
distribution&quot;, as nobody &quot;distributes&quot; wealth. It
is earned and obtained by providing services in
exchange, by providing products in exchange, by
producing something in exchange for something.<p>If I am carpenter, and I produce a chair, I am
giving you the chair and get some money. You have
the chair, I have the money.<p>If you consider both of those items to belong to
&quot;wealth&quot; set, then you must also consider both
sides of the scale: the chair and the money.<p>If I have provided many chairs in the USA, there
are many chairs in the USA &quot;distributed&quot; to
various households.<p>But you don&#x27;t consider in your observations how
much wealth (chairs, goods, products, services,
manufacturing of plethods of things) was created
by people and private individuals and corporations
who you are targeting with those silly graphics
about &quot;wealth distribution&quot;.<p>You only present it in the manner to say that
there is something wrong that someone was smarter
or some group was better organized and earning
more than you.<p>I find it selfish and thoughtless.<p>&gt; Patents and copyrights<p>I totally agree with you. But that is how it is,
and now we and you are using GNU Affero Public
license to protect the free software.<p>&gt; Open source<p>No, I don&#x27;t agree with you at all.<p>&gt; Open source: The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.<p>&gt; The best known example of open source is GNU&#x2F;Linux, a free and open source operating system that is used by the majority of servers and phones today.<p>Absolutely not.<p>You are so much mistaken.<p>Please read the definition of free software:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;free-sw.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;free-sw.html</a><p>“Free software” means software that respects
users&#x27; freedom and community. Roughly, it means
that the users have the freedom to run, copy,
distribute, study, change and improve the
software.<p>A program is free software if the program&#x27;s users have the four essential freedoms: [1]<p><pre><code>    The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
    The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
    The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
    The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
</code></pre>
1. If it is centralized and free software it
   really does not matter. It can be made
   centralized. But &quot;centralized&quot; or
   &quot;decentralized&quot; is not subject of free
   software. It can be made by any model for as
   long as it is free, see definition above.<p>2. Open collaboration -- this really does not
   matter. Many free software programs have been
   programmed without &quot;open collaboration&quot;. Who
   says that free software &quot;must be open for
   collaboration&quot; -- it need not have any Git
   access or SVN access or at all be &quot;open&quot; for
   everybody. It can be a package of software
   available for download with the free software
   license, that is good enough. As you have the
   freedom to modify it, you or anybody can decide
   to make some collaboration or not. It is not a
   characteristic of free software.<p>And finally GNU is certainly NOT a good example
for &quot;open source&quot;. In fact, with your lack of
fundamentals about free software you are
undermining the efforts of free software supports.<p>Please read here why:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;open-source-misses-the-point" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;open-source-misses-the-point</a><p>I hope you understand the points and that you will
respect this opinion.<p>Jean