using the open source software

Question

Yesterday I was using google map web application but when I've turned into street view mode, one question arrived in my mind. For example, they blurred human faces and car plates. I was thinking that they didn't write all the code for this, because already are some free libraries which can do that. I know about the license types, but is that fair? For example, if i had the system to take all the pictures, and use some free/open libs to build such an application, all the credits goes to me?

ps: I'm not a CS student yet, and I know none near me in order to ask this, that why I'm asking you guys. Can someone take all the credits of a software product by using other ppl free/open libs? Is this ethical?

Answer 1

For google street view, they had to send a series of vehicles to every location (that they have mapped) and stitch those images to the location, which is a huge undertaking. They also had to make a way so that people could contact them to say what they hadn't blurred (I had to for my mums car).

I really don't think they are taking the credit for any blurring technology, and in the grand scheme of what they have done it is only a very minor part of the whole project.

This is no different to a photographer using photoshop (or if he really wanted, gimp). the photo would still be his work.

Answer 2

With most open source licenses (including the GPL), you do not have to do anything if you just use the software to make your website, as long as you are not distributing the code to anyone (i.e. it stays on your servers in your company). This is true even when you heavily modify the software.

You do not even have to acknowledge and give credits to the software stack that you use.

Some people share your concern about this "ASP loophole", and there is now the Affero GPL, which prohibits this scenario. Specifically, it forces the licensee to make the whole source code of all its server-side code available to the public.

In addition to running web sites, open source licenses also generally do not place any restrictions on what you can do with the output files that were created with them. For example, you can produce commercial software with GCC. More to your point, image editing libraries do not require that the output is somehow watermarked or cannot be used in certain ways (that approach is popular with demo versions of commercial software, though).

As far as Google is concerned, they seem to be voluntarily contributing many of their changes back to the open source community, and if they rely like and heavily use a project, they are also known to hire key developers.

Answer 3

If they pay for it, why not ?

If they respect the license terms, why not ?