Open Source, Google & Adam Bosworth

We recently covered in our blog, Adam Bosworth's, eminence gris of Google and the man who most of the world seems to expect will lead-develop "The Google OS", excellent response to open source denizens attack against google. We quoted Bosworth saying,"This is the nature of science, of learning, of education, of engineering and of software. We all benefit from those who came before us. We benefit most when the knowledge is free and generally accessible., but we benefit either way. It would seem that these cacophonous critics, yammering about giving back and sweepingly ignoring the 100's of billions of times people use and appreciate what Google gives them for free every day from Search to scholar, Blogger to gMail, to Picasa, do not understand this basic fact. Suggesting new lines of learning and research is no sin. It is how we grow and add value and has been throughout human history. Taking advantage of what has already been learned and taught is equally no sin. It is common sense and to do otherwise is usually a sign of hubris, arrogance, and immaturity" and observed :
Very insightful comments from Adam Bosworth, though he does not explain how economically corporates can follow this and be accountable to stakeholders - this stands out to be among the best that I have read in recent times.

We now have two more significant reponse to Adam Bosworth's post from John Battelle and Brad Delong:

John Battle writes," when it comes to giving back to the Open Source community, the Microsofties may have a point, at least strictly speaking. But then again, Google took open source and, well, built Google, and it's free for all to use. That's not such a bad thing, is it?
It's very interesting (and rather odd) to see MSFT employees take pole position on nobility and open source goodness. Those in the know tell me that Google has made significant and quite valuable modifications to various open source tools. Perhaps it's time they shared some of that wealth back to the community from whence it originated".

Brad Delong writes, "Krzysztof Kowalczyk Is Completely Insane. Is there anyone in the world, anyone at all--except for Krzysztof Kowalczyk,who claims that Google has a negative whuffie balance with him? The services-free services-Google has provided to us all have been immensely valuable, and far outstrip what would in some alternate universe be the fully-allocated cost of the open source software that it uses. I'm grouchy about Google these days because of its role as an enabler of comment spam, but even so Google's whuffie balance with me is positive and very large. To call Google a "free rider" is to demonstrate residence beyond the Gamma Quadrant".