On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 13:18 -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote: > This represents my final report on this matter. My conclusion: it's not > practical to pursue a relationship between Fedora and Google at this time, > for the following reasons: > > 1. RED HAT BEARS THE LEGAL RISKS FOR FEDORA. > > As much as Red Hat has worked to create an independent governance model > for the Fedora Project, in the final analysis, Fedora is a property of Red > Hat. This means that any deal made between Fedora and a third party > *must* be agreed upon by Red Hat legal. > > 2. THE BOILERPLATE CONTACT FOR GOOGLE'S CUSTOM SEARCH ENGINE (CSE) IS TOO > RISKY FOR RED HAT LEGAL TO ACCEPT. > > The terms and conditions for the Google CSE program > (http://www.google.com/coop/docs/cse/tos.html) are pretty onerous. The > biggest sticking point for Red Hat lawyers is Section 5, in which Google > demands unlimited indemnification. Negotiations to resolve this clause > have been unsuccessful. > > 3. MECHANISMS LIKE THE FIREFOX SEARCH BAR ARE SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED FROM > THE GOOGLE CSE. > > It seems like there are two potential sources of revenue for Fedora in > Firefox: the start page (which would probably be low dollar) and the > search bar (which would probably be high dollar). In actuality, though, > the search bar is *specifically* excluded from the Google CSE agreement, > in section 1.4, Appropriate Conduct. Quote: "You shall not, and shall not > allow any third party to: ... (f) directly or indirectly access, launmch > and/or activate the Service through or from, or otherwise incorporate the > Service in, any Web site or other means other than the Site, and then only > to the extent expressly permitted herein." Which means that unless we > negotiate a deal with Google directly, we can't use the search bar to > generate revenue at all. > > So that's it. There are no simple avenues to pursue at this point, which > means that we are now open to pursue other options (wikia, fedorasearch > being the two I like best). We should also consider whether we want to > change the default search to use these, which might require a break from > the Firefox brand. I like the fact that wikia is all about transparent, open services. That makes them more like us than Google is. They're also based around a community contribution model -- people donate spare bandwidth and cycles to webcrawl for indexing purposes. I don't think wikia is competitive yet as a search tool from the user's point of view, but we certainly are in a position to help make them more so. What if, as part of this new "community grid" project (which I like calling "Trellis"), we offered people the ability to pitch in with the web-crawling duties? This is not limited to just Fedora users, but here's one possibility: Installing user sees firstboot module providing Trellis. User opts in, then from a menu of system resource donations, selects either (1) "wikia," or (2) "Fedora, I trust you, use this time for whatever you like," which maps to a certain proporation of donation for wikia (published somewhere, with a link). This isn't purely about CPU cycles anymore, but it's still worth considering. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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