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On 18/05/14 21:24, Philip Hudson wrote: > > If you don't want someone using the courts > to force you to change the software they use, don't deny them the four > freedoms. Lets be clear, if Google source code was free software (and a lot of what it runs on is free software), they still provide a service you can't afford to provide, and have first mover advantage. So that is nonsense. Even if you could contribute code back to Google which results in a better search service than they have (and I suspect few folk could, otherwise why don't they go run a search engine and make billions?), I suspect it will still index information people don't like, and think is irrelevant to the term they entered. The reason not to open search results up to external input, is that everyone is biased, all you do is produce results more to their liking. You also have to identify people and their biases to avoid being gamed. It is messy and complex, and would add zero value to the result. If the material linked to in this case was defamatory or incorrect, then the complainant would have legal recourse to get it removed or corrected. The judgement tried to make out that Google is more than an "Index", but a "data processor", and so governed by other laws. But Google specifically try to be the best index they can (subject to a slight bias to their own websites). The court simply made a daft decision, it is possible it is the only ruling consistent with European law, so they may have felt they had no choice but to make a daft ruling. But I think patently daft, and I find it hard to see how that isn't obvious. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq