Difference between revisions of "GING"

Richard Stallman invented the Free Software Movement with a project called GNU, which is a recurrent acronym for "GNU (is) not Unix." (Actually GNU is a slightly modified form of the traditional recurrent acrocnym, because the "I" of "is" is left out.)

GING is not Google. The idea is to apply Free Software principles towards the creation of an alternative to the Google search engine. I say "Free Software" and not "Open Source" software, because this is one case where the whole point is to reject the overwhelming commercialization of the web. Google is right on the front lines of that commercialization, to the extent that the mechanisms for the listing and ranking of sites are increasingly influenced by considerations of how much cash Google can stuff into their own pockets.

During the recent Storm Worm epidemic, experts calculated that the potential computing power of all of the zombie computers linked into the Storm Worm network amounted to the largest super-computer of all times. (How did it compare with Google's computing capacity?) Surely there must be some way to use P2P software to create enough computing capacity to make an alternative to Google.

[[Category:RainDog's Opinions]]