Mary Jo asks the question whether some of Google's recent actions would pass the Microsoft sniff test. If you want to evaluate the “evil” quotient of any company’s strategy/behavior, consider how you’d feel about it if it were Microsoft in the driver seat. Robert McLaws of Windows-Now.com fame reminded me of my “Is Google evil?” litmus test in his post, “Google: The New Big Brother.” As McLaws paraphrased it: “W Mary Jo asks the question whether some of Google’s recent actions would pass the Microsoft sniff test. If you want to evaluate the “evil” quotient of any company’s strategy/behavior, consider how you’d feel about it if it were Microsoft in the driver seat. Robert McLaws of Windows-Now.com fame reminded me of my “Is Google evil?” litmus test in his post, “Google: The New Big Brother.” As McLaws paraphrased it: “When looking at any new Google venture, swap out the word ‘Google” with ‘Microsoft’ and ask yourself if you’re still OK with what’s happening.”Mary Jo then goes on to list a few things Google does that Microsoft would never be permitted to do (employees asked to refrain from wearing competitors’ t-shirts, investing in the founders’ girlfriend’s/wife’s startups, etc.). But after two days of OSBC, I think Mary Jo should be asking some slightly different questions. Google gets away with a lot. Eben gave a passionate presentation about not being someone else’s free lunch, but Google routinely gobbles at the open source table while passing back comparative crumbs. And yet there’s a constant drumbeat for Microsoft to open up. But not for Google. Why? Eben suggests that we should encourage/shame Google into giving back. But this is not how copyleft works. It’s not a matter of personal taste or principle as to one’s adherence to the GPL. It’s a matter of license. You modify, you distribute, you contribute back. Share and share alike.I recognize that Google gives back code. Some of it quite interesting. But open source is not about picking and choosing when to grace the community with one’s benevolence. It’s about living up to the spirit and letter of a license. I firmly believe we need SaaS open source licenses. Licenses that will require Google to respect open source licenses…at least as well as Microsoft does. Open Source