ELC: Android and the community

I don't think popularity is enough to avoid criticism. On the contrary, look at Apple and the practices with iPhone. Sure, they are damn popular but there are strong critics as well. The Android effort would be ignored rather than criticized if it was not popular. You can be quite happy that so many people care enough about Android to want it to succeed and act as a community well integrated into Linux and working as any other regular open source project rather than it's own world.

Oh, please.

Google's Android was not the first attempt at this, nor will it be the last.

Linux is too compelling for any embedded developer to NOT use.

There is even a question about whether Android is/will be more successful than Nokia/Intel MeeGo.

Both Nokia and Google (indeed any company) will always draw complaints about not handling things as best as they can when dealing with Free Software.

What matters is the response they tend to take -- and are perceived to take.

The perception of Google is:
- ignorance; of the problem
- annoyance; that this is an issue
- defensiveness; why can the engineers directly defend their actions rather than having a "name" (like yourself) wade into the fray.
- defensiveness; other Google people pointing out how they are excellent in some other area. That is fantastic but distracts from this problem area.

The perception of Nokia is:
- acknowledgement; they see the criticism and write up how they perceive they were critisied
- action; they take action in the face of that critisim - not all good - but intended to address the highlighted problem
- feedback; they willingly solicit feedback on their acknowledgement and actions
- review; they do their own review on their actions and feedback

The only way you are going to evolve from one perceived style to another is via active engagement. It will take time, obviously, but a good review point would be six months.

Let's see how things have changed then.