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Android: the return of the Unix wars?Android: the return of the Unix wars?Posted Aug 24, 2010 17:15 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877)Parent article: Android: the return of the Unix wars?
All told, Android has not made things worse; instead, it looks like it is making things better.Jein. It's at best better than what was before--those carriers and manufacturers that don't wish to limit their customers' freedom have the option. At worst, it's no different--those carriers and manufacturers that *do* wish to limit their customers' freedom are free to do so, from just making their software proprietary all the way to creating hardware checks to make sure the customer isn't doing things that the carrier/manufacturer doesn't wish them to with the customer's own device. So mathematically, your statement is true; it's at worst no different and at best it's better, so therefore it's better. (and since we have that lower limit of no difference, it'll continue to be "better" over all time even if the trend is toward "no difference" over time (analogy is the integral of an exponential decay; it'll always be positive even as it tends toward zero as x->inf). That said, I fail to see how the statement But that freedom also appears to be supporting a whole new generation of hobbyists, enthusiasts, and hackers who want to do interesting things with current computing platforms. can truly be supported, particularly in the context of the license choice of Apache instead of GPLv3, where the primary difference is the Apache's preservation of the intermediates' natural right to hamper or infringe on the rights of their customers and users. Sure, it's more free than the iPhone, but not necessarily completely and not necessarily in the long-term view. In the long-term, what we have is a race to the bottom. As some will point out when regarding the GPL, carriers and manufacturers that share the information back can be at a competitive disadvantage compared to their non-sharing counterparts, since their code is in public display for all to review and use, whereas their closed competitors do not share their improvements back. The Apache doesn't make sharing their improvements with their customers under the same terms compulsory, but rather voluntary. This, coupled with the possible competitive disadvantage of sharing back will IMHO lead to Android eventually becoming increasingly proprietary and balkanized. If the license were GPL, they would not only be required to preserve their customer's freedoms (a long-term win for the ordinary citizen, provided the products are developed and sold (which the rise of GPLed embedded Linux has shown is not at all implausible)) but in the end all of the code would be contributed back upstream (all it takes is one customer, so in the end it's shorter for the company to just share upstream from the get-go). So voluntary sharing in the long term (assuming customers stay consumers and don't fight for anything but the "bottom line" (i.e. features and price)) implies proprietary balkanization, as Android is now beginning to show.
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Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 24, 2010 17:37 UTC (Tue) by davide.del.vento (guest, #59196) [Link]
I heartily agree with you that GPL (v3!!!!) would have been much better for customers and handset manufacturer alike.
Unfortunately, I think that if Google had GPL'ed Android, it wouldn't have had the success it had, because handsets manufacturer and especially carriers would not have embraced it so broadly.
On the Google side, the company is of course interested in the profits, not directly freedom or "progress". Their bottom line is: on the iPhones, they have to share search revenues with Apple, on Android they don't. Google has has already claimed (can't find the link now, but I could dig) that the cost of developing and maintaining Android has already been paid by the much higher revenue they get from searches (compared with what they would have get from iPhones).
Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 26, 2010 6:33 UTC (Thu) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
Food for thought:
Assume Meego fails and IOS becomes the 5% Apple high profit niche and WP7 will be a success like Kin/WinMo and Symbian/Blackberry continue to decline (Not really unlikely once all phones become smartphones)
Then Android will have such a big market share that Google could start relicensing Androids plumbing LGPL, that would force vendors to release changes to the plumbing layer and reduce Googles cost of maintaining the platform and likely accelerate development without too much fallout.
Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 26, 2010 13:02 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] The crapware issue and the downmarket Android issue are connected. The sooner that crapware brings in enough additional revenue per subscriber to justify it, the sooner that the US carriers start offering Android phones as the default "free" phone with contract. ("Make a phone call? Is it the big Blockbuster button, the big Mafia Wars button, or the big Yelp button?")
Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 24, 2010 19:25 UTC (Tue) by dberlin (subscriber, #24694) [Link]
Both this comment and the article make the claim that the GPL will cause the changes to be contributed back, but this is wrong.
It will cause the changes to be *released*. This is very different than contributed back. If you scour the internet, you will find hundreds if not thousands of releases of the linux kernel by companies that are not used by anyone else, and contain slight mods here or there. Same with any other GPL package.
The number of folks that *contribute changes back to the project* instead of *release the source as a dump* is incredibly small.
The theory that they will find it easier to send upstream is misinformed at best, as is this will just happen because it's "better for the companies". The vast majority of companies of this scale see no advantage to spending the time to upstream it, since in reality it doesn't magically get maintained if you do that, you still have to spend near the same amount of maintenance work in most projects.
Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 24, 2010 20:30 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
I disagree, but like you I don't have any real, hard facts to point to. So we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point until hard data comes in. At least we agree that the GPLv3 would have provided stronger end-user freedom enforcement. Cheers!
Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 25, 2010 10:12 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
I think there's a certain amount of evidence available just by looking at Android itself - despite actively trying to get their kernel changes upstream for some time, most of the kernel work hasn't been merged, and a lot of it will never be. The best we can hope is that eventually, after a substantial expenditure of effort, the kernel may eventually get the means to do what Google needs using a different design.
Yes, the kernel is a particularly difficult area in which to get changes merged, but I'd still be astonished if traditionally proprietary companies actually went to the effort of getting non-trivial changes to open source projects merged upstream, rather than just providing a big code dump.
Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 26, 2010 14:48 UTC (Thu) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link]
Saying that these kernel source tree dumps scattered around the net is proof that the GPL doesn't work is reversed logic in my opinion. If the kernel was proprietary for example then these code dumps would obviously not exist, that doesn't say that the situation is better.
You could instead look at what these source dumps do _not_ contain. Most of them do not contain any valuable new features or significant improvements, they're just hacked slightly to work with specific hardware or software. This must mean that most development of value actually does go upstream.
When a significant new feature is added to a GPL:ed piece of code by one of its downstream users, the GPL gives the ability to at least study the implementation details, learn and get inspired by it. I think that's the main benefit.
Android: the return of the Unix wars? Posted Aug 24, 2010 22:37 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Jein. It's at best better than what was before--those carriers and manufacturers that don't wish to limit their customers' freedom have the option. At worst, it's no different--those carriers and manufacturers that *do* wish to limit their customers' freedom are free to do so, from just making their software proprietary all the way to creating hardware checks to make sure the customer isn't doing things that the carrier/manufacturer doesn't wish them to with the customer's own device.
It goes both ways. That is why it's a huge improvement over what we have with the iphone and such.
It's just as valid to state:
"Android provides for customers who don't care about being locked down to be locked down while other customers that don't want that do not have to put up with that at all."
Despite all the rhetoric about DRM and locked down Android phones there exist plenty of phones that do not refuse to boot unofficial versions of the firmware. In fact that majority of Android phones do NOT place much real restrictions on the phone at all except that they do not provide a easy way to get root.
For people that DO care about their software freedom they can very happily use many popular Android phones with almost completely open source firmware if they wish. (still remains the chronic issues with drivers and such).
It is far from necessary to figure out ways to force handset makers to be open... the open source community's #1 job in promoting open platforms is to provide a way for users that want freedom to have it and to make freedom as attractive as possible.
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Lets not also forget that Android is Linux's #1 success story in the consumer market.
Google scored a hit in a major way. In the USA market Android already has surpassed iPhone and Blackberry in a fantastic manner and by the end of this year it's going to be close to selling more phones then RIM and Apple _combined_ and will probably surpass the entire _total_ iOS sales (iPhone, iTouch, + iPad) by the end of next year.
Google is activating over 200,000 Linux phones _a_day_.
Millions are sold every month and within a year or two it's going to be the #2 mobile operating system in the world. Only to be second to Nokia's Symbian.
This is simply huge.
Going on about restrictions and carriers being a-holes and dwelling on the negative aspects of the phone industry... which is a reality that Android must operate in, is completely missing the point that a open source Linux operating system is quickly becoming utterly dominate.
Given the easy hackability of the majority of Android phones (the Droid-X is the only one that I know of that makes substantial technical barriers to third party firmware, there are probably others but they are in the minority) this has given the most people the easiest way to get out of running restrictive and closed operating systems.
For most phones the barriers to open firmware has more to do with the nature of the ARM platform itself then anything really intentional or anti-consumer/anti-freedom.
Sure sure Google did not follow the dogmatic rules setup by the GNU folks and built a lightweight OS for small systems using a lot of Java-like stuff instead of the traditional C Unix environment... but by doing so they have made a OS that is widely attractive,solves almost all the chronic application compatiblity issues that plague linux on the desktop, and yet is still majority open source.
This is a unprecedented success in the consumer area, which Linux has languished for years. Sure there are TiVos and such, but nothing multipurpose like Android is and nothing nearly as interactive.
This is a hugely positive step. No question about it.
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