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Somebody needs to open Android back upSomebody needs to open Android back upPosted Mar 29, 2011 21:11 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)In reply to: Somebody needs to open Android back up by jmorris42 Parent article: How Amazon could loosen Google's iron grip on Android (ars technica)
While there are some well place complaints here, do remember that unless android used a proprietary license or a free software license with an anti-tivoization clause in it (such as the GPL3), google cannot prevent manufacturers from closing devices without some side agreement with the manufacturers. And, how would they be able to get such an agreement? Likely only by doing things that you would claim would make the platform less open (say: giving them preview code drops...) in the first place. And, even then, after the public code release, other manufacturers could still close their devices.
As for using the GPL3, who knows if android could have succeeded at all with it? I respect google's decision to not use it in the hopes of getting deeper android penetration. For me, from a hardware perspective, closed, but potentially hackable devices, are better than no (or very few) devices. Obviously I am speaking about non honeycomb devices. All bets are off with honeycomb, so far, they are simply closed source devices.
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Somebody needs to open Android back up Posted Mar 29, 2011 21:28 UTC (Tue) by xxiao (subscriber, #9631) [Link]
The sad truth is that, there is no OSS alternative for tablet anymore. Meego(which is actually a non-starter) took a hit, and Google had the best time to pull its trigger.
Maybe the only choice is to fork and evolve 2.3? Or Debian+JVM?
Somebody needs to open Android back up Posted Mar 29, 2011 22:25 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
> The sad truth is that, there is no OSS alternative for tablet anymore. Meego(which is actually a non-starter) took a hit, and Google had the best time to pull its trigger.
Hmm, if Meego is a non starter, then was there ever an OSS alternative for tablets?
If there never was an OSS alternative, then I don't see things as getting worse, things can only get better. If google releases Honeycomb source, the world will be better off than it ever was. If they don't, it's as if nothing happened. Tablets aren't any worse off now than phones were ~3 years ago when google announced android for phones, are they? So, why so pessimistic?
Somebody needs to open Android back up Posted Mar 29, 2011 22:47 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]
Hasn't anyone else done a quick and dirty local modified version of an open source package for a client?
Tablet makers: We need these features _now_!
Android hackers: But if we do them that quick, they'll be crappy hacks and everyone on LWN will laugh at our code!
Google management: OK, so don't show people the crappy version, and release the cleaned-up version when you're not ashamed of it.
It's not shame... Posted Mar 29, 2011 22:54 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It's probably the same thing Apple did. Remember? iPad was released with iOS 3.2, later iPhone got iOS 4.0, 4.1 till finally iOS 4.2 unified two forks. I doubt Google wants to support two forks - they probably want to merge them... and it means at least one fork is essentially frozen (probably Tablet one). If it's frozen and can not be changed then why will you open-source it? Just to help competitors who don't give anything back? Not a good idea IMO.
It's not shame... Posted Mar 29, 2011 22:58 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
> Just to help competitors who don't give anything back?
Well how could they or their supporters, if they doesn't release the code in the first place?
Your logic ignores the competitive advantage of free software and focuses only on the disadvantage.
It's not shame... Posted Mar 29, 2011 23:10 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] > Just to help competitors who don't give anything back? Talk with Google and join the OHA? You don't need public release of code for that. Your logic ignores the competitive advantage of free software and focuses only on the disadvantage. And this "competitive advantage" is... what exactly? I know of only one: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". And it does not work for short-lived forks.
It's not shame... Posted Mar 29, 2011 23:37 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
> Talk with Google and join the OHA? You don't need public release of code for that.
There are supporters who aren't partners. Those are sometimes more likely to contribute back. Some partners mainly care about getting the code to work on their devices and some to make proprietary forks. Users care a lot, just look at the cyanogen mods.
> And this "competitive advantage" is... what exactly? I know of only one: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".
You are joking right? Are you deliberately ignoring everything you have learned here on LWN? How about features, alternative platform fixes, general maintenance, refactoring cleanups, documentation, artwork, design ideas, ...
> And it does not work for short-lived forks.
Honeycomb is likely only a short lived fork in the sense that it is likely to merge back with the non honeycomb tree. It is hardly a throw away fork. Add helping to complete and merge honeycomb to the list of things that contributors could do.
I don't think that google would create and host an open source code review contribution tool (https://review.source.android.com) just for android if they didn't think that outside contributors could be and advantage.
It's not shame... Posted Mar 30, 2011 8:40 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] You are joking right? Are you deliberately ignoring everything you have learned here on LWN? How about features, alternative platform fixes, general maintenance, refactoring cleanups, documentation, artwork, design ideas, ...Lack of manpower, big egos, NIH-syndrome, starting hacking on new features before the bugs in the previous release are fixed... Just look at the recent articles and threads on CentOS, GNOME 3, Arch Linux.
Back to Maemo! Posted Mar 30, 2011 11:22 UTC (Wed) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]
Before Meego there was something much better, called Maemo. The code for Hildon etc. still exists and could be developed further.
Back to Maemo! Posted Mar 30, 2011 12:49 UTC (Wed) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link]
What advantages do you see in Maemo over Meego? To me the two seem essentially equivalent only one is GTK+/deb based the other Qt/RPM-based.
Back to Maemo! Posted Mar 30, 2011 13:47 UTC (Wed) by ufa (subscriber, #56005) [Link]
"What advantages do you see in Maemo over Meego? To me the two seem essentially equivalent only one is GTK+/deb based the other Qt/RPM-based."
The difference is basically that Maemo was done, and Meego is not
Back to Maemo! Posted Mar 30, 2011 14:27 UTC (Wed) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]
GTK+/deb is yes, it's a matter of taste already an advantage over Qt/RPM :~)
Furthermore, I used Maemo/Hildon since its infancy, being one of the first N770 users, now N800 user. I really like it! I just don't see any reason to drop this wunderbar system for anything else.
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