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Somebody needs to open Android back upSomebody needs to open Android back upPosted Mar 29, 2011 22:47 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)In reply to: Somebody needs to open Android back up by martinfick Parent article: How Amazon could loosen Google's iron grip on Android (ars technica)
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.
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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.
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