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BiasBiasPosted Jun 7, 2011 7:04 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)In reply to: Bias by xxiao Parent article: Android, forking, and control
I guess you're talking about Honeycomb. The kernel source continues to be out there, as it should, and though the rest of it has not been released, Google has declared that Ice Cream Sandwich will be open source. Honeycomb seems to have been a rushed job to compete with the iPad, and too buggy for wider use; it seems that Google fears Android's reputation will suffer if they release it to non-approved manufacturers.
But I thought this is what the Apache license is meant to guard against. It does not permit use of trademarked names (without explicit permission). Android is trademarked by Google. So third-party distributors, if not approved by Google, are not allowed to call it Android. So why not let them have Honeycomb, but make them call it something else?
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Bias Posted Jun 7, 2011 14:47 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
I suspect that they fear the junkier tablets made in places where copyright and trademarks are ignored. If they released the Honeycomb code, it would end up on those tablets despite any trademark threats.
Bias Posted Jun 9, 2011 4:49 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
So, in short, Android is "Open Source Only When Google Likes It To Be So" and not real Open Source, right? Here's something to add to Android's reputation.
Bias Posted Jun 9, 2011 5:13 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
Gingerbread is open source, by any definition. Honeycomb is not. Where do "real" and "fake" enter into this?
Bias Posted Jun 9, 2011 14:37 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Where do they enter? When you wrote them.
Gingerbread is open source, by any definition. Honeycomb is not. Android is maybe.
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