Marketing and development [LWN.net]

Marketing and development

Posted Jun 30, 2012 22:08 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Marketing and development by Cyberax
Parent article: Google plans to ease the Android update problem (The H)

Fair enough. Now imagine both events reversed: first Google makes the announcement for FFC, later Apple claims to have invented something similar, but instead of FFC it is called "WonderWave". Would anything change? Remember Firewire, Bonjour, AirPort and so many others.

I think the question hinges on how much Google values open development (very little) versus helping the competition (complete disaster). Remember the Honeycomb fiasco, which would have not been possible with an open development model.

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Marketing and development

Posted Jun 30, 2012 22:56 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

If Apple does this later then that won't be a problem. People are not that stupid to be confused just by name.

Honeycomb was indeed a complete disaster (and Google admitted that). But I'm not entirely sure if secret development is pointless. After all, Apple is also very secretive.

Marketing and development

Posted Jun 30, 2012 23:10 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

People are not that stupid to be confused just by name.

Thanks, but you overestimate us greatly.

I don't know what advantages secret development brings to Android; probably a lot. But we are here on LWN, we value free software, we value open source, and we like development made in the open. Google wants to benefit from that momentum by making periodic code drops; I greatly appreciate their openness (especially compared with the likes of Apple), but we can ask for a little bit more.

I personally think that the virtues of open development greatly compensate for not having those little secrets. Just as Apache has trounced IIS, GNU/Linux has butchered all the proprietary Unices, Firefox has slaughtered IE -- there is value in doing things in the open. If announcements are all that is at stake then Google may develop a few selected secret features while the main tree remains public.