Android turns 5 years old (The H) [LWN.net]

The H covers five years of Android. "Five years ago on 5 November 2007, the then newly formed Open Handset Alliance (OHA) announced the launch of Android, described as a "truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices". Headed by Google, the OHA is a consortium of various organisations involved in developing the open source mobile platform. When it was founded, the group had 34 members including T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm and Motorola, and has since grown to 84 members including various other handset manufacturers, mobile carriers, application developers and semiconductor companies."

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Android turns 5 years old (The H)

Posted Nov 5, 2012 21:16 UTC (Mon) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

5 years? Maybe since it became public, but Android, Inc. was found in October 2003, that's 9 years ago, actually - and Google bought it in August 2005.

Android turns 5 years old (The H)

Posted Nov 5, 2012 22:25 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

OHA develops Android, obviously. Why do you think they have such complex system with it's own web UI? This is because the whole thing is developed by competitors who don't trust each other. There are bazillion NDAs and everything is done in very coopetive fashion. LG does not know what Samsung is doing and Google have no idea about HTC's extensions, but there are common core, too.

And you wonder why "pure open-source projects" with their "everything should happen in the open" mantra went nowhere in the mobile market?

Android turns 5 years old (The H)

Posted Nov 5, 2012 22:31 UTC (Mon) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]

I know what Google does and there are business reasons for doing it which I actually think are reasonably defensible.

I have no idea what the OHA does though. If you have any ***detailed*** information about how it works, does it have a board, who is the permanent staff, what *specific* privileges members get, etc. I would be happy to hear about it.

Thanks,