This is from the point of view of an Android user. As in, an end user. I don't develop, and I wasn't planning on it. However, from my knowledge of the open source community (in general), I felt it was probably best to take some of the confusion being experienced by end users to here, the community of what I assume is the developers (if there's even a difference).
I've come to realize that it's a misconception that Android is a Google product. Google started it, and they support it, but it's actually developed by the Open Handset Alliance. Except when it's being developed by random people who downloaded the source. In other words, Android has all the characteristics of a classic open source project: the community interaction makes it turn out great, but when users want something, nobody knows who to talk to. Except it IS a Google product, according to the Google-riffic brand guideline page (http://www.android.com/branding.html). And of course it's by Google, because there's Gmail, Google Talk, Google Accounts, and Google Search integrated with practically everything. In fact, the G1 says "with Google" on the back! So of course we need to talk to Google if we, as end users, want to see changes made to Android's core services that we feel would improve it. So, where exactly IS Google in all this? I've searched (with Google) all around the web to try and find out who's the key members are in their Android department, and I can't even tell if they HAVE an Android department. That makes sense, though. Because this is an open source project, and the community develops it, why would it be in the hands of one corporation? So just talk to the community. Except Google pushed, marketed, and branded the whole thing by themselves, so consumers and end users and people who don't know how to compile the kernel to save their lives assume that they're in charge of it. Except they're not. Except when they are. So, long story short, all of us early adopters with our snazzy new G1s, we like our phones and we love the little green robot inside of them, but there are some things we'd like to be improved as time goes on. If those things are software-related, not hardware or network related, then we don't talk to T-Mobile, we talk to the Android developers, right? Because Android is open and free and that means changes can be attempted much more rapidly and easily. Well, where are they? Is it someone at Google? Is it people on these discussion boards? Or is it a different person at a different OHA member depending on what specific component our concern is with? Again, I'm an end user who has no idea how the internal structure of Android works, so I'm probably wrong about a lot and confused for no reason about several other things. But Google (or whoever) has made it clear (maybe) that they don't want Android to be a niche product for programmers to tinker with, they want it to be a revolutionary OS that will turn all of our phones into the little tiny personal computers that they actually are. So now that idiots like us are being included in the target market, can we perhaps have some clarification about who we're supposed to go to for questions, suggestions, and comments? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
