Way to take the dark side. Take into account what is written by David Turner, i.e. get the platform up to a certain spec before pushing it to the community.
Second, last I checked, it is most DEFINITELY open source. The Apache- licensed components can be USED IN closed source projects, but *as a matter of choice* -- they can choose to release their modified sources if they want. Android itself IS OPEN SOURCE, i.e., you can download the source tree, compile it, and run it on your device without needing any closed source components. Donut won't run? Its INCOMPLETE, as in STILL BEING WRITTEN! Sometimes things break when under development. FYI: I am running some donut components on my ADP1 (those that are more-or-less complete/working), and no, I am not waiting for devices to ship with it. Third... where in the license (Apache license) does it say that copying the binaries is a violation? Avoiding the GPL... sure, because forcing every component to be under the GPL will scare away carriers, who like it or not, the project DOES DEPEND ON *at this stage*. As for the illusion of openness... it is NO ILLUSION. As I have stated before, you can download the sources, compile them for your platform, and they will run as a fully functional OS without any closed-source binary components. And don't you dare to suggest that because the Dream/Magic/Whatever platform has some closed source drivers that this is somehow incorrect, because Android is NOT limited to those platforms, for instance, it will run FULLY OPEN SOURCE (including all drivers) on an openmoko handset or on just about any x86-based desktop/ laptop/etc. About handset manufacturers modifying sources, OF COURSE they do, nobody claimed otherwise. What is particular to this platform is that they DON'T NEED GOOGLE'S INTERVENTION and/or some kind of ridiculous licenses to do this. Anyone who wants can go right ahead and download the source, make their modifications, compile it, and stick it on their hardware WITHOUT EVEN ASKING PERMISSION. On Aug 11, 12:38 pm, Disconnect <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 12:26 AM, David Turner <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Not really, otherwise there wouldn't be any reason to even try the > > open-source thing. > > > The reason why everything is not entirely developed in the open source tree > > are multiple, but basically boil down to the fact that product development > > has a much higher priority at the moment than building a strong and pure > > open-source community for the platform. > > > However, the latter is still a goal that we strive to achieve, and be sure > > we will get there at some point. For example, the open-source donut branch > > really reflect the state of our current sources, with a slight delay > > compared to the internal tree. > > > Also; I know a couple of manufacturers that are using the open-source > > Cupcake > > sources to build real products; so I disagree with Disconnect's assumption > > that the open-source tree is "totally useless" :-). > > Leaving aside the procedural/technical problems (inability to reasonably > accept patches to anything except master, etc) its still not a project you > can contribute to. If cupcake is the version external devs should be working > with, are you accepting patches to it? ..no? Only for donut. > > That makes sense, except the donut tree is almost always broken for anything > other than the emulator. (Most recently it was because of proprietary > HEADERS. Yes, as in "header files describing an interface but containing no > code". Not proprietary libraries, which is bad enough, but headers.) > > Outside platform devs - who own the device sold specifically for platform > dev - are once again in the state where the recommended action is "wait for > donut to ship on hardware, then illegally copy the bins off and use those." > (It's against the license, no matter how many times google says to do it.) > > That is hardly an open source community project. Its great that its close to > the internal tree, but that is a misleading statement when the internal tree > includes a ton of core proprietary bins and libs. (Even the > "non-google-experience" version, which could theoretically be public.) > > lbcoder's big long rosy "how an open source community project can work" > message was great, but it has very little bearing on reality in Android. A > couple points though: > - they avoided gpl like the plague. Just the kernel and bluez, iirc - there > is no license requirement to release anything else. (Most similar > environments would have used busybox and one of the small libc's as well, > but they didn't -- specifically to reduce the amount of source that had to > be released.) > - the illusion of openness is exactly that - an illusion to make consumers > feel fuzzy about it. (and lbcoder, evidently) it's great that the > unsupported unmaintained version is mostly open. > - hw manufs -always- modify the source to get their specific goals met. look > at the different symbian interfaces for example. that's not special to > android. > - outside collaboration is near zero still, partially due to > backlog/workload/procedures (being worked on, mostly by poor jbq) but > largely due to the inherently proprietary nature of the trees. > > If google was committed to the big rosy picture painted in the rest of his > message, they could knock out some low-hanging fruit: a gmail client (even > just an android-skinned version of the j2me one - no push, no contact sync, > etc) and a market client (no-protected-apps). And I'm talking bins, not > source so don't get all freaky at me. > > Those things are entirely under their control and don't interfere with the > 'google experience' phones, but they'd bring AOSP vaguely close to every > other mobile platform out there.. (m.google.com is a really depressing site > if you are an AOSP user. Native apps for everything from maps to contact > sync to youtube, for everyone but you.) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
