Of course there are people who don't know what it means, that is just called ignorance. Typically though, when you explain it, they appreciate it.
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Incognito <[email protected]> wrote: > I've never met a single average customer that feels fuzzy about open > source. I99% of customers could care less about open source. Open source is > really meant for developers and cellphone manufacturers. > > On Aug 11, 2009, at 12:38 PM, Disconnect <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 12:26 AM, David Turner < <[email protected]> > [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.. ( <http://m.google.com>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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
