On Aug 11, 11:10 pm, Romain Guy <[email protected]> wrote:
> We are very happy to receive patches and we do work on getting them
> into the final builds. Unfortunately we have deadlines and adding code
> to Android is not just a matter of merging a patch. Patches need code
> reviews, testing, documentation if necessary, etc. In this particular
> the patch has been received on July 31st, after an internal milestone.
> This patch will not go in Donut, as some of the patches I would have
> liked to add to Donut. It is at this point to late to add features to
> Donut. And unfortunately the same goes with Eclair. Some engineers
> internally clearly expressed their enthusiast about this feature.
> Being an Open Source project does not mean "check in code for new
> features whenever we/you/the community feel like it." We understand
> the frustration and we are sorry for that.
OK, how about David Goldfarb's video ringtone support patches? He
started working on those a long time ago. Originally the patches had
several issues with them, Google was quick to jump in and point out
what was wrong. He resolved the issues and submitted his patches again
(over a month ago). Once the patches lacked the issues pointed out,
what happens then? Nothing. Once an acceptable feature request is
actually in the repo, silence. Is Android Upsidedowncake feature
frozen too?
> It does matter. I would love to see the community be involved and I've
> been monitoring the Android groups since they've been created. I can
> say for instance that the community did not show any interest at all
> in opening discussions about the UI toolkit for instance. There have
> been, it's true, numerous discussions in other areas though. But
> again, this does not mean we do not have constraints, they will simply
> not go away because you wish it was easier without them.
What, so it's the communities fault for being told not to voice our
opinions and submit patches, and then not submitting our opinions on a
basic subject where we think Google is doing a fine job in?
> We do not ignore this feature and there have been (long) discussions
> about it in the open. We clearly stated what our reservations on the
> matter are and an appropriate solution as yet to be defined, at least
> to my knowledge.
Then I challenge you to open a thread in Android-platform beginning
with "We overwhelmingly understand that due to the large numbers of
consumer phones with limited internal storage, that App installation
on SD card is one of the most crucial features to real Android users.
Eclair is unfortunately feature frozen, and while we shouldn't have
ignored the community this long, we are committed to getting this
feature into Flan, which we suspect will feature freeze by (insert
date here). There are some constraints to this feature due to
agreements with the OHA that cannot be negotiated. APKs cannot be left
unencrypted on the SD card, etc etc etc. We will use this thread to
work through the design issues, from top to bottom. From how the
launcher acts when the SD card is removed, to how installation targets
are chosen at install time, to how applications handle the removal of
the SD card."
The community response will be overwhelming. There will also be some
noise from people who pop in and say "just dump the apk on the card
and call it done, to hell with security". Just ignore people ignoring
the constraints and continue the discussion instead of shutting it
down with a shrug.
> The core Android team does not have control over decisions made by the
> manufacturers. Yes we understand that some people really want to have
> the ability to install apps on the SD card. And yes we agree it would
> be a nice feature to have, but we want to do it in a safe and robust
> way.
It seems you don't understand. The entire ecosystem is being strangled
by this. It's not a nice to have feature. It seems like if someone
over there did understand, this would be a feature in Donut. If you've
starred the feature request in the bug database you'd understand how
angry people are about this. But I don't think anybody is even
notified when people post "Wow! I am getting way too much email from
having this issue starred, so I'm unstarring it".
> In the meantime, if you have any patch related to the app framework or
> the UI toolkit or the Home screen I will be happy to review them and
> merge them to the appropriate internal code branch when they get
> accepted.
That's what you say. Name one significant user visible feature that
has made its way from a non OHA member contributor from the public
repository into Donut in Google's private repo. Not a bugfix, or a
typo. Something visible to the user in the way that FLAC support or
Video Ringtones or something of that ilk would be. My point is, how
many contributions do you expect to receive when the worthy ones so
far are still unattended to?
My aim isn't to harp on you guys, but to try to let you know how it
looks from the outside, because Android is a great idea, and it seems,
from where we stand, like there's a disconnect between what's really
ailing it and what's being done about it.
-E
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