On 3 September 2012 16:35, Tim Mensch <[email protected]> wrote: > On 9/1/2012 3:29 AM, dE wrote: >> How does Google benefit by making the project opensource? > > That's a fait accompli: The fact that it was open source gave it a > competitive advantage over iOS and Windows Mobile in the eyes of the various > hardware manufacturers, because they could customize it however they liked > to "differentiate" their phones. > > Honestly that "differentiation" was mostly awful, but it was what they > WANTED from a phone OS, and so they chose Android (except Nokia, R.I.P. > [1]).
Please don't forget that Google offered their Mobile OS for free or even cheaper than free (as in share the ads revenue generated from their NON_OSS version of Android), while MS wants license fee per phone: http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-%E2%80%9Cless-than-free%E2%80%9D-business-model/ Price is a king. (Usability is Queen). > >> Largest e.g. is Linux desktop, who's administrations despite being >> hard is used by ~1.5% of the world and the primary reason for most of >> these people is that it's GPLed software. > > Linux desktop is losing market share to OS X. Sad, but true. And having > tried to use Linux desktops, I can't blame them, though personally I can't > stand being forced to use the mouse on OS X (how do you call up the menu > from the keyboard? You can't.), and so would jump to Linux desktop myself > rather than reduce my productivity if I needed to leave the Windows > platform. > >> So we can't conclude that people will not given a damn about >> Apache/GPL/GNU projects, had it been so the 1000s of developers >> wouldn't have volunteered to develop opensource software and >> development is quiet a lot of effort for charity, finally they're >> also people. And we see even more of non-developer contributors >> daily. > > Developers who care about open source are a small, small fraction of people > -- there certainly are not enough of them to make a difference in something > like a consumer cell phone market. It only takes a few developers to make a > product used by millions, and frankly all the millions really care about is > "free" and the user experience. Also to throw the spanner: large chunk (much bigger than 1%) of non-consumer IT is open source. See web browsers, web servers, whole application stacks, programming languages, non-Oracle databases, big data IT, IAAS/SAAS offerings to name the few. In the TOP500 computers, MS's share is 0.4% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems) Open Source is big and working within it has many (also financial) benefits for both individuals and for enterprise. > [1] http://realmensch.org/blog/rip-nokia +1 -- Daniel Drozdzewski -- 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.
