It's perhaps easier to define what's NOT so open about Android. It is not, at its core anyway, developed in the wide open with a fat feedback loop from the community. That's essentially the same model as other companies have used successfully, i.e. Microsoft pushing new languages only to go public and standardize later at their own discretion.
I don't really see a big issue with that, patches still flow inbound to Google from AOSP and those who do not want Google's stuff are free to use any of the AOSP derived phone images (example: List of ROM's for my N1: http://theunlockr.com/category/roms-2/android-roms-2/htc-nexus-one-roms/). In such a conservative and competitive business as smartphones, I salute Google for being able to push it this far, embracing tinkering and hacking. You can witness this same tinker attitude in the API's. It is absolutely brilliant to be have a platform where everything is replaceable and augmentative. I.e. install Skype, or a SIP client, and have it operate/hook-in at the exact same level as the native GSM calling application. That's the kind of openness that loosens the traditional shackles and chains, and allows anyone with a good idea, to push the field forward. On Dec 13, 9:27 am, Reinier Zwitserloot <[email protected]> wrote: > That's quite the can of worms, Steven. But its the crux of the matter: > There are so many different flavours, and within that, different > yardsticks. We're mincing definitions when the discussion is boiled > down to something as overly simplified as "Android is released under an > OSI compatible license. Hence, it's open, end of discussion". > > Can Android be more open? Yes. Can it be more closed? Yes. > > But to be perfectly fair, and it would take me 10 pages to fully nuance > why I feel this is true, Android is far more open than not. > > In particular, it's more open in 2 ways that count the most for me > personally: (1) Porting some fairly recent version of android to random > hardware of my own choosing seems like something that's within the > realm of possibility. The hobby project that has ported android to > iPhones is the proof of this principle. (2) If I'm developing for > android and I need a look at internals to figure out whats going on, I > can do that. > > These are but 2 of a bajillion axes of 'open', but these are important > to me, and I'm guessing, to most others frequenting this newsgroup. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" 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/javaposse?hl=en.
