I love stuff like this, it is classic Steve Jobs, he is an absolute genius at media manipulation and marketing. For many years he successfully portrayed as apple as the hippy free spirits against the suits of Microsoft and IBM. Then suddenly along comes an open source product that competes with them, and makes them look like the suits.
So what does he do? He "re-ignites the openness debate between iOS and Android". Excuse me, what debate? There is no debate here, iOS is closed source, and Android is open source, this is a fact that every man and his dog knows :-) However by claiming to re-ignite a debate that never existed he is putting into peoples minds the notion that in some way iOS and Android are similar in their openness. They aren't. > How does Android get away with the “open” claim when the source isn’t public > until major releases, and no one outside Google can check in? [...@joehewitt] The source tree can be cloned from the git repository that Paul mentions, anyone can get it, and change it. BTW what does "check in" mean in a distributed version control system? > Compare the Android “open source” model to Firefox or Linux if you want to > see how disingenuous that “open” claim is. [...@joehewitt] I love this one. Well in excess of 95%, and probably more of the kernel that is in Android is also in the mainline kernel that is on any Linux system, and was written using the same open source model. Doesn't a standard Android distro come with Firefox on it as well? > Until Android is read/write open, it’s no different than iOS to me. Open > source means sharing control with the community, not show and tell. > [...@joehewitt] If Mr Hewitt wants to he can take the Android code from the GIT repository and fork it, creating his own operating system. How open is that? Tim -- WebERP Africa Ltd +447710427049 +256752963327 +255784602561 www.weberpafrica.com _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ All Archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---------------------------------------
