Finally! Jean-Baptiste Queru (yes, husband of) has announced the source code release for Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich (technically, it’s 4.0.1). Naturally, this code dump also happens to include the source code for Honeycomb – however, due to Honeycomb’s incomplete nature, there’s no tags available for it. Not interesting from a let’s-build-it-and-code-point of view, but it is interesting for ROM hackers – bring it on, ICS for my Galaxy SII!
yes, husband of …. of what?
Of Eugenia Loli-Queru, on of the founders of this site.
I only wish she had married Iggy Pop instead, cause then she would have been Eugenia Loli-Pop!
Best Post Ever
I don’t think Eugenia is a founder; I’ve been on this site back when it didn’t have its own domain and I don’t recall her posting stories or comments then.
But she’s probably done more than any other person to shape the site into what it is now.
And I must bug her again for her beef stew recipe – used to have it but lost it years ago.
“One of”. I know she didn’t start the site, but yes she’s been here from the early days and was a big part in making it what it is today.
Isn’t that what I said? What do you consider “the early days”? For me, that was ’97
Well let’s see…Eugenia’s posts on OSNews were what piqued my interest in BeOS, and I started playing with that OS in ’99-2000.
I guess my interpretation of “one of the founders” being someone who helped shape the site in its early years conflicts with yours. Sorry.
If I remember correctly, Eugenia took over the then stagnant BeOSNews, improved it, and generalized it into OSNews.
In keeping with this beginning, OSNews has always been, and will likely remain, one of the better source for discussion about BeOS/HaikuOS and many other alternative OSes.
You remember faulty.
OSNews started a long time before Eugenia became editor. But, it was neglected and had little traffic when she did take over.
Before OSNews, Eugenia was the main editor at BeNews (defunct, long gone) where she cut her teeth/built her reputation. IIRC, she left BeNews in late 2001 (though might have done both sites for a while.) certainly, she was still at BeNews when Dano hit.
Except, 99-2000 she was still at BeNews, which might be what you are thinking of? I’m pretty sure she didn’t leave BeNews fully till 2001 when the site went belly up, and transitioned to OSNews some time that year.
She just typed “www.osnews.com” in the address bar after BeNews went tits up, and ended up at the stagnant OSNews (v1). She sent a mail to David, and he allowed her to completely overhaul it. That was OSNews v2. Adam then wrote OSNews v3 to overhaul many of the lower systems. He also wrote v4 which is what we’re currently using.
Someone who shall remain unnamed started work on OSNews v5, but that project never got finished because we bit off way more than we could chew. We’re currently planning something I came up with called OSNews Simple – I’ll let you decide what that means (esp. in light of several popular websites getting ever more complex and confusing).
Talking about The Verge? ’cause that is a cluttered mess to my eyes.
Yup. Unusable.
I’ve been hanging for this since the nexus announcement.
Cyanogenmod need to get on this ASAP. CM7 has been pretty good but I’m quite happy to jump to new nightlies again when this comes out.
Indeed, I’m looking forward to trying it on my Nook Color. I don’t think the Moto Cliq will even be able to load it though; besides the 528MHz processor there are some serious storage and memory constraints. But CM7 is running halfway decently on it.
I have CM7 running on a HTC hero pretty well.
No harm in trying, at worst you have to reflash.
CM7 is running better on the hero than official 2.1 roms.
I’ve seen the same performance improvements on the Cliq regarding CM7 vs MotoBLUR 2.1. If I recall, the Hero has similar specs to the Cliq, minus the keyboard.
Given the number of bugs in CM7.1 on the galaxy s2, I’m not holding my breath…
Hrm, wonder how many of the “Google isn’t open”, “Android isn’t OSS”, etc detractors will now retract their criticisms?
What’s really interesting, is that the source code is available before the first device that uses it is.
Will be interesting to see who releases an Adroid 4.0.x upgrade for an already-released phone/tablet first: modders or manufacturers.
My bet is on the modding community.
Obviously they were trolling. So I don’t think that anyone will retract anything. Their response will be, en masse : “Sure it’s open now, until Google decides otherwise”
Most likely… seeing as manufacturers need to do “verification” and “testing” before releasing anything (sometimes for a whole year like SE).
Well, I just saw this article on Ars:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/google-makes-android-4-…
And it makes me wonder if Android really benefits by being ‘truly open’, because you have devices like the Kindle fire that will release a bastardized version of Android, with anything relating to Google or the Android market removed, and locks users into a different app store.
That in itself isn’t so bad, except that:
1. The media keeps insisting on calling the Fire an Android tablet, which it really isn’t. This not only gives consumers the false impression that it can do anything an ordinary Android tablet can, but also that it is a real iPad competitor. People will use this as yet another example of Android fragmentation, which really isn’t fair to Android, since Amazon doesn’t even advertise it as an Android device.
2. It has the potential to splinter Android development, esp if the Fire really takes off, and developers start targeting it at the exclusion of all other Android devices.
I’m not necessarily saying that they shouldn’t release the source code, but something like Android really needs a ‘benevolent dictator’ to call the shots, and demand (via the license) that at least a minimum set of requirements must be met if you want to fork it AND sell hardware with your forked code.
Edited 2011-11-15 00:33 UTC
Open source software and what a device does with it are two different things. Android benefits from being open, and what Kindle does is irrelevant.
Are you sure it’s locked down? Just a couple of hours ago I was chatting with a friend about it and he had read that people are already sideloading apps onto it without root access. Unfortunately I don’t have a source to cite, so take it for what it is (third party hearsay) but if true that would be quite interesting.
Edited 2011-11-15 04:21 UTC
Yeah, I heard the same thing too (after posting), but again… no official sources.
I stand corrected:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-sideload-apps-on-the-kindle-fire
You can side load Android apps onto the Fire. It most certainly is an Android tablet.
I still don’t agree with the decision to develop in secret and after the fact open source it. This means that one of the best features of open source, developing the software together, is lost.
And to me Google isn’t open if they are closed until release. Though still miles better than the competition. Maybe Mozilla can make a populair open mobile OS.
Edited 2011-11-15 10:45 UTC
This is true, but then again google does not accept external patches beyond some bugfixes so it pretty much negates contribution in a centralized fashion. You’d end up having cyanogenmod pulling masses of code from google and merging external contributions…making them the defacto android tree…
Well even disagreeing with their policy, you can see where it comes from.
Google clearly decided to work with hardware manufacturers and not pull a Gnome out of the hat.And by the looks of it OHA members actually contribute directly into Google’s sources.
A lot of the high profile F/OSS projects are known to have “It’s the hardware manufaturer’s fault” and “No! You fix your code, our is perfect” attitude. If Android project had it, then you would have not seen the adoption.
There are two points to take away:
Yes, they are not following open development path that is associated with a lot of OSS projects.
Yes, they have their justifications why that is a better way than the alternative.
Releasing the source didn’t make Android more open in the sense of open development, sorry to disappoint.
Amen to that!
– Gilboa
(Though, to be honest, once I rooted my SGS2 and removed/froze all the Samsung crap my SGS2 more-or-less doubled its battery life giving me little reason to replace the ROM…
On the other hand, ICS does have cool icons, no?
[I’m that shallow])
Edited 2011-11-15 02:59 UTC
I’m thrilled to see Google following through. I was really becoming afraid that I’d bet on the wrong horse with Android and we would be seeing less open releases and an end to source code releases. Glad to see this is not the case. As the subject heading states, I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.
In a slightly related note, anyone know if ketchup would improve the taste of shoe leather? Or if crow is best served baked or fried?
–bornagainpenguin
I don’t get why people hate Google so much (maybe they search for really nasty things all day and therefor are afraid)
BUT: (and I stole this of slashdot, but it sums up my feelings nearly 100%)
Google are:
– releasing source code to their operating system for free, under no obligation. The Nook Tablet and Color and Kindle Fire are great examples of how this can work against Google – Android devices that make no payment to Google and do not come with access to Google’s Android Marketplace, or Google’s proprietary apps.
– virtually the only major silicon valley company left (compared to Apple, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon etc) who haven’t patent trolled anyone (except in retaliation of course), although they could have, Google still has thousands of patents even though companies like Microsoft have far more, some of them are a lot more important than Apple GUI animation patents. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/01/googles-mapreduce-p… [arstechnica.com]
– been far better at sticking to privacy promises and openness compared to the likes of Facebook
– have entire divisions of their company and features that make no revenue for them (and are not R&D projects in hope of future earnings) but are retained. e.g. Free offline and IMAP/SMTP/POP access to gmail from day one, google docs for personal use (I can open and edit files with no ads anywhere), AOSP, Google chrome/ chromium, google.org
– principled stand on net neutrality
– taking a principled stand and pulling out of China
Somehow Google are still constantly attacked, way more than companies like Apple and Microsoft these days, they deserve some credit. Sure, they are far from the do no evil motto, but these days, doing a lot less evil than other megacorps is still remarkable.
Though they can clearly benefit each other, as far as (application) “ecosystem” goes, at the very least. Even if appstores are separate, the platforms to target are close enough.
Well, Facebook might have met its match at least in the, also quite problematic, Streetview…
(generally, both being the most powerful tools of – curiously socially acceptable in comparison to, say, peeping over the fence in the old days – cyber-stalkers :p )
IMAP access was added few years after launch (and, really, probably largely to the benefit of upcoming wave of mobile devices). Generally, all those “that make no revenue for them (and are not R&D projects in hope of future earnings)” is what keeps the real product of Google (us, our eyeballs, and wallets when the time comes to buy some advertised rubbish ;p ) more happy, it’s very much in the self-interest of Google.
To be fair, that’s also simply in their best self-interest.
That’s simply not true. Sure, they made some lofty announcements (which, evidently, scored them some positive, if inaccurate, perceptions; some lasting points in increasingly sinophobic places), some posturing …but, when the reality of pulling out of already one of the biggest (and rapidly growing) markets set in, Google didn’t really do anything.
Hey, you seem to essentially grumble a bit yourself at the accuracy of /., in a nearby comment, you should know better
Overall, Google is on upswing rush right now, so of course there will attract attention, of all kinds.
(plus, you know, Skynet lurks in something like their serverfarm
)
Edited 2011-11-15 19:33 UTC
Actually, they’ve been sending Chinese users to their uncensored Hong Kong page since March 2010:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html
Surprisingly, China hasn’t torpedoed this arrangement AFAIK. The only change after that was a tweak in June 2010 adding one extra click:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/google-tweaks-china…
Edited 2011-11-16 07:28 UTC
All it did was bypassing some regulations, by the virtue of Hong Kong being still a bit separate entity. It’s nowhere near “a principled stand and pulling out of China” – they still had (and have) friggin’ R&D and sales offices in mainland China :p (NVM it boiling down, after that short quarter, to one since-always-available link/URL becoming a bit more prominent)
Edited 2011-11-16 08:43 UTC
Nothing to say here.
You clearly aren’t actually in Silicon Valley. Of the 5 “compared to” companies you listed, only 2 of them would be considered Silicon Valley companies (Apple and Oracle). There are dozens of major Silicon Valley companies that haven’t sued over patents. That’s not a very high bar to leap over here.
Are you forgetting the Buzz debacle? Street View Wifi sniffing? At least Facebook is up front about how much they don’t care about privacy.
Lots of companies have this, I’m not exactly sure why this makes them better than any of the others.
Right, the Verizon carve out is very principled.
Except, they didn’t pull out of China.
Because most of what you listed is marketing fluff. They believe in net neutrality but they’ll live without it on wireless networks to keep Verizon happy. They’re big on privacy except when they’re stealing data on wifi networks. They’re “open”, except when for one reason or another it’s inconvenient right now. Sometimes it’s better to deal with the guys who you know will knife you in the face (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) instead of the guys that will knife you in the back (Google).
Well… They made sure that they don’t have to adhere to Chinese “political speech” laws. That’s a big deal.
Your assumption that the first three companies have one knife is not true. Google at least has the knife only to your back and a smile in your face. The others have a knife in your face and in your back.
Facebook cares very deeply about privacy. Just look at all the’ve done to try and stamp it out.
How many times, it’s “Don’t be evil”.
I imagine crow should probably be braised in something strongly-flavored, given the probable toughness of the meat and their diet. Maybe with a citrus-caper butter sauce or a raspberry chutney.
Oh, you meant metaphorical crow! Sorry.
To me the ICS logo look seriously weird. The perspective seems to be way off. Anyone else agree?
Well, if we are talking about the logo here…
http://www.androidguys.com/2011/11/15/ice-cream-sandwich-source-cod…
…the dark corners of the top packages do trigger my weirdness sensor.
Best. Comment. Ever.
“And also Apple is way more open than Google because they give away WebKit.”
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/google-makes-android-4-…
I really had to mod this as funny! XD
Rehdon
Yeah, I read that too. Maybe it is the comment system but lately it seems that the Ars audience is way below the slashdot crowd from a knowledge level.
(TBH the articles also aren’t as good as they used to be, most of them are just superficial blog posts. Truely awesome stuff like their file system article from a lot of years ago are nowhere to be seen as of late.)
Wow, is that even theoretically possible?
You know who Dianne is, right?
Former Be employee and now Android framework dev at Google? yeah, follow her on G+
Jon Stokes (IIRC), a very bright gentleman now writes articles for Wired.com, which explains why a lot of their really interesting, technical articles (like you mentioned on file systems) no longer appear on ArsTechnica.com