Andy Rubin is a vice president for engineering at Google, and he is responsible for the Android mobile operating system project. He recently had an hour long chat with The New York Times’ Brad Stone, sharing his insights into things like openness, the lack of secret APIs in Android, and several other things. Of course, the jabs at Apple were prevalent.
Openness is the keyword of the interview, and Rubin uses it to clearly set Android apart from Apple’s restrictive iPhone operating system. He first states that because Android is open ad free to use by any OEM, it will eventually win out over proprietary, closed platforms like that of Apple and RIM. “It’s a numbers game. When you have multiple OEM’s building multiple products in multiple product categories, it’s just a matter of time,” Rubin said, “I don’t know when it [Android outselling Apple/RIM] might be, but I’m confident it will happen. Open usually wins.”
Rubin event went as far as to compare Apple’s iPhone OS to North Korea. He states that users will care about openness as soon as they realise the lack of it means they can’t have things. “When they can’t have something, people do care. Look at the way politics work. I just don’t want to live in North Korea,” he said.
Stone also asked whether or not Google has an innate advantage over competitors on the Android Market because Google might use secret APIs. Rubin denied this, and slipped in yet another stab towards Apple.
“We use the same tools we expect our third-party developers to,” Rubin told the NYT, “We have an SDK we give to developers, and when we write our Gmail app, we use the same SDK. A lot of guys have private APIs. We don’t. That’s on policy and on technology. If there’s a secret API to hook into a billing system we open up that billing system to third parties. If there’s a secret API to allow application multitasking, we open it up. There are no secret APIs. That is important to highlight for Android sake. Open is open and we live by our own implementations.”
Recently, Steve Jobs made a traditional “think-of-the-children” remark – he said that “folks who want porn can buy an Android phone”. Rubin didn’t feel like responding to this. “I don’t really have a rationale for that,” he said, “It’s a different style of interacting with the public and the media.”
And what if a Google employee lost an Android phone prototype at a bar? “I’d be happy if that happened and someone wrote about it,” Rubin said, “With openness comes less secrets.”
But the lost phone is also a new hardware spec.
It’s not only the OS.
I think Rubin is correct about his comparisons, especially when you compare it to Apple’s hardware. Apple tell users what they can use their device for and nothing more. Google and the Android platform on the other hand gives the users something they can do what they like with.
The “North Korea” comparison is funny because it’s true. A dictatorship that North Korea has does exactly the same as Apple do(or in fact Steve Jobs), tell you what you can and cannot do and if you don’t stick to that and Jail Break the device, you’re branded as a criminal.
I think customers will and are starting to realise this and why Android is gaining market share very fast. Apple are dictators, nobody wants to be dictated to in how they should use their devices.
Funny… Apple has never told me what I can or can’t do. Maybe I dropped off their mailing list.
Also funny, the slew of users Apple has jailed for jail breaking their devices.
You might think that your remarks are oozing with sarcasm, but let me assure you that your sarcasm is completely misplaced. Language is there, and as long as language is there so is the threat, a very realistic threat judging by today’s news regarding Gizmodo editor
Apple is actively trying to KEEP jailbreaking a CRIMINAL OFFENCE. This is not made up – it’s FACT.
http://www.osnews.com/story/21913/Apple_Jailbreaking_Could_Crash_Tr…
And think about this. If you’ve got a jailbroken phone, you’re walking around with the thing on a big, huge wireless network that lets companies at the very least — triangulate your position — at worst, use the GPS unit to figure out exactly where you are.
Oh, and your billing information is tied to your address… credit score…
You’re walking around with an illegal device that advertises it’s existence and your identity.
F-ing brilliant.
Sorry, but my livelihood, financial stability, and family are worth more than a jailbroken iPhone. I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.
And how would they know you’re using a jailbroken iPhone without looking at your traffic in detail and possibly not even then? Even if you’re not on AT&T in the U.S, you can buy factory unlocked iPhones. It’s perfectly legal to import them, though expensive. So even if you are on a different network, that’s no evidence of jailbreaking… Not that evidence is all that important to Apple I suppose.
Do you really think Apple couldn’t exert pressure on the wireless carriers and collude with them to implement packet sniffing / jailbreak detection?
If jail-breaking is illegal, and Apple decides to go after the jail-breakers, they can (in the US, anyhow) subpoena traffic logs from wireless carriers. I would assume writing a log analyzer would be trivial.
Here’s the best part: The laws that they’ll use to do this are the -same- laws the RIAA used with great success. The precedent is set, it’s legal for Apple to take action, it’s legal for them to require wireless carriers in the US to hand over the data, and according to the EULA’s, it’s illegal for you to jailbreak your phone.
I wouldn’t want an iPhone without it being jail broken. So I’ll just avoid the situation all together, thanks.
Like I said, it’s an opinion. You may think I need a tin-foil hat, but I’ve done enough research to make an informed decision. In my opinion, jail breaking an Apple iPhone exposes me to more potential ‘liability’ than I’m willing to accept. I believe the device isn’t really ‘yours’ (as in, the EULA prohibits you from doing whatever you want with the hardware you purchase) unless it is jail broken, and I will not hand over money to a company selling me a ‘right’ to use a device in a prescribed manor.
It’s about risk aversion. Say I do jailbreak my phone, say Apple goes on a jailbreak jihad. Say my device is identified. I cannot afford the legal defense. I cannot afford the cost of a settlement. Heck, I can’t justify the cost of the device or service at this point. Why on earth would I go out of my way to make myself afford something that may cost me a whole lot more in the long run?
That’s not just stupid, it would be irresponsible to put my family in that situation.
I concur, except that if I were in the US in the current evironment and thinking, I would substitute the phrase “commercial software” in place of where you wrote “jailbroken iPhone”.
In othe words, the more generally correct phrase applicable to the apparent situation in the US at the moment thus becomes:
Sorry, but my livelihood, financial stability, and family are worth more than any commercial software. I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.
I cannot see why you were modded down. What you said is true. I had to mod you back up to 0 so your comment wouldn’t be hidden anymore.
Are any of the things in their submission false? Is it possible those things could happen? Again, we don’t have to like it, and personally I don’t, but the reality is this exact same thing happens in many other industries, although granted it’s generally not from the product manufacturers. We see people wanting to speed limit cars because there’s the potential that drivers could go over the limit. We have laws that prevent serving alcohol to people who are intoxicated – surely it’s someone’s right to drink themselves to death if they want to? The difference here is that Apple are the product manufacturer so it’s somehow not OK for them to campaign for restrictions.
They are again doing what any corporation does, seeking to make the most profit from their products in whatever means they believe is best. Just as Google are. You want to paint Google as some sort of angel – remind me what their response to the ongoing 3G problems were? They talk about openness then jump into bed with Adobe on a completely closed architecture because it suits their business model at the time. Darwin is open, but do Google openly share their search engine code? How many opensource projects do each of them contribute to?
Apple also don’t restrict me from doing anything I WANT to do with my iPhone. I don’t want to jailbreak it – it has plenty of functionality just the way it is. It fits my telephony requirements, reminders and appointments, browsing, email and social networking, I can manage my client’s Windows, Linux or OSX servers from it in a pinch and play some games or watch a movie if time permits. All the things THEY DESIGNED it to be capable of doing. In two years of using it there’s maybe been four or five occasions where I could have used multitasking. Most of these so-called restrictions are only for geekdom, the biggest majority of users don’t give a crap about them.
And your comment about Jobs taking a swipe at Android with his porn remark suggests you believe it’s OK for Google to make all the snipes they like at the iPhone (see the comments about Flash and openness) but it’s not OK for Jobs to do the same? One-eyed?
The reality is Google like most companies out there have no set guidelines for this stuff, they will do whatever they believe is best for business at the time. Just like Apple do, just like Microsoft do, just like Adobe do, just like any major corporation does. Trying to paint any of them any differently just makes you look like a fool.
As usual, you try to put words into my mouth and “suggest” how I believe things are. You use these strategies to discredit me, and make me look bad.
You falsesly accuse me of favoritism, even though I’ve said, even in discussions with you, that I find Google just as bad as any other company. This is inconvenient and doesn’t fit your Apple zealot agenda, so you ignore it.
I’ve been clear about my feelings about Apple: great products, rotten, anti-open, anti-consumer company – as evidenced by the fact ALL my Apple reviews have been positive.
Nobody is painting Google as an angel but the simple fact is, they have given users the right to do what they like with the device thanks to the more “open” platform.
Android will make them good money and I’m sure customer will appreciate for the more openness of the platform, which I do.
Edited 2010-04-28 11:01 UTC
I’d say it’s rational and reasonable for Apple to pursue civil cases against jailbreaking as an extreme response. A common response should be rejection of support due to breach of contract. Making it a criminal case prosecuted with government funds on Apple’s behalf; absolute madness. And the worst part is that it’s being based on potential things that haven’t happened. Let’s make jailbreaking a civil case as it should be and save the criminal charges for when an actually criminal act is committed. Criminalizing the modification of one’s own purchased hardware grossly biased against society.
Don’t you get your warranty voided when you jailbreak your device?
Personally, I think the guy is full of shit. For the most part, the only people who care about whether something is open are the ones who are technically savvy enough to understand the difference. For the average Joe Sixpack, I think having something that’s easy to use and works out of the box with a polished interface is what is key. And sadly, with the advent of ‘Generation iPod’, a device’s ‘sex appeal’ also factors heavily into the equation. I am not saying that Android isn’t any/all of these things, and I actually just pre-ordered a Droid Incredible, so don’t think me an Apple fanboy.
Only thing I’m saying is, just sit back and ask yourself if you REALLY think this lady give’s a rat’s ass that she’s limited to only downloading apps on the Apple store:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndkIP7ec3O8
It’s here first “computer”, of course it doesn’t matter to here because she is oblivious to everything else out there. You simply don’t want things you don’t know.
(I didn’t actually watch more than 1 second of the clip, maybe she breaks the thing out of frustration after she couldn’t install Haiku on it
)
I think the point of the video was to show that Apple works hard at making technology easy to use and understand even to a 100 year old woman who has never owned a computer before. I’m sorry but I don’t see her booting up Ubuntu and understanding it as easy as an iPad.
But the parent posters question was if the women seemed happy.
My father thought this thing: http://pan.fotovista.com/dev/1/3/04208431/g_04208431.jpg to be the pinnacle of gaming. He treated it as a secret object.
When he saw me playing my PSP he didn’t touch it any more.
Sure, she seems happy. That’s a success for Apple in the area of ergonomics. That should serve as a lesson for competitors who don’t know how to get good usability now, because in this area Apple somehow managed to do better. That should not be used as a justification for Apple’s horrible behavior in other areas like the locked down app store.
Forbidding people from installing apps coming from outside of the app store does not magically makes the device easier to use. The two aren’t related. They shouldn’t be labelled as such. Apple made an easy to use device, fine. That does not excuse them for making a morally unacceptable device. The fact that people who like the device don’t know about those horrors does not excuse Apple’s behavior either. That was my point. Forgive me for not explaining myself clearly enough
Edited 2010-04-28 10:05 UTC
Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt, especially when you have control over both the hardware and software.
Whether it is ‘morally unacceptable’ is not your decision to make. Many people who own iPhones know about the closed nature of it and are fine with it, so why do you think you’re in a position to make these kinds of judgements for them?
Having said all that, I am neither defending nor justifying Apple’s business practices. I’m just stating a fact, and that fact is that most people who own iPhones don’t give a rat’s ass whether they can only install apps from the Apple store or not. And even if they do, it certainly wasn’t enough to persuade them not to buy an iPhone, so they obviously don’t care THAT much.
In a previous reply to me, you likened what Apple is doing with the iPhone to rape. Well, it certainly isn’t rape if users volunteer for it, unless the iPhone comes with a secret date rape app running in the background that nobody knows about
Edited 2010-04-28 10:57 UTC
I get sick of this kind of reasoning. When I read that, my brain translates it as : “You know, rape doesn’t look that wrong if you didn’t got raped yet. I don’t understand why you find it so disgusting that some people rape other, as long as those who already got raped can get some weapon and shoot the raper next time”.
The fact that some horrors don’t look wrong to non-knowledgeable people cannot be used as a justification for them. Really. Crime prevention is just as important as crime punishment. That’s what education is here for
Wrong. There are those who care about openness, and there are those who don’t care about openness yet. The latter group is what many businesses and governments were in until they found they could no longer open their old documents.
I don’t think it’s unfortunate that “sex appeal” factors into a device. Lots of geeks like cars, and cars are primarily judged by their “sex appeal”, despite the technology inside. We geeks like to think we’re purely meritorious, but we’re not (nor should we be).
And Apple, more than any other company, has invested heavily in creating a smooth, intuitive user experience. Every part of the UI is obsessed over and refined, which is far different than most consumer products.
This consideration was lacking in most consumer electronic products. UIs were designed on a feature basis and in ways obvious to designers, but completely obnoxious to users. This is a result of the geek obsession with individual features. Apple doesn’t design based on features (although they are certainly there), they design based on experience.
Like Apple or not (and there are plenty of reasons not to) this obsession with experience has made their products much easier to deal with from a user’s perspective for the most part. When I went from a Windows Mobile phone to the iPhone, the Windows Mobile phone had more features, but it was obnoxious to use them. The iPhone, despite its few features, was much easier to use.
This obsession has spread to other vendors, and better products are being created as a result. So the conversation is no longer “it does X, Y, and Z”, it’s “sure it does X, Y, and Z, but it’s obnoxious to try and figure out how to do it”.
He did mention that “open” was a benefit to device manufacturers who can easily choose to adopt Android without license fees. I’d guess that would include a pretty tech savvy segment of the population; some may even say it includes engineers who can clearly consider the benefits with full understanding.
Nope, the comparison is wrong because it is between apples and oranges.
When people go shopping for a product like a cell phone or other portable device, the majority of them are looking for convenience, not a political ethos. That is why Apple is so successful in that space.
It’s not a political ethos. It’s a case of supply and demand. When an open market gets rolling then a closed one simply cannot compete with the supply, demand and size of the alternative open market.
Apple experienced that with Mac Hardware versus the PC. That’s why Apple starts off OK when they come up with something new and then ultimately loses in the long run.
Just to play devil’s advocate here…
A dictatorship in the North Korea sense gives users no choice, in the Apple sense those users are free to move to Android, Maemo or whatever else. I also consider blackberry to be more proprietary than apple btw, they tie you to their server platform too and their development tools aren’t exactly open.
Most customers don’t care about openness, they are quite willing to buy devices or media locked up with various kinds of DRM, use tv services where they are locked in to using the providers equipment (also usually drm encumbered) etc…
However in the Apple sense, the users actually receive benefits in exchange for the locking down – they gain a platform which is harder for them to break, and simpler for them to use (install apps etc without having to run the risk of installing malware)… For the average clueless user this is actually a huge benefit.
On the other hand, i would much prefer if they provide an official method to jailbreak the device so that people who aren’t technically illiterate could get more out of the device.
That’s why the Linux desktop is such a great success. Or not.
Most consumers don’t care about open, closed, private, secure or any of those things we computer geeks care about – they care about convenient.
linux is free, convenient, and open; users were brainwashed by microsoft. that’s what actually happening.
also sprach another Linux fanboy. If you dare to criticize Linux, you are brainwashed by Microsoft. Or on a payroll of Microsoft. And of course you never ever ran Linux, right?
I still remember the problems I had with RedHat in my university computing center. Actually the problem was with Gnome, but it effectively prevented me to do anything useful. When our IT support tried to switch to KDE, things got a bit better, then went haywire again. But that’s not the story. The story starts when I posted my experiences on linuxtoday discussion board. What a hostile reaction I got from Linux fanboys! I was accused of (i) being Microsoft shill, (ii) never runing Linux in my life, (iii) being completely clueless, (iv) whatever else is applicable.
So here we go again, eh? Oh, you want convenience? Then you probably sold your soul to Microsoft (or Apple). Yes. I want convenience. I don’t care about the OS I run. I want to run applications I need to run, not to make the statement about the meaning of freedom. I want the software be compatible with hardware and I’m ready to pay to have it be so (rather than getting it for free, having compatibility problem and then hearing from another Linux fanboy: well, fix it, dude, don’t you know C? Oh well, yeah, I held nothing against Android and openness in general, but stating “openness always wins” does not quite agree with existing track records.
You might wanna take a closer look at the history of things. No one was brain washed by Microsoft. Microsoft carved out a market that was not being served at the time. People wanted to be able to buy computers from anyone and have them inter-operate. Apple, Amiga, and others tied the OS to their hardware, the Unix vendors of the world fought against themselves, and Linux was just something Linus was working on with a small group online.
For the record I am not Brainwashed by MS, I don’t even have a computer that runs Windows in my house (All Linux and Mac). I do think Linux is a suitable competitor however there are a number of variables that effect it from coming into its own, but I wont get into it here.
Lastly comments like that just drive people away from Linux and Open source, makes us sound like a bunch of zealots.
It wasn’t all about carving out a market based on un-served customers as things like the OEM contracts forbidding unit sales with competing OS. But I do also agree that in the beginning, Microsoft was the savior who delivered us from IBM’s corporate grasp; it’s just disappointing that Microsoft went on to emulate IBM’s market monopolization so successfully.
They benefit significantly now from the questionable (and sometimes outright illegal) things they got away with early on.
Infact, Microsoft exploited the users’ desire for openness, by allowing them to have open hardware but tying them in to closed software instead… At the time, software was such a tiny fraction of the overall cost that it got overlooked until it was too late.
There is a reason windows is about the only major os that hasn’t been thoroughly cloned, and that is very much by design. Microsoft went out of their way to make it complicated and difficult to clone precisely so they could keep a lock on it and not have compatible clones springing up everywhere. This complexity however, is proving severely detrimental now especially when it comes to security.
Actually, if you look at windows, it’s openness that made it successful. It’s not quite as open as linux but much more than the iphone: anyone can develop any application they want on windows and distribute it however they want.
Windows wouldn’t have been successful otherwise.
You can take that further, and say that openness won out in the PC architecture. It was PC’s open architecture, as opposed to the Macintosh’s tightly closed component ecosystem, that in the end contributed to the PC’s triumph. The Macintosh, at the time, was much more convenient and easy to use but it was so closed that the much more complicated (at the time) PC almost completely eclipsed it.
Whether the same holds true today, we’ll just have to see. It’s a different crowd and a different mentality concerning technology now than it was 25 years ago. Will openness win over convenience today? Generation iPod seems to say no, but that generation (of which I am a part in age at least) won’t last forever. I think, personally, that in the end open standards and open platforms will win out, though how long that will take is anyone’s guess. NOte that I do not necessarily mean open source when I say open.
Barring unnatural forces, openness and flexibility will always win out in a market. Markets strive for pluriformity and choice -that’s just how it works. That doesn’t mean the iPhone will go away or become a loss-leading business – it just means that more open alternatives will outnumber the iPhone in popularity, pretty much like how the PC industry works now.
Android’s popularity is rising exponentially, and it won’t take more than a few years for it to overtake the iPhone. Android doesn’t have to be the better product – it just needs to be good enough and cheaper. Just imagine what will happen once the hardware capable of running Android gets cheap enough, and poorer countries get their hands on cheap Android phones.
There’s a reason Mac market share in the US is close to 10%, while it’s only 4% worldwide (incl. the US).
Edited 2010-04-28 08:31 UTC
Linux as a desktop is being marginally successful despite being hamstrung by API churn, uncertainty and lack of unification or (in some cases) quality. It is, in fact, remarkably successful for how good it is(n’t).
Not trolling, guys, I am a Linux partisan through and through, just look at the facts. BeOS? NeXTstep? OS/2? All superior systems in their day, or even now, and yet none are as widely used on desktops as Linux is today. Spare me your “Mac OS X is NeXTstep” line; I know it and I don’t consider that important. The fact is that NeXT couldn’t hack it on its own and only the Apple brand eventually pushed it in to prominence.
The graveyard of computing history is filled with well designed and highly functional systems which were in most cases superior in many or all technical senses to the Linux desktop. Why does Linux, and the open source desktop, continue to exist, and perhaps even succeed, where countless others have died in infancy? What is it that gives KDE the staying power to still be around ten years after it was written off as irrelevant now that we have GNOME? What is it that makes the open source desktop continue to advance–albeit slowly–each year? It’s not because it has better technology. It’s not because there’s a company making it that just wont let it die (not exactly, more on that in a moment).
The reason the open source desktop keeps advancing and keeps existing is precisely because it is open. In the face of all sanity it presses on because no one company controls it and no one individual can kill it.
Yes, there are a dozen companies, or more, which at any given time are dumping resources in to advancing the open source desktop, either by adding and improving applications, or building infrastructure, or throwing out and rewriting subsystems that nobody likes any more. These companies, individually, could never sustain the whole system. These companies also routinely come and go. Yet, in the end, there are always some, just as there are always some non-corporate developers, and no matter how stupid the design decision, no matter how insane the odds, no matter how superior the competition they keep building, rebuilding and ultimately moving forward.
This only works because it’s open.
It makes no economic sense to continue to support the open source desktop as a piece of technology. It only makes sense to supported because of its openness.
Linux will eventually be everywhere on phones because it doesn’t make any sense to build your own half-assed mobile OS when you can take a ready-made one, add your flashy UI, and be done. As a result of this, this openness, each phone manufacturer and reseller will buy in to the platform that they choose. Maybe it’s Meego, maybe it’s Android; it doesn’t matter. With a dozen companies, all looking out for the bottom line, pushing products on a particular platform that platform starts to look good to developers. It starts to get mind-share and market share. Eventually it becomes the de-facto standard because it’s found everywhere. In such a world there is plenty of room for a platform like the iPhone, or maybe two, but most phone companies wont ever again try to build a platform from scratch like that. There’s really no point, no incentive, for doing that any more.
An open system will see gradual improvement from earlier versions, witness the modular ibm compatible architecture and how over time each individual component can be replaced and upgraded. Contrast that with a closed system where you are waiting for the system vendor to come out with an entire new model.
The same is true of open source software, a gradual improvement as people extend the existing codebase. Commercial software works differently, you will still get improvement in a given product but it will be in bursts as “new versions” come out, and different competing products cannot share code so each one has to implement everything from scratch. This also creates a very high barrier of entry to any new commercial vendor who wants to enter an established market, as opposed to an open source project which could be forked from an existing codebase.
Users often don’t use the best product, microsoft knows this very well which is why they never tried to compete against novell, apple or proprietary unix on quality, they emphasised that they were a lot cheaper. Today linux is now cheaper than microsoft, although it doesn’t have the same marketing budget.
Open source will continue to improve and gradually eat away at the marketshare of proprietary software… proprietary unix is all but dead, osx may be alive and well but the unix side of osx is open source too. windows is only holding out longer because its less standard and more difficult to clone than unix was but sooner or later, barring any interference (legislation etc) it too will fall. It’s just a matter of how long, and how much harm microsoft do as they fall down.
Although technically, there is no “Linux desktop” since Linux is a kernel.
Joe six pack could care less about open! Android is only popular for 3 simple reasons, 1 of which may get slammed this year.
1. Free to vendors. This is good for Google and a major reason Android is growing in the US.
2. Most people I know have ” droid ” phones cause they can’t get on ATT or can’t afford AT&T etc. Most of the people I know wish they could actually get an iPhone or have a droid phone cause the iPhone doesn’t have a physical keyboard.
3. The iPhone is At&t only. Look at places where the iPhone is on more then one network and Android looks like a second hand shirt. If the iPhone went to Verizon and or TMobile it would kill all the HTC phones dead. Yeah the HTC phones are better but the iPhone just works and is damn sexy. People love it.
As for tablets the iPad will rule because there are few vendors who will invest in the time and hardware to make something as nice looking and running as the ipad at a good price at the same size or close with the batt life. Tablets are a luxury item that anyone with the money can get unlike the iPhone. Like the iPod the iPad will rule the tablet market easy.
This is pretty much an US only scenario.
There are lots of countries out there and in much of them iPhone is a toy for rich people.
People *will* want open tablets, and cheap tablets, and tablets with more features (usb ports, …). Commodity will win in the tablet space as well.
Well no longer as open and for sure not free (At least in the US)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20003602-56.html
That link doesn’t mean anything. You can’t write any bit of software without stepping on *someone’s* patent, I’d bet you there’s even a patent to cover hello world. Everyone steps on everyone else’s patents, the lawyers get fat and rich, our system sinks further into the toilet, and all the while we’re stuck watching them fight like spoiled little kids. What a great society we have!
It doesn’t mean anything but the fact that HTC has to pay Microsoft a FEE for every version of Android they sell. Microsoft basically owns Android now in the US. And if Apple wins their lawsuit or HTC settles that then everyone else will be inline to pony up!
And in all this Google has not stepped up at all to help HTC. Google could buy Palm and then use that as defense but nope, they could even buy Motorola. Nope.
Its one thing to say that someone is stepping on your patents, but once you pay up you are admitting guilt. And that is that. Android is no longer free.
Bullsh*t. There’s no law saying Google *has* to go with HTC as their phone manufacturer. It has nothing to do with the freeness, or lack there of, of Android itself (you haven’t forgotten that Android is open source, surely?). Knowing Google, they’ll retaliate against HTC somehow. Should be an interesting show to watch.
Who else they going to go with, hummmm Motorola? They are starting to back out of Google stuff. Hummmm, Samsung? Their Android phones suck, Nokia? They don’t make Android phones, LG? They don’t make Android phones ether.
And HELLO, do you think MS will not be calling any other Android phone seller in the US that they don’t have a cross patent deal with? Heck I am sure they are on the phone with everyone, HTC is just the first to bite.
And yes I know it’s Open Source and that is fine till you try and moniterize it, then it’s just like anything else, competition that needs to be squashed. And HTC or any other phone company could care less about the Open Source nature of it. HTC makes Windows phones just as much as Android, they just care about cost. Windows Mobile costs a fee and up till Yesterday Android did not. Now they are paying MS a license fee to sell phones with Android so Android is no longer free. Because of this I am sure their focus will shift to WM7 where MS has their back.
No other phone company seeing what happened to HTC is going to jump in to that fire. Motorola is cool cause they have cross patent deals with everyone and everyone with them. But any other company is gonna have issues.
By that logic, neither is Linux. Lots of companies are paying MS for their FAT patent, which is present in every linux kernel. Doesn’t mean I’m just going to give up on Linux and say it’s owned by Microsoft now, though.
Also, we don’t know the whole story here. A lot of people are speculating that this was a tactical move by HTC to shore up their patent defenses and make their case against Apple stronger. HTC has always been very friendly with MS, so it isn’t suprising to see them have some kind of cross licensing agreement in place.
Edited 2010-04-28 18:42 UTC
There is an implementation of FAT in Linux that does not violate the MS patent for FAT LFN (Long File Nmaes).
http://lwn.net/Articles/338981/
Microsoft does not have a patent for FAT. It has a patent for a method of having both long and short filename formats on a FAT filesystem.
Linux can, and often does, avoid infringing on this Microsoft patent simply by using the variant of Linux FAT support (i.e. the patch mentioned above) that can create either long filenames, or short filenames, but not both for the same file. This variant of FAT support in Linux is completely compatible, for example, with USB Flash memory and with memory cards from cameras or phones.
Not quite. A number of companies are paying Microsoft’s demands for protection money in order to avoid having to go to court over the FAT LFN patent issue.
Nevertheless, a number of companies would apparently reason that a better-than-average chance is insufficient, it is still cheaper and less risky to pay Microsoft’s demands for protection money than it would be to take this issue to court.
Edited 2010-04-29 00:31 UTC
Gizmodo: Update: Microsoft deputy general counsel of intellectual property Horacio Gutierrez just sent us a statement saying that the company’s been “talking to several device manufacturers to address our concerns relative to the Android mobile platform.” We’re taking that to mean the same as above: Microsoft isn’t too interested in suing any of its Windows Mobile / Windows Phone partners, so it’s trying to work out patent license deals with those companies in advance of any nastiness. It’s an interesting strategy: patents forbid anyone from making, using, or selling your invention, so Redmond can protect its partners while still leaving open the possibility of a lawsuit with Google itself down the line. In fact, we’d almost say it seems like Microsoft’s agreement with HTC is as much of a threat to Google as Apple’s lawsuit — Redmond’s basically saying you can’t sell an Android device without paying a license fee, and we’d bet those fees are real close to the Windows Phone 7 license fee. Clever, clever — we’ll see how this one plays out. Here’s Horacio’s full statement:
Microsoft has a decades-long record of investment in software platforms. As a result, we have built a significant patent portfolio in this field, and we have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to ensure that competitors do not free ride on our innovations. We have also consistently taken a proactive approach to licensing to resolve IP infringement by other companies, and have been talking with several device manufacturers to address our concerns relative to the Android mobile platform.
I think Andy needs to distinguish between “openness” and “freedom”. I care about my freedom on a phone, that is, I want to be able to install whatever I like, however I like, whenever I like, but personally I couldn’t care less if I don’t have access to the source code for the operating system or the programs that I choose to install.
Android gives me my freedom which is great and important, although I acknowledge many people don’t care so much about that.
Ultimately Android will succeed or fail on the same basis as any other product. Quality (both in OS and hardware), usability, and most definitely marketing (phones are in part fashion accessories after all).
It is not that simple with software to divorce “openness” from “freedom”.
Having the source code visible for anybody and everybody to inspect is the only way to be assured that software is written to the best interests of the users and not the authors. Malware can only ever be closed source.
You won’t ever be free of scenarios like this:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20003340-245.html
… unless everybody who uses the same software has the ability to look at the source code of all of the software that you use on your machine.
Also, a software user cannot be free of control by the software authors if there is no other possible supplier of that software. Likewise, the only way for anyone to establish a position for themselves as a sole-source software supplier is to fail to provide source code.
missing the point. He doesn’t think consumers are going to care about an open device because it’s open and they are political about stuff like that. He’s saying that they’re going to look for their favorite app and find that it isn’t available on one phone but it is on the other.
Flash would be an example – he thinks that people will say if i can get flash on this phone but not the other, then why not go with the open one that runs what i want it to. Now, I’m just using that as an obvious example, so don’t try to convince me how bad Flash is. I already agree. But what he’s saying isn’t exactly revolutionary, and it’s definitely not relying on grandma to be a Stallman advocate or anything like that.
He’s essentially arguing that users will follow the applications, while Apple thinks that the applications will follow the users.
Edited 2010-04-28 06:35 UTC
That is a fair summary, but it misses the fact that a good many of the applications will follow the platform that has lower barriers for to entry into the market and at least a reasonable number of users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry
Yeah, if you look at the app numbers between iPhone and Android, iPhone has more, and in a greater variety. Although one might argue that many of the apps available on the Apple app store are crap (and they’d probably be right), let’s face facts… if I need an app for my phone that helps me measure the distance between my ass cheeks, I can probably find one for iPhone.
You can talk all day about how a more open platform will lead to greater choice, but AFAIK, although there’s Flash on Android, there still is no Kindle app, AFAIK. So it’s not like having a closed platform automatically means you’re going to be shut out from the apps you want. It’s really going to be a case-by-case sort of thing.
In my case, not buying an iPhone had little to do with the ‘big brother’ aspect of it. The main reasons I chose an Android phone are:
1. There’s no iPhone on Verizon
2. I absolutely hate iTunes with a passion. I’d almost rather install malware on my machine than that piece of crap.
3. That iAd thing scares the hell out of me
I do think Android does have a lower barrier of entry than the iPhone development and here are some reasons why.
* Android market is $25 one time fee versus Apple’s $99 per year fee. This could be an issue for many lone open source developers who are not seeking to profit from distribution of their software. Also to note Android platform allows distribution of software outside of Android market while Apple does not.
* Android development can be done on Windows, Mac, and Linux while iPhone development is Mac only.
* The mere idea of Apple’s application approval process is a turnoff for most open source developers.
* Prior expertise with Flash development will transfer over to Android platform but not for iPhone development.
* There is already a large pool of Java developers that could jump onto Android bandwagon quickly however learning Objective-C may be somewhat of a challenge in the beginning for new iPhone developers.
* There seems to be much more open source applications available on Android platform than iPhone which can be a useful tool for learning how to develop for Android platform.
One area where iPhone does have an advantage in terms of lower barrier of entry is less fragmentation of hardware selection for iPhone and iPod touch. Android does have many levels of OS versions as well as vast selection of hardwares that have different capabilities that can cause support issues for Android developers. Having said that, iPhone OS is becoming fragmented as well. iPhone OS 4.0 will not work on 1st gen iPhone or iPod touch which means they are stuck with 3.1. Also iPhone 3G will run 4.0 but will not be able to multi task. Also the rumor is that soon to be released iPhone 4G will have a different screen resolution and pixel density than all iPhones prior to 4G. It appears iPhone platform isn’t immune from fragmentation as some people thought it was.
I don’t like the comparison with North Korea. Although maybe he is right, a lot of people in the US would be better off if they were living in North Korea…
Rubin is obviously talking to the more savvy people around, normal users don’t care about it at all. It is explained pretty clear in other posts…
Looks like Androids days in America are numbered.
http://gizmodo.com/5526078/microsoft-licensing-mysterious-patented-…
In this case it looks like at least in America Android is no longer FREE. No longer free means no longer as appealing.
Open is better but patents always win. Sad but true. 🙁