Submitted by Market research analyst firm VisionMobile says Google’s Android smartphone operating system isn’t very open at all. Google’s open-source chief Chris DiBona strongly disagrees.
Market research analyst firm VisionMobile says Google’s Android smartphone operating system isn’t very open at all. Google’s open-source chief Chris DiBona strongly disagrees.
Yeah it’s simple and I don’t need no analyst.
QUESTION:
Is the code for the latest Android that run on thousand of devices available and open?
ANSWER:
NO
Is Android open source then? Well, no. It isn’t. There is no need to argue around it, it’s a pretty black and white thing.
Code for the the lastest Andriod os is that is distributed with a device is availble from the Device manufacturer. See HTC, ASUS, Motorola et al.
Also can the operating system be forked? The answer is yes. Which is more than I can say for Apple or MS operating systems See Cyanogen.
Presumably the answer is even easier when the study is apparently sponsored by, at least, a possible future competitor?… http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/191791/pay-no-attention-spon…
Though his longer response is more realistic, this one is typical of the attitude from the project.
See also:
Another definition Android doesn’t meet, as of Honeycomb.
So they’ll gladly soak up all the moral praise that comes with being an “open” project while completely disregarding the qualitative factors that make being “open” a morally praiseworthy position.
All that is to say nothing of the practical advantages of openness. In Android, that consists entirely of custom ROMs, which are no more difficult (and far less often necessary) to attain on popular non-“open” platforms. The added difficulties of fragmentation hit home hackers harder than the average end user. Got an iPhone? Load this web page, and you’re jailbroken. Got an Android phone? Which one? Which carrier? Which version? Which hardware revision? Read this long thread about it. Sign up for a forum account, or the links won’t work.
Meanwhile, their openness to being used by corporations just leads to things like this: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/worst-gadget-ever-ar…
Remind me again why anyone wastes breath proclaiming that Android is open.
That tablet isn’t ‘official’ Android: no Google apps, no app market and the legality of it’s branding is dubious, at best (I’ve handled that tablet, sadly).
Otherwise, spot on.
it also leads to things like this:
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/
and this:
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/WIMM-Labs-WIMM-One-Wearable…
Your claim that Android is not open yet showing and example (albeit a poor one) of its openness is quite frankly…silly.
Just as with the company hated by most Android lovers, Google and their partners use “Android is open” simply as a marketing tool. Put yourself in the position of knowing nothing at all about technology or smart phones, walk into a phone retailer and start talking to the geeky salesperson about an iPhone and see what his response is.
My wife has done paid “mystery shopping” for a number of years. Basically she is paid to go to particular retailers asking specific questions about certain products then filling in survey forms to give feedback about staff responses for training and QA purposes. A few months back she was asked to do an iPhone mystery shop, the problem was getting the guy at the retailer to actually talk to her about iPhone. All he wanted to do was tell her how their selection of Android phones were all so much better because they were open and therefore she could do so much more with it.
Following this little episode, and my wife’s frustration at trying to get this guy to talk to her about the product she was asking about, we decided to do our own mystery shop, so we visited five other phone retailers in our area.
At three we had identical experiences, the salesperson, for want of a better term, wanted to sell us Android phones because they were so much better due to their being open, and because of this we could do so much more with them. Of course, when asked what we could do with them that we couldn’t do on an iPhone, all of the suggested functions were stuff that no average user would consider in a lifetime of use. Two of these guys also struggled when we asked them the iPhone scripted questions about the Android phones, especially when it came to things like setting the device up for users with particular physical challenges. They kept trying to show us things like customising the home screen and multiple apps running simultaneously.
Of the other two, the girl tried to push Android devices but quickly changed tack when she could see we were asking specifically about iPhone, while the last, another male, duly answered our questions then suggested we use their demo iPhone and a few different Android phones then select what we felt best suited our needs. This last guy is my kind of salesperson – I almost felt guilty not buying something from him, but will certainly be visiting him again when next due for an upgrade, and have since recommended him to family and friends.
It was an interesting experience and one that pretty well confirmed my thoughts about Android’s meteoric rise, and has been the basis of my comments on this topic.
I guess iPhone users can pull a longer stretch with their phone, while Android users will be looking for something better after 6 months or so.
A lot of iPhone 3GS users I know don’t even think about an iPhone 4 or 5, because the 3GS still works fine.
People this is silly, let me break it down.
How open is Android’s source code? Extremely.
How open is Android’s development? Extremely not open.
The debate comes from people talking about different things.
You can’t debate that the code is open source.
To cut off the Honeycomb code comments, patience is a virtue.
Does that mean Doom 3 has been open source for 7 years? Since id normally open sources their games (at some unspecified point in the future when they want to), can we say Rage is open source?
Have patience, its coming with IceCream Sandwich. The rough guideline (date) for that has already been announced by Google with reasoning for not releasing the Honeycomb code as of now. So, it isn’t “unspecified” time in the future as you claim.
Of course, Android is open. What the developer/hacking community is interested in is the source code, which the Android Open Source Project dishes out from time to time. What does a marketing firm know?