I am a bit disappointed that Google has seemingly reversed itself on its openness. While I would want someone poking around in code but I felt wasn't my best work, I feel that this excuse for Google is dubious at best. I believe it is done to stifle competition.
They say they want to protect users experience, which you might be able to believe on face value if it weren't for the fact that anyone who had the skills to manipulate the code would inherently know that they are going to change the intended "Google experience". This is not something that a hacker would hold Google responsible for. If he actually could start the glass of milk you don't get mad at the cow because your milk is brown instead of white!
Google is afraid that if they allow their code to be in the wild, hackers innovations will outstrip their own. They forgot what made their platform so attractive in the first place. Android OS benefited immensely the beginning from being open source people added features there were leaps and bounds ahead of Apple IOS. For people who are well-informed and made a comparison between the two a no-brainer. If they continue to do this it'll be like going to her door and closing it. And I will be their fault because I've been around long enough to know that there are infinite pathways innovations can take.
Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
101–110 of 110 posts
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
What point are you trying to prove?
I think he's trying to prove he doesn't understand logic. You can prove anything from contradictory true statements not from false ones.
Contradictory true statements? Is that some kind of quantum logic? Maybe I am too old fashioned for that, I admit defeat.
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very difficult to not have the opportunity to become a millionaire. For example I could have bought a lottery ticket and won the lottery. But I didn't. Likewise, Google hasn't published the Honeycomb source yet. Also, it is strictly logic, you can follow everything from a false statement (false => anything). So, if Google had released the source for Honeycomb I could have been a millionaire is a strictly true st…
What point are you trying to prove?
That the discussion is complete BS.
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
For all you know, bowl manufacturers could embed GPS tracking devices in there. I don't carry my bowls around ;) There comes a point where you just have to trust people selling you stuff won't be evil. I don't like that word. It oversimplifies the issues. Whether Google is evil is subjective and irrelevant. The fact is that their entire business revolves around collecting personal data, often without being clear to t…
> "The fact is that their entire business revolves around collecting personal data, often without being clear to the user about the details." BS. They sell advertising.
They sell targeted advertising. And to target effectively, you need personal data. I never said they sold that data, just that they need to collect it.
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is software freedom defined differently on phones vs tablets? Why does Android 3.x not being for phones make any difference at all to this conversation?
Because the title is "Android phones...", and also the majority of Android devices being sold are phones. You definitely have the option to get a non-Honeycomb Android phone right now. Afaik Honeycomb was never meant for phones, either.
Okay, that may be but it has no impact on the "freeness" of Android 3.x.
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
he's right, but in the wrong way. honeycomb is not open source software, but that does not mean that android is not open source software. honeycomb is a dead fork of the android project, it has no future. the android trunk is as open as it has ever been.
It is not as 'open' as most software projects. They develop in a closed environment and dump the results on the community. There are long-standing bugs that have been fixed in community distros such as Cyanogenmod, yet the Android team doesn't accept patches, because they're busy working on the next code dump. At Google, there is no 'upstream'.
its not as open as community projects, but it is still open source. this is the sort of attitude that makes companies turn away from community development: the. sense of entitlement users get.
they develop a great system, give it away for free, and publish the source. isn't that enough, do they really need to follow your preferred development pattern too?
if you want to evangelize software freedom, how about commending Google for being as open as they are, and criticising the sellers of totally closed systems.
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "The fact is that their entire business revolves around collecting personal data, often without being clear to the user about the details." BS. They sell advertising.
They sell targeted advertising. And to target effectively, you need personal data. I never said they sold that data, just that they need to collect it.
They don't need to.
You search for X, they show adverts related to X.
The extra targeting stuff probably increases their revenue a few %.
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
They sell targeted advertising. And to target effectively, you need personal data. I never said they sold that data, just that they need to collect it.
They don't need to. You search for X, they show adverts related to X. The extra targeting stuff probably increases their revenue a few %.
That produces inferior results. But whether they need or not is irrelevant. They do.
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#109At the risk of getting downvoted for being meta-, can I remind people that links like this need to be flagged? The Guidelines clearly state: "Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter." - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you see a link to a blog post like this, which is just a bad summary of an original source ( http://www.guardia…
...which had an earlier HN story, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3013622
Re: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't say anything about that but I would bet my money on gnaffle's point.
It's very difficult to not have the opportunity to become a millionaire. For example I could have bought a lottery ticket and won the lottery. But I didn't. Likewise, Google hasn't published the Honeycomb source yet. Also, it is strictly logic, you can follow everything from a false statement (false => anything). So, if Google had released the source for Honeycomb I could have been a millionaire is a strictly true st…
I think you'll agree that it's much more likely that we'd had Android 3.0 on phones if they released the source code, than that you'd become a millionaire if you bought a lottery ticket. After all, people have done that to previous open source Android releases, I can even install the latest Android release on my iPhone.