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Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

thinq.co.uk

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Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#71

Post by sbuk »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #59
phuff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, many is a very relative term there. Android phones are definitely mainstream. I'd say of all the people I know that have an android phone, less than 10% even know what "open source" means.

It is relative, but many people bought Android phones because their techie brother-in-law raved about it. He raved about it because it was "open". I have little doubt this was a major cause for Android crossing the chasm, so it does seem a bit disingenuous to only be "kind of" open.

My girlfriend has an Android phone. Her reasons are threefold (in order of importance); 1) It's cheap. 2) It's relatively small (Wildfire S is smaller that the iPhone). 3) She uses only Google services (Gmail etc.) so it makes sense to use Android. She is what I believe to be a typical user and the fact that the OS is "open" is irrelevant to her. No-one else influenced her choice and I think this is true of the majority of the phone-buying public; the silent majority that actually matter (we "technically minded" [geeks and nerds!] really don't). Genuinely, the openness debate only has any relevance in places like this, and even then it's arguably not really relevant.

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#72

Post by cube13 »

gergles wrote: post #65
cube13 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They could have done that but chances are a few of the less reputable OEMs would have ported code from Froyo or GB to get the dialer working again. The open nature of it means there is no restriction that could not be unrestricted. Unfortunately, this is probably the biggest mistake that Google has made with Android. Google could have gone the route that the Mozilla foundation has with Firefox, where Mozilla does no…

They do have that, it's "with Google". Android phones that follow Google's platform guidelines can put a "with Google" logo on the device, otherwise they cannot.

Google defines "with Google" as(from http://www.google.com/phone/):

>'with Google' phones have been optimised for use of Google Mobile Services, providing easy access to Search, Voice Search, Google Talk, Google Maps, Gmail, Sync, YouTube and Android Market (where available).

And normal, non-branded phones are defined as:

>All phones in the Google Phone Gallery come with Android Market and Google Mobile Services such as Search, Google Maps and Gmail pre-installed.

What's the difference? There do not appear to be any real UX-related requirements, because Android 2.2 and 2.3 phones have the branding, some phones that use HTC sense have the branding(and others don't). Also, the Droid Incredible has the branding, but the Incredible 2 does not!

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#73

Post by sjs »

martingordon wrote: post #7

Do we have a term to distinguish between the two different models of open source? The two models being the "development in public" model (Chrome, Firefox, Rails, etc) and the "release finished code" model (Android, most GPL components of closed source software, etc).

periodically-dumped-source software? Hopefully someone can come up with something catchy.

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#74

Post by guelo »

joebadmo wrote: post #35

Android is Open Source in that Google dumps the source code into the open periodically. It's not developed in the open. Honeycomb's source was and never will be open. This is way farther on the 'open' side of the spectrum than any other major mobile OS. Is this, along with Android's open app marketplace, ability to install arbitrary third party software, and installability on any compatible device enough to warrant G…

> Honeycomb's source was and never will be open.

Honeycomb will be in the git repo since it is what ICS was developed from. The question is if it will be specifically tagged.

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#75

Post by karl_nerd »

sbuk wrote: post #71
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is relative, but many people bought Android phones because their techie brother-in-law raved about it. He raved about it because it was "open". I have little doubt this was a major cause for Android crossing the chasm, so it does seem a bit disingenuous to only be "kind of" open.

My girlfriend has an Android phone. Her reasons are threefold (in order of importance); 1) It's cheap. 2) It's relatively small (Wildfire S is smaller that the iPhone). 3) She uses only Google services (Gmail etc.) so it makes sense to use Android. She is what I believe to be a typical user and the fact that the OS is "open" is irrelevant to her. No-one else influenced her choice and I think this is true of the major…

There are thousands of reasons to love or hate android. One thing i like is the development going on in Cyanogenmod and MIUI Android. It's relevant to me.

Those things wont help android 'win' against the iphone, but it will be relevant in other markets, like the MIUI phone, wasnt that around 200$?

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#76

Post by dsl »

DrCatbox wrote: post #49
durin42 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite sure. Chromium (the open-source end of Chrome) is very much a cathedral in the sense of product direction, but is developed in the open. I can't come up with something that has the opposite pairing though (it'd be kind of strange). I'm all in favor of some pithy term for "source released under an open license but not developed in full view of the public."

Shared Source is nice, or half-open source. Or, "we take all the benefits, free workforce and goodwill of free software while retaining all control and money".

The first thing I thought of was "Shared Source", the licensing program for Windows source code.

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#77

Post by telcodud »

km3k wrote: post #52
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That goes against the principle of open-source. The principle is that by releasing code to the public you will get contributions from others (an extra set of eyes) that will make the project overall better. But to accept this principle to have to also accept that some people will take your code and use it in ways that you don't approve. The hope/belief is that the good will float to the top. If you don't accept this…

> They don't seem to care about contributions from the community Google accepts a lot of patches from the community. Many of the major custom ROMs regularly submit patches. Things aren't perfect at the moment since all this infrastructure was hosted at kernel.org and is still down, so I can't link you directly to examples of public patch submissions and code review, unfortunately. But I can tell you they used Gerrit…

AOSP source code is now back online: http://groups.google.com/group/android-building/msg/c73c14f9...

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#78

Post by zmmmmm »

pingswept wrote: post #34
ajross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is off. The linked announcement by Dan Morril said the source will be released after the devices are. So it should be future tense. But neither is it closed source: there's been no release at all yet, so if you need a term, use "vaporware".

I see your point about vaporware, but I think that term generally refers to software that will likely never ship. I don't think Google will fail to ship 4.0. Right now, the source exists, and I can't get it. I think it's pretty straightforward to call that closed source.

> I think it's pretty straightforward to call that closed source

Straightforward and pedantic. Even the GPL allows a "reasonable" time for someone to yield the source upon request which as been widely interpreted as up to a month. If the source will be available in a reasonable time period then it's reasonable to call the general project itself an open source one.

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#79

Post by zmmmmm »

sovande wrote: post #44
dabeeeenster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the quality of the source code and the quality of the resultant binaries are two completely different things.

The source code is used to produce the "resultant binaries" so unless you have a very strange definition of "quality" the OP has a very valid question.

> a very strange definition of "quality"

Is it strange that, say, comments are stripped out of a binary? Or that the file names of the source files are not in there? These things are examples of aspects of quality that have no impact on the binary but make a big difference to the quality of the source.

Re: Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

#80

Post by ajross »

DannyBee wrote: post #57
ajross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "unexpected" or "uncommon", maybe. I think it's entirely unreasonable for an entity calling itself an "open source project" to withhold code under development from the public. There's no project here. But it's still better than we got from Honeycomb (or Apple, or MS), so I guess beggars can't be choosers.

Two of the original open source projects, emacs and GCC, did this for many years. In fact, if you shared the source code of development versions, you were banned from the FTP server that contained it.

That may be true (not sure abuot the banning thing, I've never heard that story), but you're sort of missing the difference in spirit. Certainly the FSF in its early days was eager and active in recruiting new developers, and merging code from the community. Read all the early Gnus Bulletins for lots of examples.

If you wanted to see RMS's emacs source, all you had to do was ask and promise not to spread it around before he'd made a release. That policy may not have been a good idea in hindsight, but it certainly wasn't because of Stallman's desire to keep control over his "product".

Google, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be much in the habit of letting people see their code simply because they want to contribute.

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