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Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#91

Post by icebraining »

gibwell wrote: post #76
dmethvin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open. This is exactly the position Microsoft was in during the mid-1990s, even before they went after Netscape. The article is saying that Google is even applying some of the same…

Saying 'iOS is more closed' doesn't make Android meaningfully open.

What about the fact that competitors are using the OS without so much as asking Google?

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#92

Post by x0054 »

I once read an article in 2010 that criticized people for saying that Apple and iOS of the 2000s is like the Microsoft and Windows of the 90s. The article pointed out that Apple IS the Apple of the 90s and Google with its Android platform will become the Windows of the 90s. I think it's happening. In a few years Android is going to be as closed sourced as Windows, probably as ubiquitous, and most likely, just as prone to security issues.

It's already kind of like windows, no? It runs on hundreds if different devices. It's often bloated by OEM software that people hate. It's prone to security wholes. It's slow and clunky unless you run it on the latest hardware. It bends over backwards for compatibility sake. It's more and more closed sourced...

Android is Mobile windows of the 90s. I hope Ubuntu Mobile will be successful.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#93

Post by Apocryphon »

oscargrouch wrote: post #66
Brakenshire wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is a philosophy (or rather, various different philosophies) that go along with the legal structures, and different projects have different levels of adherence to those ideas. It eventually comes down to perception of value. Part of the original attraction of Android was its openness, if Google is now closing off substantial functionality, to head off competition, then it's not unfair for people to re-eval…

> Part of the original attraction of Android was its openness, if Google is now closing off substantial functionality, to head off competition, then it's not unfair for people to re-evaluate their enthusiasm for the product. Very well put! Its not a legal perception that theres something wrong about what they are doing(and nobody are saying that they cannot do it in the legal aspect).. its a betrayal of some part tha…

Perhaps there should be a phrase to mean "open source in name only." I wonder if all of this is related to Richard Stallman's dismissal of projects that claim to be open source, saying that it isn't enough unless it's "free software."

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#94

Post by icebraining »

Brakenshire wrote: post #19

> While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs…

Are you serious? What other commercial OS can I do a competing fork of? Don't you see that the same restrictions apply to all other consumer OSs (iOS, WP, etc) by simply being closed-source?

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#97

Post by objclxt »

millstone wrote: post #56

> Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold whatsoever, it was decided that Google would buy Android. And Android would be open source. This is blatantly false. Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced.

> Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced.

Not only, as has already been pointed out, did the UI change, but if you look at the Android architecture it's clearly evolved along an very different path to iOS.

I remember when the first Android SDK came out the programming manual made it very clear to developers that we weren't to expect devices to always have discrete GPUs or touch-screens.

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#98

Post by apetrovic »

parennoob wrote: post #22

When someone like Github does this (make some parts of their code open-source, but others closed-source), journalists don't write critical pieces about them, do they? I mean, Google leaves a bad taste in my mouth since they started shuttering services like it was Christmas at the Google Service Chopping Block, but I don't see them being actively evil here. It's all according to the previously openly aired plan. Googl…

> Now if they want a hardware platform to run on, go find one outside the Open Handset Alliance ecosystem.

Imagine you want to sell a Linux laptop with your own Linux distribution. You're just a small shop in California, and you're shopping around to find a manufacturer for your laptops. And you find that anyone connected to Microsoft (Foxconn, Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, etc) can't do any job with you. Would you say "that's fair, Microsoft isn't evil by forcing hardware manufacturers to work exclusively with them" in such situation?

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#99

Post by yarianluis »

As an Android developer, I love that Google is doing this!

Android has come a very long way in the last few years in terms of usability and design. A large part of this has been due to an increasingly uniform design language and feel. That, and the new distribution model for what are basically Android updates (Google Play Services) has made Android feel more polished and actually allowed it to stand on its own against iOS. It also means that developers like me don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about fragmentation in the traditional sense. Each day the percentage of people using sub-ICS phones falls, and we all get one step closer to the day we can support ICS+ only.

However, companies like Amazon would force me to rewrite the maps integration, the sign-in portion, the wallet, etc... Amazon did a great job of replicating Google Maps API V1 but they have yet to mirror V2 and don't mirror the other components I mentioned.

Aside from fragmentation and developer sanity, the article mentions another key point here:

"[M]any of Google's solutions offer best-in-class usability, functionality, and ease-of-implementation."

Exactly! Google APIs are not perfect, and there's bugs (like when Google Maps broke map markers on high resolution phones like the HTC One). But generally speaking, I'm really happy with the quality of the APIs and services. In an ideal world, Amazon and Google would work together to provide great and uniform single-sign-in APIs, great maps, etc... As it currently stands though, I don't believe either party is interested in doing so. Prisoner's dilemma?

Re: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

#100

Post by cremnob »

icebraining wrote: post #91
gibwell wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying 'iOS is more closed' doesn't make Android meaningfully open.

What about the fact that competitors are using the OS without so much as asking Google?

Then why make a free "open" OS in the first place? If it was such a concern that Google should control the OS they could have done what Microsoft did with licensing Windows, or like Apple where they keep iOS to themselves for their own hardware.
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