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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

#191

Post by protomyth »

IMHO, the unfair part is the following:

"Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list."

Google Apps and APIs are fine and good, but I don't think any company should dictate to an OEM what products they can make for other companies.

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

#192

Post by abvdasker »

tluyben2 wrote: post #124
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…

Android is open enough to replace all Google apps with your own (Samsung) and open your own appstore (Amazon). Also companies are completely free to not pick Android (Tizen / Firefox OS / ?) and they are free not to license the Google apps and put their own or (other) open source ones. It would be hard to make Google out to be a monopolist via that route. MS was different; there weren't much alternatives and the alte…

So how long have you been working for Google?

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

#193

Post by guenlo »

cromwellian wrote: post #24

Most of the examples of Google closed apps that are not part of the AOSP release are in fact apps that are based off of Google data-center services. Would it really help Samsung if the source to the Gmail app was open? Since Google controls the server side, and the client-server protocol, it limits the amount of innovation they can do. The web equivalent would be like claiming that Chrome OS isn't open because the so…

>off of

Learn English, and then we'll talk.

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

#194

Post by chimeracoder »

r0h1n wrote: post #178
fooqux wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three points: 1) Newer custom ROMs can deny permissions on a per-app basis. I understand this isn't for everyone, but I enjoy having this option very much on my own device. (I also agree with you that it should be baked into the vanilla Android, but I can understand why they wouldn't want to confuse users with that option.) 2) Some apps will give you a choice in their own settings (if you trust that). 3) You always h…

I've been running CM since the Nexus One. I don't think it supports per-app system privileges. Unless it is hidden somewhere deep within (though I could swear I've recursively been through their entire settings tree). May I ask which ROMs you are referring to?

Cyanogenmod used to provide this in the Gingerbread days, but they removed it somewhere around ICS/JB.

It was rumored that this was under pressure from Google, etc., but I'm not sure if that was ever confirmed.

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

#195

Post by sbuk »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #190
sbuk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antitrust laws exist to enable greater competition by stopping businesses behaving in an anticompetative manner. They don't necessarily exist for "policing monoploies" anywhere in the world. > "and it is such legislation which I consider bunk" Why? Don't you think that Microsoft should have been reprimanded over their abuse of the OS market to gain control of the browser market? Or is it because it's being held over…

>Don't you think that Microsoft should have been reprimanded over their abuse of the OS market to gain control of the browser market? Absolutely not!

Why?

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

#196

Post by chimeracoder »

bjourne wrote: post #161
bad_user wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're partly right, but in regards to the Gmail app, what I don't like about Android is that it doesn't come with a good email client that's not GMail. Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer. But…

> Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer. GMail uses a proprietary protocol that is decidedly not imap. It has features like colorized labels and inbox prioritizing that just isn't present in imap.…

> GMail uses a proprietary protocol that is decidedly not imap

A thousand times, this.

Using a traditional IMAP client such as offlineimap makes this painfully obvious. Gmail synchronizes labels as "folders", not "tags", for some unknown reason, which means that mail in the inbox ends up getting duplicated on disk under "All Mail", and then again for every single label attached to that label.

Archiving hijacks the way that deleting works, and while clients can adjust to this, it breaks the way IMAP is supposed to work. If clients have to add special cases to interact with your service, that means you're going off-protocol!

Even the login is different. On IMAP, your username should be "foo", not "foo@example.com".

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

#197

Post by eropple »

guenlo wrote: post #193
cromwellian wrote: post #24

Most of the examples of Google closed apps that are not part of the AOSP release are in fact apps that are based off of Google data-center services. Would it really help Samsung if the source to the Gmail app was open? Since Google controls the server side, and the client-server protocol, it limits the amount of innovation they can do. The web equivalent would be like claiming that Chrome OS isn't open because the so…

>off of Learn English, and then we'll talk.

"Off of" has been an English construction since the 1500s. It's entirely reasonable and appropriate in this context, much like contractions in informal written English.

But I'm fairly sure I'm replying to a throwaway account, so it's not like you were seriously interested.

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

#198

Post by throwaway2048 »

fpgeek wrote: post #149
throwaway2048 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Google's choice to put that hardware into the phone, and it was their choice not to pressure qualcomm into being more open. Your argument itself is also somewhat of a mischaracterization, because at least Google could have wrestled redistribution rights for the binary drivers, thus making AOSP actually usable on the nexus, and they didn't even bother with that. Vendors are a convenient whipping boy when don't…

There's a very, very simple problem with your argument: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/drivers#razor

and here is the problem with yours, from the EULA:

     Subject to the terms of this Agreement, Licensor hereby grants to
     You, free of charge, a non-exclusive, non-sublicensable,
     non-transferable, limited copyright license, during the term of
     this Agreement, to download, install and use the Software
     internally in machine-readable (i.e., object code) form and the
     Documentation for non-commercial use on an Authorized Android
     Enabled Device and non-commercial redistribution for academic
     purposes only of a reasonable number of copies of the Authorized
     Android Enabled Device Software (the "Limited Purpose"). You may
     grant your end users the right to use the Software for
     non-commercial purposes on an Authorized Android Enabled Device.
     The license to the Software granted to You hereunder is solely for
     the Limited Purpose set forth in this section, and the Software
This makes it entirely impossible for AOSP to distribute the drivers

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

#199

Post by lttlrck »

chimeracoder wrote: post #196
bjourne wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android's GMail client is very polished and there's not much in it that's specific to Gmail, it could be a generic email client that works with POP3/IMAP/SMTP and other standards as well. The experience of users that aren't into Android's own services do suffer. GMail uses a proprietary protocol that is decidedly not imap. It has features like colorized labels and inbox prioritizing that just isn't present in imap.…

> GMail uses a proprietary protocol that is decidedly not imap A thousand times, this. Using a traditional IMAP client such as offlineimap makes this painfully obvious. Gmail synchronizes labels as "folders", not "tags", for some unknown reason, which means that mail in the inbox ends up getting duplicated on disk under "All Mail", and then again for every single label attached to that label. Archiving hijacks the wa…

foo@example.com is a perfectly valid IMAP username. How else could a email service provider host multiple domains on one endpoint? For example Rackspace does this through imap.emailsrvr.com.

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

#200

Post by lttlrck »

bookwormAT wrote: post #132
saiyan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. All those videos of Android demo or prototype units clearly showed Android was a Blackberry clone (just look at that tiny touchpad for navigating around Android OS) and changed its design direction after iPhone made its appearance.

nonesense. Android is a software platform that companies can build sofware and devices on. Android is not a device, and it's not an "operating system" in the sense that people use this word today. It is a fundament that you can build an operating system with, and a cross platform that allows applications run on different software, as long as this software is based on Android. If you want to show off what Android can…

"If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment."

I'm not so sure about that. Blackberry didn't do that, and neither did Apple...

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