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Android is really the best hope for a free and open mobile experience though, at this point. It may not be 100% RMS approved, but it's fairly close, and the weight of Google means it is actually getting traction, unlike, say, OpenMoko. I guess MeeGo or something might count too, but that all seems quite vague at this point.

I think that, with time, we'll see more truly open, Nexus One style phones. I really wish they hadn't given it up so easily: something like that would be competitive in Europe where it's much more common to pay full price for an unlocked phone.

Sometimes, I think people forget just how cool open source is in terms of being able to take stuff and hack on it.

You are right that it's the best that we have at the moment, but from where I'm standing, openness in phones is decreasing, not increasing - each new generation of Android devices seems to contain more and more locked-down proprietry code.

Maybe I'm being naive, but when I hear 'open' I'm thinking that that means that if I don't like a small part of my otherwise great smartphone, I can go in and modify the code that handles that specific part, compile it, and download the modified code onto my phone so that it does what it wants. That is several orders of magnitude of effort away from today's reality of:

- find a security flaw

- design an exploit of the security flaw so that I can root my device

- extract the drivers from the binary so that I can add them back into my new image after recompiling

- modify code and compile

- reload new image onto phone

I just feel that the open source community is getting sucked in to supporting this solution that is dragging us away from what would truly be an open platform. If Rubin was being honest about an 'open' Android, it would be under GPLv3, as RMS says. It's not, and the reason it isn;t is because it is not open. Rubin is spinning this, and I do not respect that.

A few more notes, while I'm at it:

> openness in phones is decreasing, not increasing - each new generation of Android devices seems to contain more and more locked-down proprietry code.

"openness in phones" took a huge leap forward with Android. 5 years ago, the idea of a widely deployed, almost completely open phone system would have seemed like science fiction. Just because some companies are adding crap doesn't take anything away from the core system, which continues to be free and continues to improve.

> the open source community is getting sucked in to supporting this solution that is dragging us away from what would truly be an open platform.

Which is, pray tell? Google has poured millions of dollars into Android, and we get that under a very free license. The "open source community" isn't some magical thing: it takes real work to make stuff happen, and Google is doing it with Android, including stuff like usability and GUI work that the "open source community" hasn't been so strong at in the past. So I don't really see some magical solution just wafting down from the heavens... it's simply not on the radar at this point. The only other remote possibilities are Meego and perhaps Symbian, but I don't really see much going on there.

The Apache license is liberal and open, and very much free. RMS doesn't like the fact that you can build proprietary stuff on top of it, but sometimes you need that freedom in order to involve companies in your community.

I agree that we're still not seeing manufacturers do quite what we'd like, but I think it'll come with time, most likely in places that are not the United States: Europe and China most likely.

And, to be clear, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it's going to come from Apple.

This is a logical fallacy -- you define and use two definitions of the word "free" in the same context. On the one hand you associate freedom with RMS's context, which must include the ability to actually run the free code. RMS views the software and the specialized hardware it runs on as one and the same -- inseparable in freedom. In the sentence just before it, though, you argue that freedom is simply the Apache license as applied to software. In fact, what you are actually arguing begs the question because you assert that the software is free because it is under the Apache license, but we know that the Apache license is free because the software is liberal and open, as defined by the Apache license.

Before you can approach whether or not the software is free you must first define what free is. The parent poster is relatively safe in this because he provides RMS's definition of free, which is encoded in the GPLv3. Until you provide a similar definition I don't think one can state the software is either free or unfree.

I agree that we're still not seeing manufacturers do quite what we'd like, but I think it'll come with time, most likely in places that are not the United States: Europe and China most likely.

And, to be clear, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it's going to come from Apple.

I think this is just speculation.

> define what free is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Definition - Android qualifies, except for a few bits and pieces.

> I think this is just speculation.

I'd bet a lot of money on it. Apple has a long, long history of making beautiful, innovative, forward-thinking, and fairly locked down products, from the Mac onwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Definition - Android qualifies, except for a few bits and pieces.

OK, but you admit that your definition of free isn't everyone's definition of free. To be even more precise, the OSI itself doesn't even call that definition free, they call it 'open source.' The FSF, in fact, has a contrary definition that they maintain is actually free software. Both parties refer to the OSI as 'open source' and the FSF as 'free.'

This leads in to the main problem that Google/Android have -- when they market Android as being open they don't really define what open is. It is prima facie true that Android is not open on all fronts, so the question is really what Google considers "open" to mean.

Jobs put this observation into an interesting context because it's important to note that a lot of software in the iPhone is free as well. In the manual you will find a list (quite a long one) of all the GPL and BSD licensed software included inside the iPhone. The question, then, isn't who is open and who is closed, but what the definition of 'open' is and who more closely abides by it.

    OK, but you admit that your definition of free isn't 
    everyone's definition of free

No shit ... my definition of "free" includes me distributing the code I made however I want.

If it where for me I would include a new rule in the OSI definition that excludes GPL from being called "open source", because its copyleft extends to the whole package that links to GPL pieces, and for me this is not "free".

    Both parties refer to the OSI as 'open source' and the 
    FSF as 'free.'

The Apache license has been approved as "Free Software", which is by no means the same as "free" ... an English word that you cannot trademark.

    It is prima facie true that Android is not open on all 
    fronts

In my definition of "open" that doesn't include forcing the phone manufacturers to not build locked phones.

If my voice doesn't matter (I'm a nobody) here's the voice of Linus Torvalds (you know, the guy without whom you can't speak about Linux):

    [Stallman] calls it "tivoization", but that's a word he 
    has made up, and a term I find offensive, so I don't 
    choose to use it. It's offensive because Tivo never did 
    anything wrong, and the FSF even acknowledged that. The 
    fact that they do their hardware and have some DRM 
    issues with the content producers and thus want to 
    protect the integrity of that hardware.

    The kernel license covers the *kernel*. It does not 
    cover boot loaders and hardware, and as far as I'm 
    concerned, people who make their own hardware can 
    design them any which way they want. Whether that means 
    "booting only a specific kernel" or "sharks with 
    lasers", I don't care.

And I don't care about what Jobs says, the real question is: can you build your own iOS phone? can you participate in its development (like contributing bug fixes)? Can you choose phones from multiple manufacturers and multiple carriers? Can you install your own apps on it without going through that certification shit-hole?

No? Well Android is a lot more open, regardless of definition.

So, it's not free? "except for a few bits and pieces" It's either free or it's not. "except" should not enter the vocabulary.

That defines "open". Free is defined here:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Also, the FSF (and I assume by extension RMS) has no problem with the Apache 2.0 license which is a free software license and compatible with GPLv3.

You can absolutely do that today by purchasing an unlocked handset. I think the problem is your expectation of being able to do that on a subsidized handset, where you've traded certain contract terms for a heavily discounted device.

It would be depressing for Android to be our best hope. An OS built by a company that gets most of its revenue from advertising will be subject to the whims of Google's customers, which are advertisers, not people like me.

And you can see this: 1) The market is strongly biased towards ad-supported aps. Who benefits? Google. Whose data is passed to the advertisers? Mine. 2) All of Google's ad-supported services are preinstalled on the devices. 3) Android handsets must be activated before use. I've paid for the hardware, but it's useless until I give more data to Google.

Google's business model is giving away cool stuff in return for milking you for information. I can't believe people think that this is "free" or "open".

If you buy the right hardware, you can get rid of all of the Google stuff if you want.

Also, it is open source, so you've got a very good base to fork from to make something of your own, should you so choose. I think we'll see more of that in the future.

Sure, Google adds some stuff on top, but I think that's a small price to pay for all the free stuff you get underneath, which is more than enough to build your own Google-free system should you choose.

> It may not be 100% RMS approved, but it's fairly close

It's nowhere near RMS approval at all.

What's missing? Some drivers and firmware? The RMS quote is, from above, "The shortest path to making it possible to run a smartphone without non-free software is to reverse engineer those non-free drivers or firmware and write free replacements", which to me indicates that Android is fairly close. He is not saying "the shortest path is to go write something else from scratch" or "gee, it's not really free yet, so I'll buy a shiny iPhone because... what the heck, I owe it to myself and I'm tired of harping about this free software bullshit anyway".

What else out there is closer? That has a remote chance of being successful?

I see it as a "perfect being the enemy of the good" situation. Android is the best, most open thing out there, even if it's not 100% open, and not 100% the best thing, either.

What else out there is closer? That has a remote chance of being successful?

Completely irrelevant. If I say a donkey is not a horse and you then say "Yes, but it's closer than a manatee!" the donkey doesn't suddenly become a horse. Successfulness also really has no relevance to whether or not it's free.

What's missing? Some drivers and firmware? The RMS quote is, from above, "The shortest path to making it possible to run a smartphone without non-free software is to reverse engineer those non-free drivers or firmware and write free replacements", which to me indicates that Android is fairly close. He is not saying "the shortest path is to go write something else from scratch" or "gee, it's not really free yet, so I'll buy a shiny iPhone because... what the heck, I owe it to myself and I'm tired of harping about this free software bullshit anyway".

As a kernel developer I'll just say that my opinion is that this is a monumental task that says that Android is about as far away as any other embedded proprietary Linux-based device (including the Nokia phones).

Edit: That should be not including the Nokia phones. The Nokia Maemo phones are far easier to deal with than the Android phones.

> Completely irrelevant. If I say a donkey is not a horse and you then say "Yes, but it's closer than a manatee!" the donkey doesn't suddenly become a horse. Successfulness also really has no relevance to whether or not it's free.

First of all, I'm talking about the percentage of the source code and the system created from it, not about animals. We're all technical here, so let's not go off on tangents.

That said, it's a compromise. I want something that is open, and I want something that is reasonably widespread, and I want something that works well, because of the positive network externalities inherent in much of the software world. I'm ok with not 100% open and not the market leader - indeed, I'm fairly biased towards open, being an Ubuntu user (even though that is not 100%).

Beyond what I want, a completely free system is useless if no one produces actual hardware for it, so I think Android's compromises are good ones in that direction. Perhaps RMS does not agree, but that's his right.

What is so 'monumental' about the drivers and firmware that are missing?

I think you are discounting the value of the GUI and user space stuff, which is given to you under a free license with Android. Recreating that stuff would be a monumental task in and of itself.

     Completely irrelevant. If I say a donkey is not a
     horse and you then say "Yes, but it's closer than a 
     manatee!" the donkey doesn't suddenly become a horse

You can use a donkey to almost the same chores as a horse, you can even mate a donkey with a horse.

So this particular point is completely irrelevant ;)

    As a kernel developer ... Android is about as far away 
    as any other embedded proprietary Linux-based device.

You've got to give some concrete facts here, as this is too vague.

You can use a donkey to almost the same chores as a horse, you can even mate a donkey with a horse.

I'm not going to play the semantics game, I'm relying on the reader to not be dense.

You've got to give some concrete facts here, as this is too vague.

OK, to give an example of a problem of similar scope, the first thing that has to be done is root the phone. Luckily, we have a canonical equivalent to bypassing the digital signed software -- Tivo. Tivo was basically the same deal. In order to load your nonsigned code into the firmware of the device, one first needed to find a security hole and exploit it. From there one would have to recreate the necessary drivers and such. This would essentially be equivalent to the effort to reverse engineer the Broadcom wireless drivers, which is still not complete (partially because I think they recently announced their intention to release at least some source code).

An example of a device which directly contradicts davidw's statement that Android is the most free smartphone is the Nokia N900. The development work needed to customize the N900 is a fraction of that of the Android platform.

> davidw's statement that Android is the most free smartphone

davidw didn't say that. What I said is that overall, I think Android is our best bet for something that's free, but also "matters". OpenMoko is quite free, for instance, but doesn't really matter - no one will ever use it. I honestly don't have a good idea about what's in MeeGo, how free it is, how much it's possible to tweak the installation on the phone, and so on.

> I'm not going to play the semantics game, I'm relying on the reader to not be dense.

You are the one who brought the zoo into it. The rest of us were talking about mobile phone software.

Also, in terms of their DNA, a donkey is far closer to a horse than a manatee is, if you really want to get into comparisons of animals...

Both you and bad_user are completely missing the point. The idea is that "openness" is not a universal. The statement 'X is more open than Y' does not hold unless you define open. I agree that your definition of open does indeed categorize Android as more 'open' than some competitors.

However, the notion that you can simply say that Android is more open than the iPhone, universally, is simply untrue. I'm attempting to promote a semblance of formal statement here, wherein the parties actually state their axioms as opposed to making otherwise semantically meaningless statements like 'Android is more open than iPhone'.

Come on. Axioms? Formal statements?

It's pretty simple:

Where can I download the source code for the iPhone's UI?

Does iPhone have anything like Android's intents that allows me to plug my own stuff in?

Can I install my own applications on my own damn phone without paying Apple?

There may be some metric where iPhone is more open than Android, but I can't think of it.

There are plenty of nice things to be said about the iPhone: it really changed the phone game, it's beautiful, well designed, and so on. But 'open' and 'free' aren't really words I'd associate with it.

Unfortunately N900 doesn't have any traction and has some usability issues. I've played with one and I think the OS is a little too heavy.

RMS is concerned about freedom for end-users.

Apache license gives freedom to developers, including freedom to take freedom away from end-users.

And Apple is concerned just about end-users. End users are not concerned about RMS and his concerns at all.

No, Apple is concerned about making money. They make money by making things and convincing end-users to buy them. One way to convince end-users is to make something useful and pretty and then market it in the most effective way possible.

They are very good at this, and I do not fault them for it, but I also do not confuse altruism with what is clearly a profit motive.

So if Apple is making something useful for users, and users reward Apple for it by buying their products, what's the issue again?

What, in anything I said, did you read as critical of Apple or of Apple's users? For the record, I have been a Mac user for the last five years, but do I really need to say that every time I describe Apple's profit motive?

Unlike Google's altruism?

Ah, assigning motives to my comment. No, what I said about Apple is just as true of Google. And Microsoft.

There's at least one project that aims to make Android completely free software and thus 100% RMS approved.

Free software is cooler, open source is only kinda sorta cool ;p

The best comment I've heard on the free-ness of Android is:

"Everyone thought that Android would usher in a new era of freedom for handset users. Unfortunately, it just turned out that Android is more open not for users, but for Carriers to do as they please. Compare the crapware installed on Android phones vs. the iPhone. In a weird way, Apple has done more to push freedom for the (non-hacker) end user than Android has."

> it doesn't work, doesn't know what repo is.

I think that should have said "git" instead of "repo"

'repo' is a google-authored tool (in python) to nagivate their repositories and grab the correct build.

There are a dozen dependencies not listed in that tweet to build android. JDK5.0-12, flex, bison, libncurses, etc etc etc.

Perhaps he meant it's open enough for a phone manufacturer? Not that I completely agree with that definition of "Open".