Google really doesn’t want Honeycomb on phones
unwiredview.com
unwiredview.com
Sometimes you have to "close" the source for a period of time to satisfy commercial restrictions and all is well when it is opened again.
I've never understood Google's 'openness' argument as a moral one. I always took it to mean that I can do whatever I want with my hardware, including side-loading software at various levels of the stack. This has held mostly true.
I'm seeing two kinds of attacks on Google/Android's openness when this kind of thing happens. The first is from F/OSS advocates that feel betrayed and manipulated by Google's use/misuse of F/OSS terms, which is pretty understandable to me as Google's handling of its software seems to be very different from traditional F/OSS.
The other is from Apple advocates trying to score cheap gotcha/schadenfreude points. Your comment is the second kind.
> I can do whatever I want with my hardware
All handset manufacturers lock down the firmware. You can download the source, but you can't do anything without hacking the phone. If that's 'open', then by unlocking my iPhone I can render it just as 'open'. Now you can't even download the source. As for side-loading, the second-largest mobile provider in the US doesn't let you do it at all. How is Android open if Google never calls out the gatekeepers as they strip away the openness?
The only substantial way Android can even claim to be 'open' is the lack of editorial control over the software installed on Android phones. Of course, Skyhook probably has something to say about that too.
As for Apple, they do plenty of things I don't like. But fundamentally they're just a consumer electronics company turning out gadgets with few political implications.
Apple isn't the world's largest advertising company, running the world's largest private information gathering system. Apple isn't the go-to company when Obama wants advice on tech issues. Apple hasn't enabled censorship in China. Apple hasn't supported net neutrality when it suited their needs, then yanked the rug away when it didn't.
Google is all of those things - and their reputation as the universal love child, reflexively defended by legions of fans based on their commitment to principles like 'not being evil' and 'openness', enables them to act without regard to those principles.
The handset manufacturers/carriers do lock down the software. But that's not Google, that's the manufacturers/carriers. When Google is involved (with their flagship devices like the G1 and Nexus devices) the hardware is not locked down at all.
I think one of the problems with what you're saying is the conflation of specific hardware, Android, and Google Experience Android. Anyone can take open source Android and put it on any hardware they manufacture. That's open. Some manufacturers can negotiate with Google to put Google Experience Android on their hardware. That's less open, but more open than most/all other platforms. Skyhook can make a deal with anyone making non-Google Experience Android devices they want to. Google Experience Devices still enjoy almost complete freedom in the Android Market, as well as openly distributed APKs (excepting ATT devices).
RE Apple and political implications: I disagree with you. Their editorial oversight and the heavy-handed and arbitrary way that they exercise it is political control.
RE Apple and censorship: Apple doesn't enable censorship in China. They actively engage in censorship everywhere (through the App Store). I'm sure if Apple had occasion to enable censorship in China, they'd (prudently) do so. (As an aside, Apple has other issues in China.)
I'll admit I do like Google and have a warm and fuzzy feeling about them. But I think it's deserved. Google has done some amazing things, some (like the release of Android source) unequivocally open.
That said, I do think Google makes some pragmatic decisions sometimes that are compromises of their professed principles. And that does make me angry. I don't reflexively defend those decisions. I do hope that they are pragmatic decisions taken with a long-term view (e.g. working with carriers/manufacturers until Android and specifically Google Experience Android is a sufficient industry power that they can force the industry to open up and allow software freedom).
Again, delaying the release of source code to me does not qualify as a breach of principle, and the criticisms thereof strike me as reflexive, and mostly in the two ways I described above.
How does "closed Honeycomb" reflect on any of the code that you previously would have considered "open"?
Before someone commits code to an open-source project, that code isn't available. No one would claim that the existence of that unavailable code says anything about the openness of the available code. And that wouldn't change if the unavailable code was shared with some of the author's friends.
So why does "closed Honeycomb" have that effect?
They've been making a lot of noise for years about Android the open source software stack for mobile devices. Now they 're releasing mobile devices, calling it Android, basing it on Android, and keeping the source to themselves; Weak.
Would you have not complained if they had called it "Banana" instead? Or, would you have complained when they open-sourced Banana because it was really Android.
They open-sourced a huge amount of code and you're complaining because they didn't open-source some other code because that other code has the same name?
Wowsers.
It's great that the OS source was also open, but it seems like this has only a very indirect impact on end users and app developers, unlike app store policies.
I'm no Apple Fanboi (I'm a Linux fanboi, if anything), but this shows what a phenomenal job Apple has done with iOS.
Closing Honeycomb's source is not going to stop cut-rate handset manufacturers from shipping a terrible Android experience on their phones, it is merely going to mean the terrible experience will be built on Gingerbread or lower instead of Honeycomb. Either way whatever damage might be done to Android via the user's own bad choices is done and in any case that's a caveat emptor situation that Google can't and shouldn't try to control.
I'm not sure what the actual reasons are behind this but IMO the consequences are all pretty negative. This move makes Andy Rubin look like a bit of a hypocrite in light of his public twitter-spat with Steve Jobs, it generates ill will for them among the open source community, it mildly kneecaps one of the important things that make a subset of tech-trendsetters favor Android over iOS, etc, and for what purpose exactly? No good one that is visible from the outside looking in.
Ultimately Android is Google's thing and they can take their ball and go home for any reason, but if they are going to do so they should really give a better explaination of why they are doing it because the one they seem to be going with rings hollow.
Because it degrades the users experience with Android.
Sure, some manufacturers will create a bad experience using Android 2.2. But, if Google knows that Honeycomb WILL have issues with most handsets, it would be prudent to hold off until those issues are resolved.
Just a possibility I'm throwing out there. Haven't read up on the issue yet.
Can someone with insight in to the industry explain this?
What the world really needs is for some small competitor to Google in some space to make a very public attempt to get some tech into the tree. For example, for one of the smallest mapping companies to try and make an API for in-app mapping-services.
Then Google will wake up.
You are aware that OEM engineers who are open source comitters to android do have access, right?
In the context of the rapidly-changing ubiquitous computing space with open-source (or even commoditised) hardware nowhere to be seen, I just don't see what gains would come from an OSS project rather than Android's 'eventually-open' model.