Vic Gundotra’s Paean to Android’s Openness at Google I/O 2010

Google has always allowed early access to privileged hardware partners. They may be changing the terms of that early access, but the access itself is not new. You can argue about whether Android is "open" or not, but either way it's still about as "open" as it's always been.

- Android 1.0 source was not published until one day before it shipped on the HTC T-Mobile G1

- Android 2.0 source was not published until one week after it shipped on the Motorola Verizon Droid.

- Android 3.0 source will not be published until some unknown date after it shipped on the Motorola XOOM.

Not even other hardware partners have access to the source during these early access periods. (I know, because I was working on an Android customization project for carriers and manufacturers at the time of the 2.0 release.)

Actually, now that he puts it that way, Google's position looks much less hypocritical.

Even if Google were to completely close the source forever, and never release the new updates, they could quite consistently claim "We created Android to shake up the phone market. You now have two men. Andy Rubin, and Steve Jobs. You have two carriers, Verizon or AT&T".

More charitably, they're still only talking about early access. Presumably, eventually the Honeycomb sources will be released. Which would further allow them to claim that android is 'open'.

If Facebook wants to create a Facebook/Andoid phone that is completely independent of Google, they can definitely do this. Sure they have to forgo gmail / calendar and the other proprietary apps, but they could easily write their own. It's all open source.

The difference is Gruber could never create a Gruber / iOS phone that is completely independent of Apple.

not gruber again..

He claimed Apple's 30% cut on subscription was good - only because Apple always does the right thing and then had nothing else to back up the claim.

Somehow his comments are always here?