Android Isn't Free
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About HTC and Samsung(and the rest) forking Android, such moves have failed in the past with Symbian etc, because of two reasons. First is that you need a primary driver and others need to play second fiddle, also, the OEMs expertise is in hardware, not software. Their 'enhancements' to the stock Android UI and code have been reviled for lagging the phone and running down the battery. Same with the PC OEMs, the stuff bundled with their PCs universally suck.
Nokia is the latest to fail at making software and I don't think HTC and Samsung are going to go that route, especially since they're already pushing a ton of phones for now.
Ballmer's threat was about the risk of patent extortion OEMs incur when they make Android phones. Since he runs the company that extorts about $15 out of every phone Samsung makes, I would not be surprised if he had good information (despite being Ballmer).
Let's see how the racket goes now that Google has 17000+ more patents to defend their partners with.
I don't think anything like Android ever happened to the mobile space. Symbian was co-owned by Nokia and Sony Ericsson for a while, but was never open-source. I think saying a common Android stack would fail is premature. And my point is that it would survive even if Google tried to kill it, something I doubt will happen.
Motorola will, as Google has repeated many times, continue to be an independent company and will have to compete with other Android licensees in order to win preferred partner status. I strongly suspect they won't win frequently (as that would jeopardize the Android ecosystem)
Last time I read an article on the cost of producing Android devices Microsoft was making a very healthy profit from each device. Guess it pays to have an R & D lab and a few lawyers.
Also isn't Google currently holding Android code back form the public? even before all this latest carry on?
So currently it's a release by release open source system, and not purely open.
For a long time they outsourced their R&D to Apple. Guess it's no longer that easy these days. Their lawyers, however, have consistently been top-notch.
> So currently it's a release by release open source system, and not purely open.
You need to look up the meaning of free and open source software. You have the code Google released, you can use it for whatever you want, improve it and redistribute it. It's, therefore, free. You may prefer to let Google do all the heavy lifting for you and then get the software for free, but that's the free Ballmer intentionally uses to create confusion with free software - it means "gratis" - and had nothing to do with your freedoms.
And free involves things being free. Having to pay MS (and maybe Apple soon) every time you release an Android based product is not a free product. Remember that MS court case its won have been against core Android components but targeted at manufacturers so they can get revenue.
So releasing an Android products means there is a court precedence that you have to pay to use it if MS decides you are a target. From memory they where getting USD$15 per device, thats $3 billion a year (15 x 500000 x 365) ... far from free IMO...
And yep the currently released code is open source. I Expect Google to continue down that path.
But its a totalitarian system if they aren't releasing evolving code, you have no say how things are designed, you bow to Google engineer decisions. There is of course benefits to that but its also not freedom, if you wanted true freedom you'd branch Android and push the totalitarian aspects out of its design.
Unless I am very wrong, no such case exists. HTC, Samsung, Tom Tom and other victims of patent extortion settled out of court.
> But its a totalitarian system if they aren't releasing evolving code
No, it's not. It's only so if you don't make your own fork, which you are free to do. Unlike, for instance, WP7, which only Nokia (soon to be renamed "Microsoft Mobility" ;-) ) has gained permission to do - and I doubt they can do more than add a little theme here and some preinstalled app there. Freedom also means you have to take care of yourself. You are free to take the code Google offers, but, if it doesn't do what you want (but does what Google wants) it's up to you to change it.