Google to Android Developers: 'Do Not Develop in the Open'
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It's certified by the OSI, whose definition of "Open-source" is available at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php. To summarize, open-source means (1) The software and modifications can be redistributed freely, (2) The source code is available, (3) Users are free to modify the software. Android meets these requirements.
The software is open-source. The project development is not open: See http://www.lua.org/license.html
> Lua is free open-source software, distributed under a very liberal license (the well-known MIT license). It may be used for any purpose, including commercial purposes, at absolutely no cost. Just download it and use it.
> Where does Lua come from?
> Lua is designed, implemented, and maintained by a team at PUC-Rio, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Lua was born and raised in Tecgraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group of PUC-Rio, and is now housed at Lablua. Both Tecgraf and Lablua are laboratories of the Department of Computer Science of PUC-Rio.
and http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Lua-open-source-or-not...
> An "open-source project" has one meaning, an "open-source software" has another. The project is not open source, the software (the result of the project) is.
Few people have had a problem with this principle as applied to Lua. I'm not sure why this is confusing or newsworthy when it's applied to Android.
Whether Google intentionally positioned Android as such or whether that's just the wishful thinking of its fans is irrelevant now. The expectation for Android is that it will be completely open.
People complain about things when they are disappointed, or when they perceive hypocrisy or broken (real or imagined) promises. There's no absolute scale.
This is why people have a problem: http://twitter.com/#!/Arubin/status/27808662429
I think a lot of people's problem comes from Google having not yet released the Honeycomb source code. It's one thing to say you're open source, provide all your source for each release, but develop in private. It's another thing to say you're open source, develop in private, and not release the source code to your released software.
Android can be forked and inspected, which are the fine things about open source, but it cannot be followed like you can with "open" software.
But lets put it in another way: its hard to argue that all aspects of Android are 'open' while its easy to argue that some of them are definitely 'closed'. Whether that sums up to a "open" or "closed" verdict is not up to me. For me it sums up as being somewhere in the grey area, more to the "closed" side after the Honeycomb incident.
You can see the _source code_ when they're finished with it, and bundle it with a product. That is significant, or do you happen to have a copy of iOS 3 lying around that you can bundle with your own non-apple phone?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/07/the-bombshell-that-wasnt-fo...
There wasn't anything new in those documents. We already knew that Google only put out final releases and we already knew about lead phones. It was all public knowledge.
That doesn't mean that it has no bearing on the case, but it's not revelatory.
The real news here (as far as I am concerned) is that the judge has suggested settlement talks, which to me, in my legal ignorance, sounds like he thinks the case has some merit?
This just looks like smoke in the eyes from Oracle lawyers.
Open-Source does mean that I (as an individual) have a lot of rights, including having the right to fork it in case I don't like the current stewardship.
Most of the Android eco-system is actually as
closed as with every other platform
The Android eco-system includes thousands of open-sourced Java libraries and cross-platform development tools that are also open-source. I can develop Android apps on Linux or Windows or OS X, depending on my mood. And I can modify those tools to make me more productive.
Yes, I don't have a direct influence on what Samsung might deploy on their phones, or on the code getting deployed in Android's master ; but then again, it's equally hard to have that effect on Linux, the kernel.
If you don't like it, fork it. That's what open source is about.
except the false advertising
I don't think that Android follows the spirit of open source though:
Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. [2]
There is no peer-review or transparency about the Android development process (unless you only define peers to be multi-billion dollar megacorps).
>The Android eco-system includes thousands of open-sourced Java libraries and cross-platform development tools that are also open-source.
Irrelevant; there are vast numbers of open source libraries for Windows or OS X, doesn't make them Open Source operating systems.
>If you don't like it, fork it
Except I can't fork any of the recent versions or development builds. How do I fork Honeycomb? How do I fork Ice Cream Sandwich? What good is the 'right' to fork something when the actual source isn't available unless you pay Google millions of dollars?
[1]: http://opensource.org/docs/osd [2] http://opensource.org/
iD Software open sources their old 3D engines as well; no one considers iD Tech to be an open source project.
Except they can. All of Android, with the exception of the Linux kernel under it, is not protected by a "viral" license like the GPL.
Nope, because I do not have access to the latest code, therefore I do not consider it open or open source.
You don't have access to the "very latest code" for the Linux kernel either, that resides (in many separate pieces) on various developer's workstations. By the time it actually gets committed, some other developer has made modifications to their working copy (arguably making it "the latest version") and not pushed that up yet.
Except we don't have access to the code that ships. The code shipping on Honeycomb device is not available.
>You don't have access to the "very latest code" for the Linux kernel either
Using an 8 month old version of the Android source is not the same as not having access to kernel code that is still being written. With the linux kernel you can access code as soon as it is committed to kernal.org, with Android you only get to see it after an entire new version of the OS has been released (and sometimes not even then). It is perhaps difficult to draw a solid line here, and pedants will complain that you don't have access to code that still only exists in Linus' brain, but there seems to be a pretty clear difference to me.
You're right, there is a difference. But the difference is one of process, and isn't really related to the openness of the software itself.
They claim that the code "is not ready yet for public use", whatever that means.
Either Gingerbread is the last public release, or Google switched to a model where only the second-latest version is publicly available.
I've always found the argument that a product that is being sold to customers is "not ready for public use" specious.
Some people are ok with that, and some are not.
It almost sounds as if there was a law that companies have to open source their products, which I am pretty sure does not exist (IANAL, though).
This does make the Android development process less than open. It does not stop Android being open source.
The relationship to the court case is that Google's development process is very much at question in the issue of whether there is a violation of Oracle's IP.
http://www.economist.com/node/593691
The situation is very different with android, but the analogy is obvious.
Why? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm truly curious. What would be the benefits?
Under Google's governance Android has become quite powerful and a true competitor to the iPhone. Something that no other company has been able to achieve with their own phones/OS. Microsoft, RIM, Palm/HP, Nokia; they've all failed so far. At this moment it is not broken so why fix it?
So in my opinion they either stop bragging about how open they are or actually practice what they preach.
Nobody is forced to use Android. You could always license Symbian or something...
You're making it sound like there are compelling alternatives to Android for a handset maker, but really there's not.
If my patch conflicts with the direction of the project, I can just fork.
And no, I never tried because don't have a device running 2.x. I could try contributing to Honeycomb (since I happen to own a Xoom). Is there any repo I could clone containing Honeycomb? (honest question)
Meanwhile Apple rakes in billions with closed source software. What's more, people cheer them on for it and hail them as the saviors of mankind.
Not sure that competitor is Google though, because they seem to be more interested in controlling the platform than in creating an open platform. Open is a bit of a marketing buzzword with Android.
[citation needed]?
Nobody is specifically cheering because it's closed source. I would cheer even more if they had iOS and opened it up for minor tinkering.
Look, there have been a zillion articles raving about Apple in the last two weeks. Just google for yourself, don't ask me for citations about the most blatantly obvious things. It really annoys me.
No, they usually don't cheer the closedness (although it happens often enough), but they don't seem to mind it, either.
As for what makes OSS better: you can check what the software does, and change it if you don't like it. I think you can find lots of articles about the benefits of OSS. However, I don't care what kind of software you use, so please spare me the discussion.
The thing is, most companies (Apple, MS, Oracle) advertise their software as closed source but still give away portions of their code (Apple with BSD/WebKit, Oracle with Java, MS gives away smaller stuff) while Google advertises their code as open source and gives away portions of their code.
That's why people are complaining. It's not a war on semantics ("oh but it is still Open Source"), it's not a political war.
It's basically people complaining about how Open Source has been reduced to a buzzword because of Google.
As for your reason why OSS is better; none of that is relevant to consumers, who account for the largest part of the market by far. How many consumers are going to fork Android realistically? None. Don't get me wrong OSS software is a great thing and has it's place commercially too, but you present your argument as if it is black and white; as if anything closed is evil. It is not.
"However, I don't care what kind of software you use, so please spare me the discussion." That was pointlessly aggressive. If you want to engage in adult conversation, I suggest that you rethink your approach. I must ask, at what point did I or any other commenter start reeling off what software they use, and evangelising their world view as the one true view?
Except with Android I can't submit those patches back to the main project, so I have to maintain a separate fork myself, for eternity (similarly for any changes made by other non-Google developers that I might want to use). This isn't sustainable for more than a few patches. An Android fork that is developed in the open and accepts community patches would qualify for the benefits of Open Source, Android from Google? Not so much.
Some previous Android releases have been open source software but the Android project is not an open source project.
Open Source doesn't give you the right to get patches accepted upstream, it gives you the right to have your own fork. If your fork is worth it's steam, other people will like it and join you, otherwise it will die off when you lose interest just as it should.
>This isn't sustainable for more than a few patches
This is true, but sounds like it could be countered by starting a fork as a community project so that anyone with just a few patches can submit them to your fork. This would also likely increase interest in your fork and may help find someone willing to take over admin rolls for you, since that seems to be your goal in all this.
Look, if all you want it to be able to publish a few patches and upstream won't accept them, then include said patches in a blog post. That way they're in the wild, and you don't have to maintain a repository. Just a thought in passing.
Also there might be community mods, like Cyanogen (haven't really looked into them).