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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Not an Android user, but from what I understand the issue is that Google has released the new Nexus 7, but a) the GPU uses proprietary drivers (binary blobs) and b) the actual "factory image" (i.e. what runs on the device when you buy it) of the Nexus 7 is still unreleased and closed source.

This means that the Nexus 7 is, practically, no more open than the iPad/MS Surface/etc.. That would definitely be upsetting to me if the gig had been sold as a way to strongly impact an open source piece of software, and Jean-Baptiste's decision seems very reasonable.

Can android users/developers weigh in? I'm sure I'm getting some part of it wrong.

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That's overstating the case. Google can't distribute a tree that can build for the new N7 because of one (or maybe a handful of) component licenses. The rest of the system remains open source though, and can be built (for the N7 and others) by community projects. There is value there.

Certainly the new N7 isn't a "free" device in any meaningful sense. But Android as a whole remains vastly more open than iOS or Windows.

It's not overstating the case though. When a huge component of the system isn't open source, that clouds the openness of the system as a whole. People make fun of Stallman for his ridiculous practices, but at least he's principled about this very issue. Here, the AOSP maintainer is making the same principled stand. If you can't boot the device (hence use it) because it doesn't have open GPU devices drivers, then it's not an open device, plain and simple. None of the other stuff you allude to matters if you can't use the device.

As with many questions of openness, it's a question of pragmatism. It might be fair if some Kickstarted device did this or something, but this is Google's flagship tablet. Google uses the "Open" moniker as a marketing tool to both sell the devices to like-minded supporters as well as to bash others (Apple, MS, etc) pretty much whenever they can, as do many of their affiliates/partners. As such, it's completely fair to hold them accountable when that ends up not being the case.

Sorry, that's dumb. If it's really a question of "pragmatism", then in a practical sense there is no distinction between this device and, say, the HTC One which uses the same GPU and is subject to the same restrictions.

Yet I can go to www.cyanogenmod.com and pull and build a tree for the One and boot it, with access to the source code for virtually all of the system (sans things like the GPU blob in question).

That you would argue this is no more open than iOS or Windows is weird, and sounds more like a stand on vain principle and not "pragmatism".

Is it bad? Yes. Is it equally bad? Hell no.

If you can't even see the screen of the phone you're booting then how does it matter if the rest of the kernel is Free or not?

A lot of the theory of optimization can be reduced to speeding up parts of code actually being executed and paging out parts of the code never actually touched, which works because the source is not uniformly useful. A kernel would be useless without a scheduler, a GUI program would be useless without an event loop, no matter how "open" the code surrounding those are.

Android is "open" because there's a lot of GPL code in there. And the irony is that with all this "openess" is still the most fragmented OS out there. The whole situation is ridiculous.

I always thought Android's openness was a driving force behind the platform's fragmentation. If anyone can build an Android device, and modify it however, wouldn't you expect it? Wasn't it an expected byproduct of Google's initial strategy?

There's nothing ironic about that. Due to it's open nature (i.e. anyone can manufacture an android device that runs whichever version of the os he likes) there is fragmentations. Just like the different linux distros...

Uh, what? The only GPL code in Android is the kernel.

Darwin is open source too. You just can't build a booting IOS image from the code that's available, due to a lack of certain binary blobs. It's almost the same problem.

Got a link for me, please?

http://opensource.apple.com/

Wasn't hard to find... :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

Darwin is but a single (very small) part of iOS. Only if you consider all of iOS's frameworks & apps to be a binary blobs is it "almost the same problem".

None of the Google apps (like Maps, for example) are open source on Android either.

Google is choosing not to leverage licensing opportunities that could solve this situation for all of the Google Experience Devices.

This is not about the apache or gnu license. This is not about binary blobs. This is about a huge company that is playing games with "open source" for strategic reasons, full stop.

Google could put in licensing conditions that would resolve this driver situation for any company that implements GED services, but they choose not to. It always comes back to the fact that their primary product is you the user, and they only are interested in selling advertising services. Google executives are behaving unethically with this platform.

I don't have knowledge about this particular case.

But I can tell you that multiple, multiple times people have cried wolf on this. There's always a gap between when Google releases a device and when they release the accompanying source.

This is different though, as most of the components that are used in this device require you to sign an NDA to even get the datasheet. Most devices beforehand had at least a semblance of the open source movement.

Android is usually considered open compared to iOS because developers can distribute software directly to consumers, without permission from a third party.

Source code licensing is a different topic.

That's one of the big problems: "open" can mean vastly different things to different people and in different contexts.

I don't think 3rd party software distribution is a main contributor to openness. Before Apple's app store most software was distributed directly to customers. For example, Symbian, J2ME phones, Windows Mobile, etc. None of these were considered open.

"None of these were considered open." I would say they are now, because of this:

"Before Apple's app store most software was distributed directly to customers."

Most discussions I see on the net these days are about free markets vs privately regulated markets. Windows and Android and Mac OS X belong to the former, while iOS and the XBox to the latter.

Should people provide products and services to other people, maybe with some government regulation? Or should a few private companies control and regulate the distribution? Would the world be a better or worse place when Microsoft had the power to prevent the distribution of Web Browsers?

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